The Greatest Gift

Christmas with Team Newton is pretty similar to that of any other American family. The youngest children wake the family (this year was close to 8am, probably the latest ever!), we unwrap our presents, and we eat breakfast. The rest of the day was spent playing with our gifts and eating good food. 

I noticed something different however.

It was something in the environment that I could just not put a finger on.

That is, until we were driving around Nashville, looking at lights, and singing along to Brad Paisley’s Christmas Albulm. It was just like every other Christmas evening, but because it was the first time that the entire family was together (although we did point out that we wished Mark’s girlfriend was there a few times) since June, I recognized something that perhaps I had not noticed before.

My parents had given us kids the greatest present of all.

Not the toys, not the activities we participated in, not the education, not the clothes, not the food…no none of these amazing gifts from our parents could ever compare to what they gave us.

My parents gave us a family.

In a family, we understand and accept one another for who we are, not who we were or who we want someone to become. Rather, we take each person as they truly are, and we love them. There are weaknesses and strengths in each personality. However, that does not mean that we try to change or take advantage of one another. Instead, we love them.

The most striking example of this love of the full person happened over Thanksgiving.

Penelope, my youngest sister, has a few social struggles. I discovered in the past few years that she and I share many of these issues. However, her cross is a bit heavier than mine, so I cannot say that she and I are truly the same. Anyway, she was having a difficult time dealing with a situation. Cordelia, the next oldest girl, told us all to just let her be.

“You know, she’s going to have to learn to deal with this stuff just like I had to,” I told Cordelia after the others had climbed in the passenger van.

“Never in this family,” Cordelia replied.

In that moment, I realized how insensitive I had been. Not only to my little sister, but to my entire family. Because we love one another for who we are, no one ever has to deal with the struggles that they have to face in the real world. We are lifted up by our family. The crosses we carry are never removed, but we do not have to feel the weight of our struggles when we are with those who love us.

My family had been loving me through all of my weirdness for my entire life. And they didn’t have a label for any of it.

They just loved me.

No questions asked.

One of my favorite examples of how my family, my mom specifically, can love any member of the family without having to know every single detail was when I first had my heart broken by a boy.

I was in the eighth grade. I had a massive crush on a boy in my class, and I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. Well one day, he found out about my crush, and being a thirteen year old boy and a member of the track team, he did what any other boy would do:

He ran.

He ghosted me before ghosting was even a thing.

That was the first time I had ever felt unwanted. I didn’t understand why the boy ran away; everyone thought that he and I would be cute together. Even though he seemed to have liked talking to me on the way to our cars and in class, he chose to run away when we could actually be "together." He didn’t want me. 

I was crushed.

My mom asked me what was wrong when I got in her pearl white Toyota minivan. I told her that the boy ran away and cried the whole way home.

When I got home and cleaned off my face from crying, I came down the stairs to see Brach’s Peppermint Ice Cream and a giant bowl sitting on the counter. It is true what they say: the best cure for a broken heart is ice cream.

That day I saw that even when the world did not want me that I would always be wanted by my family. It’s a truth I had always known, but becuase I had never been rejected I had not understood just how important it was to have a loving family. Because my family loves me, I know that no rejection can remove my worth. 

There is never a time when I do not feel like I should not go home, call my family, or not send that odd meme to my family.

I will always know how important I am in this world, and all because I have a family that loves me.

As I have said a hundred times, going away from home was the hardest thing I have ever done. And while my friends are amazing, there are just things that they cannot do like my family. With so many strange things happening and adjustments to make, the homesickness became more and more overpowering.

And just when I thought I was accustomed to Grad School, everything fell apart again.

It all came to a head in seminar. As far as days go, that day was the worst. Class was tiring, my experiment was awful, and a few other unhappy things happened that day. Exhausted, I broke down crying in the back row. My amazing friend Hannah sat next to me and rested her hand on my right quad as my other friend Ben sent a few cute animal pictures.

“I want to go to my lab,” I sniffled, “But not because I love my lab. I just want to go home.”

