2015

February 8, 2016February 23, 2016 / Zack Akvan / 3 Comments

2015 started out like any other year ought to:

With a selfie (and a photobomb). Kaitlin and I watched the peach as it dropped with some friends, and snapped a photo when the new year came. 2015 began, and proved to be a year of adventure, change, and blessings.

Two days later, on January 3rd, I visited my dad on his birthday. 2015 would be my first full year without him, and though he’d been gone for nearly a year at the time, I hadn’t really even really begun grieving. I have trouble allowing myself to do that, and though I made it a new years resolution to do so, it never really happened. It’ll remain a goal of mine for 2016.

Soon afterwards, I marked an item off my bucket list: finally beating “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”. That game is quite easily the greatest video game in its genre of all time, perhaps second only to “A Link to the Past.” Anyway, that’s enough geek for one post.

Our family soon grew by a few hands when I (with the help and generosity of our friends at Cobblestone Crossing School of Horsemanship) was able to give Kaitlin a baby horse for Valentine’s Day. The two had quite an amazing bond, and raising a baby had always been a dream of Kaitlin’s. It’s amazing to see how far they have come in their relationship since then!

The next day, she had her first lesson with him. We named him Koda Bear.

Then, we set off for Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for our Valentine’s Day retreat! Nothing beats a dinner at the Old Mill and a few days to just relax and have fun together.

While I was there, I gave someone a fake parking ticket. They deserved it. To see more of my parking ticket victims, search the tag #parkingticketsfromzack on Instagram.

It also snowed in February, and we made the best snowman in our history of snowman making together. It doesn’t snow often in Rome, GA, but you can tell it wasn’t our first rodeo.

Meanwhile, as a middle school teacher, I discovered how fun writing tests could be. Also, I learned that middle school kids nowadays don’t know who Keanu Reeves is. They better watch out, though. That guy knows kung-fu.

In March, I received my acceptance letter from Shorter University’s School of Nursing. I talked a whole lot more about my journey to making nursing my career in a blog post titled “Finding God’s Will“. Needless to say, this marked a turning point in my life.

We found this baby squirrel outside, after a neighborhood cat killed its mother. We nursed it back to help and was able to take it to a friend who rehabilitated it! As far as we know, it was released back into the wild a healthy squirrel.

On April 21st, we celebrated 7 years of being a couple! It’s amazing when I think about being together that long. That’s over a fourth of our lifetime spent on this God-written love journey. I’m a lucky man.

Four days later, my brother-in-law married his best friend (who happens to be the sister of one of my fraternity brothers from college. Small world!), and we (Kaitlin and I) got to be apart of the ceremony.

Immediately afterwards, I broke my wrist in a fall at the church. Which was a big wake-up call for me, honestly. It was my second fracture in two years, and though my first was not due to my own actions, I still had to realize that I’m not invincible. Never having a serious injury as a child or adolescent, I never really had to think about the possibility of my actions leading to serious harm.

For my birthday, Kaitlin took me geocaching and to a Braves game! She’s the best.

I saw my little brother walk for his high school graduation. And now he’s in college. Life happens so fast! 1997 doesn’t seem too long ago, and I can vividly remember the day my father told me I was going to have another little brother.

Kaitlin and I traveled to South Carolina to our friends wedding.

I began working at Starbucks, solidifying my physiological dependence on caffeine, and introducing me to a phenomenal company and crew. I am lucky to work here.

Also in June, I baked my last batch of bread for Rome, Ga’s Great Harvest Bread Company. The company was being sold and would no longer be a Great Harvest franchise. I never worked anywhere as long as I had worked at the bakery, and I owe a considerable amount of my growth as an employee and a person to my time there. Nothing compares to making bread from scratch, and I continue to do so in my home from time to time.

On June 18th, our marriage turned four years old! We weren’t able to be together that day, but it was special nonetheless. Marriage has blessed my life more than anything I have experienced since receiving my salvation in 2008. God has taught me more about myself and about love through the covenant of marriage that I can put to words. I love this girl! I’m grateful I get to grow old and do life with her. Every moment is meaningful.

Every July 4th, Kaitlin’s family tries to have a beach trip to their new retirement home in Yulee, Florida (about 15 minutes from Amelia Island).

Later in the summer, I took Kaitlin to Charleston for a birthday getaway trip, where we enjoyed restful time at the beach, explored Market Street, went on a sunset kayaking tour, and ate some amazing food. It was a fun-packed time, for sure!

