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?