In Between

The hardest part of life is the “in between.” No matter what two states we are in between, adult or child, friends or dating, hired or intern, we all want to know what is going to happen next.

Some of us have the patience to accept the in between, but many of us would rather have all of the answers, all of the ends, and all of the understanding that comes at the end of the story. After all, the world moves far too fast for us to let things work themselves out naturally right?

Of course not.

“Life is not the mountaintops, it’s the walking in between” ~I Like You, Ben Rector

Dust fell around my head as the construction workers attempted to install new smoke detectors in my lab. They said that I could work while they worked, so there I was, attempting to get my work done according to my schedule. But as more dust fell in to my long abandoned coffee cup, I knew that I could not be in the same space anymore.

With a slight huff, I picked up my bag and left to review grants on the bike at the gym.

As I got to the doorway, I could see a visible change in the workers. They took stronger swings at the roof, and they had started to literally stand on my lab bench. Because they were not hindered by the fear of hurting the biologist who thinks a 7am assay is normal, they were able to work more confidently and efficiently.

I came back an hour later to several new smoke detectors in the ceiling.

They would not have completed their task had I stayed in that space.

It’s the walking in between

Sometimes being in a place requires us to move around. We have to be willing to walk through the “in between.” I’ll admit, it is scary to stray from the original path when you have a pretty clear vision of what you want the most is right in front of you. To move in an unconventional path in the in between risks us losing time.

But the truth is that we are not walking alone in the “in between”

The next lyric in that song is “I like you walking next to me.” No matter how much we want to believe that our journeys are autnomous, that just is not the case. Every person we encounter as we become the person we are meant to be is just as much in the “in between” as we are. Just like the construction workers attempting to work around the stubborn biologist, there are people in our lives that want to reach the same mountaintops as us.

But sometimes we have to go out of our way to help them get there.

Even if it takes some time out of your plan or leads you to an unexpected soul, it works out in the end.

I have spoken many times before about how I had to take care of my twelve undergraduates in the spring of my first year. My project was finally moving forward when I was handed far more than I thought I could handle. I did not want to change my trajectory, so I worked myself to the bone (literally) trying to complete five different projects at once. On top of that, I was teaching sophomores how to do research, completing mouse training, and still trying to pass my classes.

After too many tears, I decided to stop.

And I moved towards my undergraduates instead.

Instead of worrying about my own experiments, I took the time to help my undergrads understand their research questions. I took the time to tell them that I was there for them, and I helped them learn to believe in themselves. I shared my failures with them, and in time, they were doing some of the best research I had seen come out of my lab.

Taking a step off of our paths, when taken out of love, is what allows us to grow. It is what allows us to become who we are meant to be. It is what helps us reach our mountaintops with the ones that we have the blessing to share our lives with.

In those seven months, I gained 12 friends, and I learned more about my project than I ever did before.

When we go outside of ourselves and allow others in to our “in betweens,” we open our hearts up to the possibility of something more. Sometimes we even find a short cut to the mountain that we would not have seen otherwise. All it takes is accepting that there is so much more to the life than the horizons we create for ourselves.

Those seven months revolutionized the way I approached science. 

The bench was no longer an intellectual experience, but rather it was a place where I could give back to all of the people who have made my life better. It was a place where I could help those who could not help themselves. Science became far greater than a career.

My vocation as a cellular biologist doing high-power research no longer seemed too good to be true anymore.

Now there is an important point that is very easy to forget. We have to be careful when we move from where we were. If we choose to go outside of ourselves, it needs to be out of love and understanding for those around us. We should not change our lives out of fear for the future.

“But wait, everything can change in a moment’s time. 

You don’t have to be afraid

‘Cause fear is just a lie.

Open up your eyes.”

~Strong Enough to Save, Tenth Avenue North

If we ignore our end goals, then we run the risk of losing ourselves.Yes, it is valuable to make changes and to engage those around us, but we are still growing. The in betweens of our lives are the times that allow us to find who God made us to be. When we take a step off of our path, we are are still going towards something greater.