When August hit and nursing school officially started, life began to change. Facial hair disappeared. Exams covered countless chapters of material. But I still enjoyed (and continue to) knowing I was on a path that God designed me for. In the end, I was working hard and studying not for myself, but for Him and for His people that I would soon be serving with a new set of skills.

Awkward-faced lunch break selfies became the new thing.

My mother turned 29 again! So I took this picture of her and my brother. He made that face on purpose.

I received my white coat, which I never actually wear. I do love and appreciate the symbolism of it, though.

We joined Kingdom Valenia at Going Caching 2015, a geocaching mega event.

We took a trip to see Amicalola Falls while the leaves were changing color. Gorgeous.

All-nighters with notes spread all over our living room also became the new thing.

Thanksgiving and Christmas brought family together. Not being able to see them much due to school and work made it extra-special this year.

2015 ended the way it started: a selfie. We bought a selfie-stick and used it to take a family picture with all our animals for the Christmas card. It was a greater challenge than we expected, but we eventually got it. Sorta.

Finding God’s Will

October 29, 2015November 16, 2015 / Zack Akvan / Leave a comment

I like to journal as a means of communicating to God my prayers, my questions, my praises, and my frustrations. One question that I have asked God over and over is a classic: “What is Your will for My Life?” While reading through my journal, I came across this entry dated February 2nd, 2015:

Maybe I am asking the wrong questions. I ask You what Your will is for my life, but I already know that. Your will is for me to make Your name greatly known to the ends of the Earth and back. The real question I (maybe) should be asking is “what do I desire to do?” Not as a selfish question at all. Just as a way to ask myself what desire you placed in my heart. I can do Your will no matter what I do, but will I be serving with a divinely established passion for the work set before me? LORD, as I try to discern what to do, search my heart and get rid of any selfish motives or ideas. Show me the passion and desire that was given to me by you.

At the time, I had several equally appealing paths before me. I was finishing pre-requisites in my pursuit of a BSN. I was also a GACE certified middle grades teacher at the Montessori School of Rome, where I was pretty much promised a future in teaching if I desired. If I wasn’t torn enough, a friend of mine offered to sell me her business (a very successful business, of which I was very familiar with and could confidently run).

Three roads diverged in a Roman road.

As my journal entry illustrates, I stopped asking God what His will was and started searching within myself. God placed desire and joy in every one of us. The pursuit of joy is not a bad thing! We just have to place our ultimate joy in Him. It didn’t take very long for me to find out which road I was meant to take.

My desire to serve in healthcare started long ago, when I attended a medical mission trip to Mexico. At the time, I was studying as a pre-med major at Shorter College. Upon graduation, I applied for medical school. Two years in a row, I got to the interview stage, but was either rejected or wait-listed both times.

During my second interview cycle, my Dad was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. As I spent the last 8 months of his life in hospital rooms and, eventually, with hospice nurses at my parent’s home, I realized I might have been pursuing the wrong profession. Physicians are amazing, important, and I have the up-most respect for them, but I hardly ever saw one at the bedside in the hospital.

I did, however, spend a lot of time around nurses. It was the nurses that took care of my dad at the bedside, sometimes around-the-clock. It was a nurse that put a smile on his face when he needed one. It was a nurse that he called when he needed help or had a question about his treatment.

It was a nurse that asked him about his family in the recovery room and not only listened to his stories, but asked if she could come to his patient room to meet us. That moment helped him hold on more than she’ll ever know. She probably knew he wasn’t going to make it, but she treated him like a person who mattered. He lit up introducing her to us all, and showing her pictures. He had a good time, and he needed that.

Those experiences showed me the importance of the role the nurse plays, and that if I desired to be at the bedside, nursing was a profession I should consider. But I wasn’t ready to commit just yet. After my father died, I decided to take a year off to figure things out. I got a job teaching middle school students and became certified to teach math and science in Georgia.

Later, in the fall, my wife, inspired by a sermon by our pastor at West Rome*, asked herself (and later me): Why not now? If God might be leading me to a career in nursing, why not pursue it now?

Can I just take a moment to say that I am married to such a Godly woman, and I don’t feel I deserve her? She tends to be more sensitive to the Holy Spirit than I am, and I’m grateful God let me have her as my wife and help-meet. It’s moments like these that help me realize what God meant when he said “its not good for man to be alone.”

Being a staff member at Shorter University, she used her free time to look into everything it would take for me to apply to their nursing program. As fate would have it, all the prerequisites I didn’t complete in my first bachelor’s degree were offered the following semester, could be registered in a schedule together, without conflicts, at times that still allowed me to keep my teaching job. If that’s not proof of a living God, I don’t know what is. She helped me register and I was enrolled as a pre-nursing major within a week.

