A nurse I am
The following story is a first-person account of CON student, Britt Luby. Identifying details have been changed in stories to protect patient privacy.
For years, I have walked into rooms where the air feels too heavy to breathe. As a
pediatric hospital chaplain, I learned to enter chaos quietly, to steady myself beside
families whose worlds were collapsing, and to stay present in moments most people
hope never to witness. It is devastating and beautiful work — work that taught me
how to sit with suffering, how to listen without flinching, and how to hold space
for grief that has no resolution.
I worked closely with our palliative care providers, and I was grateful for the physical comfort they offered patients as they died. My own role was more nebulous. Aside from an occasional baptism, I had very few tangible interventions to offer. I could sit in the dark with families, I could bear witness to their pain, and I could honor their stories—but I could not ease their physical suffering. Over time, that limitation carried a moral cost. I began taking nursing prerequisites at our local junior college, unsure of where they would lead but certain that I needed a way to pair my capacity for presence with skills that could relieve suffering in concrete ways.
One night in the PICU crystallized this for me. I had been called to support a family as artificial life support was removed from their pre-teen son. He was just a few years older than my own child, and the sports-themed decorations around his bed reminded me of my son’s room at home. The family asked me to review funeral home information and timelines before they said their final goodbye. When we finished, I gently said, “I can see that you love your son, and I am so sorry that this has happened. Some families appreciate prayer at this time; some prefer privacy. Would you like me to accompany you? There is no wrong answer.”
His mother gave me a small, tired smile and shook her head. “We’ve been reading a Percy Jackson book at bedtime,” she said. “I’m going to read it to him so he can hear it one last time.”
I had tears in my eyes as I touched her arm. “That sounds like a prayer to me,” I said.
After the family left, I helped the nurse prepare the boy’s body for the morgue. Then I drove home, walked into my kitchen, and helped finish cooking dinner. My daughter climbed my legs while my son told me about recess. Months later, when my son asked to read Percy Jackson, I had to steady myself before pulling the book off the shelf.
My personal theology leaves room for mystery, but not everyone can tolerate the mystery of why children die. Families wanted answers I could not give. Patients were in pain I could not relieve. I found myself carrying the weight of these unanswered questions home with me. So I kept taking prerequisites. At night, I carried the bodies of infants to the morgue; during the day, I flipped through pharmacology flashcards. On weekends, a mother might weep on my shoulder so intensely that her mascara seeped through my paper gown; at home, I grew bacteria in petri dishes in my refrigerator for microbiology while sewing my daughter’s Halloween costume.
When I told my classmates I was interested in hospice nursing, they looked at me with shock. “Dying people?” one said. “I could never do that.” But here is the truth: they will do that. All of us will. Working as a chaplain brought me into the sacred work of caring for the dying, and every single person dies. Death is not a medical failure—it is a human experience. Every person deserves to meet it with dignity, comfort, and companionship.
This challenge—bearing witness to profound grief without the tools to ease physical suffering—has shaped the nurse I aspire to become. I want to be a nurse who is unafraid of the hardest moments, who can walk into a room where a family is breaking and offer both presence and skill. I want to be the kind of nurse who understands that pain is not only physical, and that healing sometimes looks like comfort, clarity, or simply not being alone.
My years as a chaplain taught me how to listen deeply, how to honor the dignity of every person, and how to stay grounded in the face of overwhelming emotion. Nursing school is teaching me to pair that emotional resilience with clinical competence.
I also hope to support my classmates and future colleagues as they encounter death for the first time. I know how frightening and powerful those moments can be; I know how they linger. I want to be a nurse who helps others show up fully—who models compassion and steadiness in the thin spaces between life and whatever comes next. I chose UNT Health Fort Worth because their values — be curious and better together — aligned with my own. I also felt like the College of Nursing welcomed me into the program because of my work as a chaplain and identity as a mom; not in spite of it.
Three semesters in, I am in awe of my classmates. Most are much younger than me, but
they come to class with curiosity and profound resilience. There are moments, specifically
when I am working on a group project, where I think, “I am too old to be doing this.”
They go to the library to study; I have to head to the elementary school pickup line
and make a dinner plan before driving my son to soccer practice.
But most of the time, I feel like the thirty of us in our cohort are enriching each other’s learning in transformative ways. They teach me how to use technology, slang words, and new TV shows to watch. I teach them discernment skills and how to talk to grievers. Several celebrated Easter around my kitchen table with my family. What a gift we are to one anaother.
The challenge of working as a pediatric chaplain did not push me away from suffering; it pushed me toward a profession where I can meet suffering with both presence and action. It taught me that I am capable of holding immense grief without losing myself, and it clarified the kind of nurse I hope to be: one who brings dignity, comfort, and courage into the hardest rooms in the hospital. Nursing is not a departure from my past; indeed, is the next faithful step in the work I have already been doing.