Blessing of the Hands
OBU ceremony gives peace, confidence to incoming nursing students
Tess Batchelor and other junior nursing students gathered on the campus lawn with a sense of expectancy.
It was their first day of the fall semester, the day they would enter the College of Nursing at Oklahoma Baptist University.
Many of them wearing scrubs, the students joined together and listened as faculty members prayed for them. Senior nursing students who joined them also lifted them up in prayer.
It was all a part of the “Blessing of the Hands” ceremony at OBU.
“This time was so sweet. It calmed a lot of anxious and worry-filled hearts,” Batchelor said of the Aug. 10 event.
“As we worshiped and prayed, it was a reminder of what God has called us to do with our life. We might not know everything, but God does, and He holds our future.”
Robbie Henson, dean of the nursing college, said two members of the faculty, Laura Gramling and Megan Smith, created the ceremony as a way to commission all junior nursing majors as they enter the nursing program.
Henson, a Certified Nurse Educator, described the ceremony as a time of recognizing the nursing students' “calling to be the hands and feet of Jesus as they learn to care for people who are at points of transition in their
life — the joy of a birth, the pain of trauma, the fear of the unknown.”
Smith, an assistant nursing professor, said she had been helping to coordinate the commissioning ceremony for about six years. She said organizers reevaluated the ceremony last year and decided it was time to conduct it in a different way.
Smith said the event had been more formal and less spiritual, but the coordinators wanted to refocus the ceremony to highlight more of the faith aspect of becoming a nurse.
“It's almost a worship service in a lot of respects. We truly believe our junior nursing students are coming into a calling,” Smith said.
She said last year's ceremony was held indoors, but the group gathered outside for the recent event because of COVID-19. The students' hands were anointed with oil at the 2019, but that spiritual practice was set aside in an effort to limit physical touch due to the pandemic.
Still, Smith said, “It was an opportunity for us to call on the Lord to bless these students.”
The ceremony was poignant, particular in the midst of a pandemic where nurses, doctors and other health care professionals have been on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19.
“In the last few months, we've all seen what it means to care deeply for other people. A ceremony like this, it gets back to what it means to care well for others,” Smith said.
`Seek our Father together'
Kenzi Fergason, another junior nursing major, said the ceremony was a blessing, particularly because it was held on the first day of classes.
“I know for me, starting nursing school is daunting because you hear how hard it is. With the ceremony on the first day of school, it allowed us to be reminded why we choose nursing in the first place and how it is a calling. ... We can do nursing school through Him who gives us our strength,” she said.
Another student, Emma Lang, said the event brought her peace and confidence heading into her junior year of nursing school.
“At first, there were so many unknowns coming back to school in the middle of a pandemic. There were contradictory feelings of great joy and nervousness knowing that we had the opportunity to be starting nursing school. The Blessing of the
Hands service provided the opportunity to have the faculty and senior nursing students come and stand alongside us, share words of sweet encouragement, and more importantly, seek our Father together,” Lang said.
“I am thankful to be in a community where the nursing faculty, among many others, are genuinely invested in and care for the hearts of every nursing student here.”
For Batchelor, the ceremony was the perfect way to start the next chapter of her education.
“Jeremiah — 29:1113 says `For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, `plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,'” she said.
“I cannot wait to see how the Lord molds and transforms my class.”