“Then go to your lab,” Hannah tried to comfort me.

“No,” I shook my head, “It’s not home. I’ll stay here.”

Then, as the talk droned on, and as the pain grew worse, I did the only thing I could think of. I sent a text to the second oldest kid, Mark, and I told him the bare minimum of everything that was going on. He did not need all of the details.

Mark’s response was exactly what I needed.

And I got better almost instantly.

See, because Mark knows me and loves me as we were raised to, he was able to respond in the way that I needed the most. He didn’t need more because he already knew what was right for me, Felicity Newton.

That day I saw that my family was never too far away to love me.

I did not need to physically be with Team Newton to know their love. All I needed was to send a text, make a call, send a snap, and just be me. No matter where I was, no matter what I was doing, I always have a family that was there for me and loved me. I could be away from them physically because they could never truly leave me.

Some people find it odd that I am so close to my family.

They say it’s backwards, too old-school, and some would argue wrong for me to be so close to my family.

Yes it is odd that I am so close to my family, but not because it is wrong. I think the reason why it looks weird for a family that is so large to be so close and so happy is because there is something missing in the world. There is something misssing in our culture that is making it nearly impossible for families like mine to exist.

My parents gave us the gift of a family, but they gave us something more.

They gave us a family of faith.

My parents raised my siblings and I as members of the Catholic Church. We pray together, and we go to church together, and we celebrate our faith for what it truly is, and we learn what we are meant to believe and practice as Catholics. It is through our faith that we learn what it truly means to be forgiving, loving, accepting, and present.

Catholicism teaches that no person is perfect, not even the Pope.

We are all flawed as human beings, but that does not mean that we are not worthy of love and acceptance. After all, Jesus died for all of us, and his best friends were some of the worst sinners. We cannot judge others, but we can love them.

It is through understanding God’s forgiveness that we choose to love one another through our struggles.

Our faith teaches us to see Christ in everyone. We are taught that each person has dignity, regardless of who they are. Catholic means “universal,” so we should be willing to include anyone. It does not matter what their race, gender identity, mental health status, or economic status may be; each person is important.

Every single Newton is different.

And we are loved because of it.

I like to say that the Catholic Church is like Texas. We believe that it is the best, and we want everyone to experience how amazing the Faith is. The Church is willing to bring anyone in because they are a child of God. That love and acceptance does not just stay at home. So, Team Newton, as practicing Catholics, is always welcoming others in to our lives.

That’s why my family knows about all of my friends.

They are important to me, and thus they are important to my family.

The everpresence and love of my family is also a sign of our faith. God is always there for us, so we should always be there for one another.

Even when He feels distant, we can always go home to him. Just like that simple text to my little brother when life seemed impossible, so too can we turn to God at any time.

I recently experienced the joy of bringing someone to Mass for the first time. It was truly a humbling experience to see the man sit beside my friend Lauren and I at a simple Daily Mass. Just as I could always go home to talk to my family, so too could this man be able to sit in the presence of God. Whatever he may have experienced, I do not know and I do not wish to know, but I am eternally grateful to see that God is always welcoming, just as my family is for me and my friends.

How does this all add up to my drive through Nashville? Well, what I realized was that what made Team Newton so special was not just our faith, but what our faith gave us.

Joy.

“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.”~ GK Chesterton

Joy is not just the mere feeling of happiness. It is “feeling of well-being.” It is knowing that all is well. Unlike happiness, which is circumstantial, joy is always possible. Because I was raised to know that there was a God that was always there for me, that always forgave me, and that always accepted me, and because Team Newton practiced the Faith, I knew that they would always be there, forgive me, and accept me.

By being a member in a family of faith, I always know that I am loved.

Therefore all is well.

"You have nothing to fear because you know

God is with you all the way"

~Born on Christmas Day, Brad Paisley

Heaven is not this distant thing that we cannot reach. It is the here and now. All we need is faith. My parents gave us the greatest gift of all: a faithful family. A family that practices their faith is filled with love and acceptance and truth and forgiveness. In this way, we are together with God.