Sometimes we just need to stay put, even if it is scary.

Sometimes we just need to keep walking, even if it is difficult.

When I was younger, I had this little dream of working alongside my father. However, as I continued to walk down the path of academia, it became apparent that I was not meant to be a physician like him, but rather I was called to basic science. It was difficult to admit, but once I got in to the lab and started working, I knew that this was where I belonged.

I went thorugh the unhappy phases, and I made discoveries. The unexpected happened.

My most recent discovery brought me to a project that likely will end in a collaboration with my father.

Sometimes we just have to rest in the “in between.” For it is in the unmaking of our paths that allows us to reach our full potential. It is the tangents that we take with the souls entrusted to us that allow us to learn to love as we ought to. It is the “in between” that teaches us the lessons we need to make our dreams come true.

We may think that we are losing when we are in the “in between.” The truth is that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

So take risks.

“What happens next when

all of You, is all that’s left…

This is the unmaking

the beauty in the breaking

Had to lose myself to find our who You are”

~The Unmaking, Nichole Nordeman

Stop letting your fear hold you back. Share your life with others. Help your younger co-workers. Dive in to the job you have laid out before you. Really try to understand how your body is responding to the medication your psychiatrist prescribed. Pray with all of your heart.

You will reach the mountaintops.

And I’ll be right there with you Dear Reader.

“Sometimes I'm my mother's daughter, sometimes I'm her friend

Sometimes I play grown up and sometimes I play pretend

Sometimes I'm a princess dressed all curves

And sometimes I just wanna scream “I'm not a little girl!“

Dumb enough to think I know it all

Smart enough to know I don't

Young enough to think I'll live forever

Old enough to know I won’t”

~In Between, Kelsea Ballerini

The Unhappy Phase

“The only way that we will ever truly experience love is by letting our hearts become open. We have to be our real selves, and we have to be willing to let our true selves in for others to see….Sadly many of us, myself included, tend to keep love in a little box, only to be given to those who will be able to return it….

Thing is, our love is not for us to give. Love comes from God because God is Love. He gives us His very heart and asks us to share in His everlasting love for each and every one of us.”

This quote is derived from two of my dearest blog posts, Broken Open and Miracle in the Basement.

I would like to revisit these posts today.

However, I would like to give them a little bit of context:

My advisor speaks about an “unhappy phase.” The unhappy phase is a difficult point in your life where you have to overcome adversity and answer questions for yourself. In those times, you will question where you came from, why you are doing what you are doing right now, and why you believe in the future you have before you. Many will fail to make it through the unhappy phase, but those who make it out are made stronger.

Another prominent biologist in the department told a close friend of mine, “I am going to throw you in the deep end, and I am going to give you a brick. Most will drown, but those who come out are made stronger because of it.”

We all have to go through unhappy phases, and these unhappy phases, these crosses if you will, are the moments that draw us closer to who we are meant to be.

Roughly a year ago I wrote a story about how I asked God to break my heart for what breaks His. I told the tale of my advisor calling me out of myself, Mass being all too relatable, and the fear I felt at going outside of my comfort zone. Even though there was great joy in those months, there was also a heavy burden on my heart.

My heart broke for the souls that I met here at Notre Dame that did not believe God could love them.

And as my heart broke open after several years of defense and care, I found the truth about vulnerability.

By acknowledging my failures, my faults, and my losses, I was able to open myself up to love that I would not have otherwise experienced at Notre Dame. I made new friends who I would have continued to be envious of for their intelligentce. I became a part of a squad that lifted one another up and now will pray over one another in the middle of a party.

I shared my fears, and God gave me confidence in a community that would love me for me.

Happiness followed me, not because everything was fixed, but because I became more myself in those experiences.

The challenge with unhappy phases is self-doubt. We see the joy and success in everyone else and start to question our very worth. If we cannot have the job that we want, then we think we are unqualified. If we do not have the relationship we dream of, then we think that we are unworthy of love. If we do not fit in to the right clothing, then we think we are unattractive. All of these statements, and any of those are like them, are false.