Yet despite all this, I was still asking God a few months later what His will is for my life.

Really?

I think maybe we, as Christians, make that question too complicated. At times, I know I was even obsessed with knowing the answer. I don’t think it’s supposed to be so hard. Perhaps, God has already equipped each and every one of us with the knowledge, desire, and gifting to choose the road designed for us, if we’ll just see it for what it is.

Maybe you’re asking God the same question I did.

So, my question for you is this:

What desires has God placed in your heart? What do you love to do? What are your passions? What have you been through that gives you a venue or opportunity to serve people?

Chances are, the answers to those questions are the key to finding out what God would love for you to be a part of.

I know that certainly was the case for me. With God’s help, I can do just about anything I set my mind to, but it was important for me to ask myself what I like to do. God cares about what I like to do. God made me to like what I like to do.

I’m excited to be where God designed me to be. I love people, and I have a strong desire to serve them at the bedside. And even though nursing is certainly not always a glamorous profession, perhaps God saw me through some tough times so that I could help shine a light on others through theirs, using my story as a testimony of His goodness.

Whatever is ahead, I am ready and equipped.

* Coincidentally, my Church’s mission statement is “Helping people find and follow God’s plan for their lives.”

See No Beard; Hear No Beard; Speak No Beard (Or, an Ode to My Beard [Or, This Goes Against Everything My Dad Taught Me])

October 28, 2015October 28, 2015 / Zack Akvan / Leave a comment

I acquired facial hair at a fairly young age. My first bits of fuzz were bestowed upon me during elementary school. Most people don’t believe me, but it is true. The earliest photo I can find on my computer is from my 5th grade year, but it dates farther back than that:

I’m the chubby one on the left. The dark spot on my chin is, in fact, hair. It was definitely irregularly shaped and the subject of much teasing in school, but was a part of me none-the-less. Some said it looked kinda like the shape of Florida, and I absolutely agree.

No matter how weird it may have looked (especially compared to all my baby-faced male peers), my dad always encouraged me to keep it. He said I should be proud of it, because it meant I was becoming a man. What a word for a father to call his son, let me tell you! Ten little redneck boys in school could have told me it was funny-looking, but my dad called me a man for it. That’s all that mattered to me! So I never completely shaved it.

It wasn’t until high school that the rest of the beard caught up with my little soul patch, and the era of the beard truly began. No matter where my life took me, my beard followed.

When I went through some awkward emo phase in high school, my beard was there for me.

When I graduated high school, so did my goatee.

When I snapped my first selfie with Kaitlin (before we were even dating (and before selfies were even cool)), my beard was my perfect wing man.

In the spring of 2010, while serving in Mexico on my first medical mission trip, my beard and I heard the LORD call me to serve in healthcare.

When I was nervous about meeting with Kaitlin’s parents and pulling off a successful proposal, my beard saw me through it all.

When some friends and I decided to start a new fraternity on campus, my beard told me to go for it. So I did. Pi Kappa Phi till I die, yo.

After what seemed like an eternity of studying, all-nighters, and writing papers, I finally became a college graduate. A bearded college graduate.

Not too long after that, my beard and I walked the aisle with this gorgeous woman.

My beard traveled with me when Kaitlin and I went on our first international mission trip together, where we made many new friends.

On my first day of teaching middle school, my beard helped me make an authoritative first impression on the students.

As is customary in the Middle East, my beard helped me as I mourned the death of my father. I didn’t trim it for nearly half a year (and only because I got tired of wearing beard-nets at the Great Harvest). It got pretty crazy, to say the least.

In all things, my beard has been a constant in my life that I can count on.

Until now.

As a part of my clinical attire at Shorter’s nursing program, I am now required to be clean shaven for the first time in ages. It won’t be easy, but I will make it through. Growing and maintaining a beard is arguably one of the most spiritual and masculine experiences a male can embark on, and I look forward to picking up where I leave off.

So, here’s to you, beard. This is not a “goodbye”. It’s a “grow you later”.

see no beard, hear no beard, speak no beard

On the plus side, I got to scratch “monkey tail beard” off my bucket list.

in all things

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him." – Romans 8:28

nursing

2015

Finding God’s Will

See No Beard; Hear No Beard; Speak No Beard (Or, an Ode to My Beard [Or, This Goes Against Everything My Dad Taught Me])