And Heaven comes to Earth.

By giving my siblings and I a faithful family, my parents brought Heaven to Earth.

There is no greater gift.

To any parent that may read this, I would strongly encourage you to bring faith back to the family. It is the greatest gift I could have ever received, greater than any toy or experience. If you have strayed, that is ok; you can always come back to God. It may be hard at first, but trust me, the joy your family will feel is worth every moment.

I pray that when I meet the father of my children that we will have the same strength and faith as my parents to raise a family like Team Newton.

This world needs a lot more Heaven.

And Team Newton found a way to bring it here.

Thank you Mommy and Daddy for the gift that has saved my soul time and time again. I can never thank y’all enough.

Ten Lessons You Learn in Your First Semester of Grad School

For those of my Dear Readers that have been following this blog for the past few months, you are already fully aware that I have learned some pretty big life lessons in my first semester of graduate school.

But there is so much to graduate school than all of that heavy stuff.

For example…

1. Free Food is the answer to anything

Boring talk? Strange required event? Reslife?

Who cares? It’s...

2. It is in fact weird to have a close bond with your advisor and...his wife.

While I knew that most PI’s are fairly hands off, I had no clue just how unique my situation was. I mean, I still haven’t told my advisor about my results from the past month and a half, and not because I don’t have any, but because he asks me about my baking adventures and my social life instead. It may be because every time we talk science I end up with a completely new project. I’m fairly certain that my advisor is trying to contain his excitement that I have taken an interest in Dynein.

And while Dr. Mrs. Vaughan is my mentor, I am pretty sure we have more inside jokes than most people typically have with their advisor’s spouse.

I really look forward to the day that I can do the same things for my graduate students. I never saw myself as a PI until I started working for the Vaughans.

3. Do NOT talk about your field all the time.

That person was me for the first month of school...

4. You have to believe in something other than your project.

If there is anything I have learned as a biologist, it is that your project is not something you want to have faith in. It takes a whole lot of Jesus for me to keep trying to make my new mutant construct do…well…anything.

But really, there are so many other important things in life than your research.

Fitness, friends, family, politics…really as long as you find something that gets you out of the lab and in to the world…then you take the constant failure of lab work with a little more grace.

5. Being a TA is an interesting experience to say the least

Actually no... TA babies were awesome. 

Some just were more put together than others...

6. Family is what keeps you grounded

Anyone here knows that I talk about my family all the time. I tried to tone it down, so not to brag, but honestly I felt so much worse without bringing them up. My mommy is my best friend. My dad essentially saved my project in its early stages. My siblings always are there to send a snap, make a joke, or drop all of the wisdom I’ll ever need.

Seriously, in a single text my little brother makes everything better. 

Every. Single. Time.

7. Coffee is life

Coffee Consumed in Grad School = Undergrad Consumption x at least 2

8. Required seminars are painful.

Sometimes there is a topic you can latch on to. Most of the time it is on a topic you don’t understand at all, but you know it would be cool if you were in the field…maybe. Other times there is a strange old man touching himself throughout his the entire talk.

Really the only thing you can do to survive is sit next to someone awesome and make as many jokes as possible.

9. Unless you make an effort, you won’t hear about anything from the outside world

10. Most importantly…you gotta make legit friends.

Yes, I have certainly spoken against squads when they act exclusive, but my Bio Girls squad have made life so much better than I ever would imagine. My roommate has saved my sanity through countless rom coms and froyo runs and prayers to Saint Fructus. 

Oh, and my department is amazing.

I love Notre Dame, and I love graduate school even more than I thought I would! I have learned so many other things, but I think I will cap it at 10 because no one wants to read more than they absolutely have to.

I'm so thankful that God brought me and all of these amazing people together.

On to the next semester!

Snow

There are two things I know people hate:

1. The Rain

2. The Cold

I grew up in Tucson, AZ. For those of my Dear Readers who do not know, Tucson is in the desert, and there is little to no precipitation. Winter for me was 30 degrees with no wind chill in the morning and evening and 40 to 50 degrees during the day. Unlike the majority of the world, I never really had to deal with the rain or the cold.

When I moved to Nashville, I discovered that rain could actually feel cold.

What a concept

The two most hated parts of weather actually could come together.

It actually came as quite a shock to me that the rain could feel so cold. When I was little, I thought that cold rain just turned in to snow. Even when I learned about melting and freezing points, I still thought that the only form of cold water falling from the sky was snow. After all, it rarely rained in the winter growing up, and we all feared the rain for the most part.

Cold rain is real.

And it sucks.

For the majority of my undergraduate career, I would say that cold rain should not exist and that there should just be snow. If there is going to be cold, then it should at least snow. It never really snowed in Nashville, and when it did, the city actually declared a State of Emergency because we couldn’t handle it.

Snow was scary.

Ice was scary.

Cold rain, while it was annoying and shattered the dreams of little Felicity, was safe. I could handle the cold rain.

But there was something about the snow that I could not forget: Snow is beautiful. When it did snow, I would wake up to white powder covering the grass and gazebos of Belmont University with a sense of awe. The whole world was quiet, and the sun reflected beautifully off the supposedly terrifying precipitation.

Snow was beautiful.

And just like that, my childhood self saw the beautiful snow that she dreamed of every winter.

Now here I am in South Bend, IN where it snows quite a bit. It’s freezing, and the wind makes me feel like I am going to fall over. Snow and ice are a real thing. Nearly every day this week I have watched it snow out my window.

And just like every other time, I am reminded of how beautiful the snow is.

The snow is a lot like us. No, I am not talking about the fact that every snowflake is just a little bit different from the last one, although that is a very important point. Everyone is unique and important, and these little aspects to who we are contribute to the lesson that watching the snow has taught me over the past few weeks.

There are parts of our lives that we think do not fit in with the world.

Much like the cold and the rain, we can find aspects of our lives that we think no one will want. We don’t want people to see what we are most interested in, or what we think about a particular political topic, or maybe we don’t like the same type of humor as everyone around us. We have been rejected for these things at one point or another.

The fear of rejection forces us to separate these aspects of our lives from those we do not wish to see them.

Bit by bit we become compartmentalized to fit the world we think we are supposed to be a part of.

People start to see us as the aspect we share with them. We let them feel the cold or the rain so to speak. By compartmentalizing who we are, we force the world to face imperfect versions of who we are. Sometimes we get a hold of ourselves and reveal a tiny bit more of ourselves to those around us. 

By crafting our lives in a way that reflects what we want others to see, we become cold rain.

Even still, that is still only a part of who we are.

After all, snow is just rain and cold with a little bit of something extra (i.e. more cold)

It is only when we are willing to be fully committed to who we are that we can become like the snow, beautiful and awe inspiring and filled with unique pieces frozen together in harmony. When we make this transition, we may not change our day to day lives, but we become something far more beautiful than we ever were before.

I went through this progression myself over the course of the semester.

If you looked at my daily agenda at the beginning of the semester and the end of the semester, you would not see very many differences. If you looked at my text threads or heard my topics of conversation, you would be surprised at how similar they are. If you looked at my most recently played playlists on Spotify, there would be little change in the genre. Basically every aspect of my life seems to be back to what it was at the beginning of the semester.

It’s as if nothing happened.

Clearly that is not the case. Otherwise I would not be writing this post to you Dear Readers. So here’s the story:

At the beginning of the semester, I was particularly good at compartmentalizing my life. I knew who I could talk to about Jesus, and I knew who I could be excited about papers around, and I knew to only talk about my lab when the other lab members weren’t around. I was perfectly happy in my own little bubbles, keeping myself together day by day.

Weeks went on, and I wanted to connect to more people.

So I attempted to share my life a bit more.

Now, my life is amazing and happy and nearly spotless. I have no alcohol in my system, and I haven’t really had a “crazy night” like most of the people around me. To be happy all the time was annoying to most of my cohort, and by speaking in layman’s terms about science made me look less intelligent. So I tried to shift my personality around to fit the group.

I tried to keep my childishness away

I tried to talk about science and my family and other important things a little less.

I attempted to be “an adult.”

My class participation in my favorite class went from frequent to distant. I cried more in those months than I had cried in five years. I didn’t talk about science, even though I really wanted to. I spent more and more time analyzing life than I did living it. As a result of trying to be “an adult," whatever I thought that I meant, I became cold rain. 

No one likes cold rain.

Before I went home for Thanksgiving, the Bio Girls had a little hangout. I was shocked to find out that one of the girls had said that she was excited because, “Felicity is finally going to be happy.”

Felicity means happiness.

I had not been happy. 

This forced me to look at myself. What I thought had been a mature adult had actually been a stubborn child, pretending she knew what she wanted with her life. I knew better than to be serious all the time, and I knew that I was meant to be a scientist. I was homesick because I didn't talk about my family every day like I normally did. How could I have forgotten so much about myself in such a short amount of time?

Yes, I did have to heal from some silly things that one of my undergrads called me out on for dwelling on it too much.

Yes, I did have to handle new challenges that coincide with graduate school.

But I was still Felicity.

And as I said, Felicity means happiness. I knew that in order to be happy, to be my true self, that I was going to have to be the skipping around the basement, Jesus loving, science obsessed, family oriented, intelligent, and happy woman that God made me to be.

That week, I baked for the first time since September 14, and I prepared for my cell biology lecture with more enthusiasm and joy than I had in months. I got excited about using enzymes like SexAI with my mentee, and I spent time outside of the lab, just walking around in the fresh fall breeze.

And suddenly I was succeeding.

My advisor said he was proud of my work, and I was dancing in the hallways. My friends were talking to me about my lab work and showing me their own. My roomie and I have never been closer.

Surprisingly enough, I was not doing anything different than I was at the beginning of the semester. I still have COS-7 cells in the incubator, and I am still over-excited by the papers in class. I still make the same meals and do the same workouts.

But I am not the cold rain anymore.

I am happier now in this little basement than ever before. It may look like I am doing the same things, but joy and peace I feel make each moment all the more beautiful. I am more beautiful in this place than I was back in September. 

It just took a perfect combination little science, a little childishness, and a lot of love from a family that I am extremely blessed to be a part of.

I am the snow.

See Me

For the past month or so, I have gotten to know an amazing man. Some of you know him, and some of you are not his biggest fan, while some of you would argue he's the greatest guy I have ever befriended.

He told me a story, and I would like to share that story with all of my Dear Readers.

See Me

I have always been a loved child. My father is the most amazing man there ever was. It didn't matter what people did to him; he would just forgive them. Sometimes these awful people would come to our doorstep, begging for my father to help them. He would just smile and he would help them.

My dad is a very quiet man. Most of the time people cannot hear him, but he said it was ok because anyone who needed him would come around eventually.

If he could love everyone else that much, then you can be certain that he loved me even more. I would love to tell you all of the details of my upbringing, but it is not all too important for now. Just know that my father loved me more than all of creation, and he would do anything to bring love in to my life.

One day I had to go away.

I lived with a new family. They were very kind people that my dad loved very much, and he trusted them with my life. The woman was very sweet, and she had a heart of gold. Her husband was a quiet man, just like my father, but he worked very hard to make sure his family was taken care of, and that included me. I was loved very much by these people, and I loved them very much.

Eventually I set out on my own.

I was a preacher, or at least that's what everyone called me. 

I just like to say that I was my father's son, loving and caring for everyone I encountered.

I had a small group of guys that I hung out with all the time. They were a rowdy bunch, but they were exactly the kind of people my father loved to hang out with. He always said that these rough souls were the ones who would make the world a better place; they just needed someone to see them for who they truly were.

I saw these men.

And I loved them.

There were many other people I met, and over time I gained a sort of following. People liked to see the things I could do. They were amazed by my special talents, of which I will tell you about another time, and sometimes they did not stay to talk to me. