Worth the Journey
Nurse Practitioner Morgan Williams King’s life has been full of surprises. She’s learned that most of them arrive because of a leap of faith.
Words by Justin Hunter | Image by Blakeney Clouse
Months of stressful and fruitless wedding planning had zapped the joy from her special day. She was at the point of elopement.
“I must have been one of a few women that were blasé about a wedding,” reflects Morgan Williams King on that time seven years ago. “I was ready to just go down to the courthouse and get married. We had been together for years at that point and engaged for a while, and I was ready.”
Her fiancé and high school sweetheart, James, had other plans. With the help of family, James surprised Morgan with the intimate backyard wedding her heart desired.
How does a surprise wedding work? One, convince the bride she is getting married at the courthouse but will need to get an elegant white wedding dress for photos. Two, on the day of the elopement, have the courthouse call the bride and tell her the judge is out of the office and cannot marry her. Three, when the bride requests for you to go online and get legally certified to marry in the state of Alabama, refuse. And four, on the day the bride is scheduled to get pictures, make sure to transform the backyard into a wedding venue attended by close family and friends.
Fortunately, James’s devious plan worked out, and the couple was married on June 22, 2013.
Since then, the unyielding support of her husband and family has helped Morgan persevere through trials, including the loss of her younger sister, Maggie, in July of 2015, and uncertainty in her career.
“I am blessed with such a wonderful husband,” she says. “James is my biggest supporter, so I told him his name should also be on my nursing degree because I couldn’t have done it without the love of my life.”
A Jasper native, Morgan graduated from Walker High School in 2005 and spent two years at Bevill State Community College. Like thousands of Americans each year, Morgan was engaging in the ritualistic transition into adulthood. She had spent hundreds of hours in college classrooms but was still searching for the career that causes you get out of bed each morning.
In 2011, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of Birmingham at Alabama (UAB). But her future was still unclear. “I didn't really know where to go from there,” Morgan says. “I knew I wanted to do something medical but wasn’t quite sure what.”
The surprise pregnancy and subsequent birth of her first child, Eli, in 2014, was a catalyst in pursuing a high school dream of nursing that sat on the shelf for a nearly a decade. Morgan’s firsthand knowledge of the specialty of OB-GYN, especially the physician(s) and nurse practitioner’s attention to the patient and baby, inspired her as well.
Morgan decided to go back to school and obtained her second bachelor’s degree in 2017 when she finished the UAB nursing program. Three years later, she obtained her Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) from UAB to become a Family Nurse Practitioner. Several months after graduation, her career came full circle when she was hired at Walker Women’s Specialists, one of her first jobs in Jasper.
At WWS, Morgan is flourishing in her role because it provides the autonomy to care for patients and the ability to work alongside the doctors to administer the greatest level of care possible. Her collective experiences dug an emotional well of empathy that allows her to connect with her patients. “I’m able to let my patients know it’s OK to not be OK and there is nothing shameful about the rough moments of motherhood or life,” she says. “On the other hand, I can celebrate the wonderful moments of patients listening to a heartbeat for the first time.”
Morgan revels in these moments and experiencing a mother’s joy has made the long journey to becoming a nurse practitioner worth it. 78