However, we have to be willing to fight, to work, to believe in something greater in order to move past this self doubt.

But we do not have to do it alone.

I thank God for my shared crosses because they allow the community to draw closer.

The first unhappy phase, described in Broken Open, shares the story of how the people in my life, most notably my family, taught me how authenticity and self-confidence is the only way to combat the heartaches of this life.

Because I asked God to break my heart for what breaks His, I was given the opportunity to see how desperately the souls around me needed my unique Felicity-joy. This unhappy phase reminded me that no matter how terribly my experiments go, no matter how far my family feels, that I can always crack a joke, laugh about my failed experiments, and share the joy of the Gospel in my smile.

I can cry.

It’s no secret that my heart is easily broken.

But I do not stay sad for very long. Not because I am in denial, but because I know that God has given me a community filled with love. I know that I will someday be with Him in Heaven, and I can start to live like that now.

We can all live like that. We can all share in this beautiful opporunity to partake in God’s Heavenly Kingdom, and we do not need to do it in the same way. Heaven is us becoming our true selves. Therefore, as we go through this life, success and failure alike, we are drawn closer to our true selves, closer to Heaven. However, this is only successful should we choose to be true to ourselves.

“Do something beautiful for God. Do it by your life, do it in your own way, but do it!” ~Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta

You know the scary part?

To become our full selves requires us to give up our entire earthly lives for the One who loved us first.

This is particularly difficult, especially for Type A personalities such as myself. We can believe that we are doing good things, and we can believe that we are becoming better versions of ourselves, but we may not want to let go. We want to take the credit, the ownership, the honor of what we have done. It doesn’t matter if it is for the faithful community or for those who are in great need, we still desire that credit.

It is with great sadness that I admit that I failed to give the glory to God in my summer post Miracle in the Basement.

This story was a story of how God called me to pray for those in need, and how it was not until the prayer was said that the “miracle” took place. However, the post was worded in a way that thinly veiled my personal pride. It looked as if I had been the one who made things happen, as if my holiness overcame some unspoken darkness.

But that’s not how love works.

In fact, that’s not even the entire story.

The real story was that I have been blessing doors for as long as I can remember. I bless lab benches, and I bless lab doors, and I bless cars. I bless anything that remotely relates to my friends because I trust that God will take care of them. If anything, me blessing that door was more normal than anything else in my spiritual life.

What was abnormal about that prayer was that it was the first time I meant it, and it was the first time I laid my hand on that door.

Dear Reader, there was a lot of anger that came before that prayer. You see, I was exceptionally angry that my cohort was divided. I received so much love from my cohort, and I wanted everyone to have the same opportunity as me. After all, my heart broke open, and I saw more of God’s desires for us than I ever did before.

Division is far from what God wants for us.

Jesus Himself even prays that we “might all become one” (John 17:20)

I blamed myself every day for the division. It was not anyone’s fault, but I blamed myself for it. I told myself that the divisions I saw around me, both in my cohort and elsewhere, were my fault. It was a weight that I carried on my heart for so long that it became a staple in my prayer life. I could not shake the hopelessness I felt when I heard angry whispers in the hallways.

The miracle that took place on that day was not stabilizing an experiment.

It was setting me free.

That day the unhappy phase of hating myself for the natural divides in the community ended. No longer did I cry at the whispers and the comments. In fact, I heard a particularly weird rumor, and I laughed at it. I still laugh at it to this day. Not because I am in some sort of denial, but because I know who I am: Felicity Rose Newton, the happy Catholic biologist.

And she doesn’t care what people think of her.

All she wants is to love others as her family taught her to love.

If I wanted to be a better member of this community, then I would have to treat everyone the same: with love. I would have to love others as I have been loved, even if it was difficult. To pray over a door is a normal part of my life. To smile and dance in the hallways is a normal part of my life. To be a friend is who I am.

And God gave me friends to move forward from every unhappy phase, every cross, that He entrusted to me.


What I did not share about the days following that prayer were the changes made in my own life. At that time, an unexpected friendship formed between myself and some lab members. Through their love and support, I completed the project that caused my scientific unhappy phase. Shortly after, I met my Sacramental Prep team that somehow lets me go on extensive rants about Lysosomal Tubulation and Ann Arbor the STARD9-/- Mouse.

I learned how to share my research, and I spoke in front of my peers with confidence I would never have had before. I learned to love every aspect of being a biologist, a Catholic, and well... Felicity.

All because of the friendships that reminded me of who I am, what I can do, and all that I will do someday.

As I said, unhappy phases teach us who we are meant to be. Should we carry our crosses to the very end, then we reap rewards unlike any other.

Let’s think of Peter, James, and John who were fishing one day. Jesus came up to them as they were cleaning their nets. They had spent all day trying to catch fish, and yet they came up with nothing. They must have been so upset.

Yet Jesus takes them out in to the water. He calls them to lower their nets. Now most of us know the story, that there were so many fish that the nets nearly broke and the boats started to sink.

But why were the nets breaking?

Because Jesus gave these men far more than they could have ever expected. Their nets were sufficient for their ideal fishing days, but not for the great gift that God alone could give them. They expected nothing, but because they risked another trip out to deep water for Jesus, they were given more than they could ever dream of.

That day they became more themselves. They became fishers of men.

Dear Reader, you will meet unhappy phases and difficult moments. You will have to overcome adversity within yourself again and again. However, should you choose to endure the potential heartache and loss that comes with the cross, I can assure you that you will find the greatest joys. God wants you to be happy, and He will give you far more than you could ever dream of.

All it takes is a little bit of faith.

Will you come with me?

Call It What You Want

A few months ago I wrote about labels and how they impede our ability to live life to the fullest. Just to review real quickly, we are the only ones who see our labels, and if we let the world tell us who we are, then people lose the opportunity to get to know our true selves.

You are worth far more than the label you come up with.

You are worth even more than the labels others give you.

But as always…there is more to the story.

As I said, we like to give some form of label to everyone around us. Labeling others typically happens right when we meet someone. That’s why they say that first impressions are so important; they inform others about who we are and what to expect from us. It is not a bad thing that we create a label for the person in front of us. Without any background knowledge, it would be impossible to properly approach someone.

For example, if your first interaction with someone revealed that they were a vegetarian, then you probably wouldn’t suggest they come eat Chicken and Waffles with you the next night.

It’s not wrong to have an informed opinion, but leaving a label on someone and focusing your entire attention to that one detail makes them a one-dimensional figure.

First impressions rarely reflect the full person. First experiences rarely reflect the full relationship. Therefore, the labels that we use to inform our first interactions with someone are unlikely to be sufficient in the future. We cannot talk to them about their food preferences forever, and we cannot associate a person solely with their career.

More importantly, everyone should be allowed to be authentic.

We should allow those around us to surprise us with their true selves.

But we cannot be open to those experiences if we keep trying to label everything.

The most prominent example of this issue is Taylor Swift. Every single interaction she had with a man suddenly became a whirlwind romance, and every song she wrote was quickly associated with the man she supposedly loved. Even if she was inspired by these relationships, no one really understood the whole story. The only people who would understand the story would be Taylor and whomever she dated.

It was not our story to tell, and yet we tried to tell the story anyways.

Crippled by the labels, Taylor took time away from the spotlight. No one knew what she was doing in that time, but people made assumptions. Many people, myself included, thought that she was suffering and lonely.

But she wasn’t.

She was living her best life, loving and living and writing and growing. Whether you like her new music or not, all of her new songs reflect a more confident woman.

And she doesn’t care which labels are thrown at her relationships.

“My baby’s fit like a daydream/walking with his head down/I’m the one he’s walking to…

So Call It What You Want”

~Taylor Swift

The fact of the matter is that there is no point to putting a label on everyone and everything. Of course, Defining the Relationship (DTR) is super important, but it is not everything. When we force a label on a situation we run the risk of confining others in to a box. We tell ourselves that if someone is only our colleague that we could never be their friend. We tell ourselves that if someone is only our crush that we could never just have a friendly interaction.

By forcing someone in to a box, we lose the chance to share memories with those who have been given to us.

By trying to define every single interaction, every single moment, every single relationship, we cheapen the gift of encountering a beautiful soul that was made to be loved.

Again, I’m not saying that labels are a bad thing, but they are not everything.

There is a certain irony to me writing this post. I’m the absolute worst when it comes to labeling. As a biologist, there has to be a reason for everything. Every result, even a failed experiment, has to have meaning. Each hypothesis has to come up with a significant result. Each question needs an answer, and with each answer comes a new question.

Every detail to life has to have a label, a protein, a pathway, a complex, a cell type…the list could go on forever.

This is a good thing for biology because these pathways and such can lead to novel therapies. These questions lead to even greater ideas, and they shape our lives for the better. Unfortunately for me, biological reasoning is not the best way to approach life. Although Biology is the “study of life,” we cannot live our lives like an experiment.

Every life already has a p-value that is < 0.001.

Just by existing, a life is significant. Just by happening, an experience is valuable. Just by living as God called me to, I am important and loved.

But why?

Let me take a side-bar.

I love swing-sets.This past weekend someone asked me why I loved swing-sets. More specifically, they asked why I would say one swing-set was #1 while another was #2. I had never really considered the question, so I went straight in to the biological mindset and gave very specific answers. From the stability of the seat to the tensile strength of the rope/chain, I described my favorite swing-sets.

“So it…feels right?” they said.

“Yes!” I laughed, “I had never really thought of why I love swing-sets. I just…love them I guess.”

So why is each life important? Why is each experience important? Why is every little interaction more significant than the label we give it?

Because love is present.

We do not need to attach some big meaning, some insufficient label, to a moment in our lives. We do not need to describe the significance of the souls we encounter. Just like my swingsets that can be described in excruciating detail, these moments and souls to share them with can be analyzed and labeled excessively.

But no matter how much we want to label it…give it a why…

It will never be more sufficient than love.

In order to allow others to live without a label, we have to be willing to love them. In order to allow our lives to become significant to ourselves, we have to love ourseles. We have to be willing to accept that there is no need to label everything, explain everything, or go above and beyond to define an experience.

All we need is to accept love.

And what is love?

God is love. In every moment of our lives, God is present. He is there, whispering in to our hearts to hope for the future. He is there, whispering in to our hearts that all is well. He is there saying that it is going to be ok and that you are loved. He gave us each person and experience and talent we have.

We do not need labels.

We just need to let God love us and take our time.

We may not all sell the most albums in a week in history, but we will be happier than we ever were before.

Surprise!

Satisfaction.

It’s one of the greatest feelings in the world. After a long day’s, month’s, year’s, lifetime’s worth of work, there are few things quite as wonderful as knowing that you have completed a task. Sometimes it is just nice to know that things turned out as you expected them to turn out.

Meeting expectations, however small, is fantastic.

But there is something even greater.

Surprise.

I do not mean surprise in the sense of a surprise birthday party where everyone is hiding behind couches and lamps, just waiting to jump out at you. I do not mean surprise like in a haunted house where every turn causes your heart to skip a beat. I do not mean surprise like in a pop quiz where your expectation to retain knowledge after an all-nighter is tested.

Those sorts of surprises are not good.

Those surprises require some sort of exchange.

Surprise birthday parties are all about the shock on the person’s face when everyone jumps out at them. Haunted houses are for the thrill and the scream. Pop quizes assess a teacher. Although these are all good in their own right, they do not reach surprise. If anything, there is a sense of satisfaction in these surprises.

When an exchange is expected instead of freely given, then is it really a surprise?

“The possibility of ‘no’ is what gives such charm to ‘yes.’” ~Ven. Fulton Sheen

Maybe the person the action is done to is startled, but you are not really surprised. You know that they will appreciate the party. You know they will scream. You know some students will fail, some will succeed, and the majority will fall in the middle.

The surprise I am talking about is better.

The surprises I am talking about are moments and opportuntities that come when we least expect them. Without expectation, satisfaction is overcome by joy. These surprises are little gifts from Heaven which take our lives and move them in a positive direction.

My personal favorite is the mitochondria. Not too long ago, people thought that the mitochondria’s activity was just an artifact, that it was unimportant to cell function. Then, after many unexpected results, a brave group of scientists made a bold claim that the mitochondria is important. Now everyone knows the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

There is a lot of joy from the knowledge that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

It is completely logical, and yet it was unexpected in the very beginning. 

The gift of unexpected results is powerful, and it can change lives. Even if it does not look like it at first, these gifts from God allow Heaven to reach Earth.

Everyone has experienced this sort of gift.

Sometimes it is taking a course that you had no clue you would enjoy so much. Sometimes it is meeting someone in an unlikely place. Sometimes it is a job offer that came because you were working hard and it was noticed by a customer. Whatever it may be, the experiences that we are given without any expectation are some of the most beautiful memories. They show us what truly matters in our lives and points us towards a brighter future.

These moments reveal God’s presence within our lives, whether we have brought Him in to our lives yet or not.

Back in undergrad, I had a very good friend who was an RA with me. This friend was quite the character, so I wrote quite a few stories about our times in Reslife together on my (now deleted) Tumblr account. One day, my friend asked me to send me the link to the stories. I did not want the stories to be read out of context, so I copy and pasted the posts in to a Word document and filled in the gaps with some prose. 

“I finished your story Felicity,” my friend came up to me two days later, “I really learned a lot.”

“About what?” I asked.

“God,” my friend smiled sheepishly, “I learned that He’s always there and that He’s always talking to us. Sometimes we just can’t hear it in the same way we did before. Sometimes He’s with people. I heard Him in your story.”

I was surprised.

My friend’s answer was totally unexpected.

I was expecting my friend to say they learned a lot about me, or themselves, or Reslife. I had an expectation to be satisfied with a “job well done.” I had the expectation of a shift in my friendship, and instead my friend found Jesus. Through all of our adventures, we had learned what it meant to be there for others, even if it was just by writing funny notes on their whiteboards.

My friend’s answer was not a satisfactory answer for my expectation.

However, this unexpectated answer surpassed satisfaction and brought joy in to my heart.

You see, most of these “surprises of grace” are not always huge moments. Sure, there are miracles and there are amazing opportunities presented to us. However, if every moment of God’s grace was a huge surprise, these moments would not be a surprise anymore. I would even suggest that some of us would no longer recognize the unexpected. Just like on the reality TV show, Big Brother, we would learn to “Expect the Unexpected.”

There are unexpected moments that happen all the time.

It is not until we look back for a moment that we recognize just how many unexpected results became the only logical conclusions.

Being in the Vaughan Lab is nothing short of a joke. We have unexpected results coming in left and right. From brains literally disappearing overnight to a transmembrane kinesin driving lysosomal tubulation, the Vaughan lab lives in a constant state of surprise. Even though this is somewhat expected, I will have to admit that even my most wild hypotheses still seem to come up with results that surprise me.

However, these surprises at the bench pale in comparison to the smaller surprises which have founded my life at Notre Dame.

Had I not been rejected by FOCUS and came to Notre Dame 2 years later, many aspects of my life would be absent. The graduate student who introduced me to the Catholic community would have already graduated, and I might never have become a member of the Sacramental Prep team that has brought my heart such joy. I would never have met my undergradaute mentee Shannon, and I could not imagine lab without her. My “Squad” would not know me, and I would not have the same supportive Christian community that reminds me of God’s presence at the bench.

Sometimes the greatest surprise is the progression of our souls.

And sometimes we just have to open to a few more surprises.

God loves us. That is unexpected in of itself. However, He loves us so much that He chose to send His Son to die for us. He loves us so much that He provided us with many opportunities to experience His love and Mercy.

It’s unexpected, but perhaps if we were willing to accept those little moments of His love, then we would come to the only logical conclusion.

What is that conclusion?

That we all belong to Him, and we can all come Home.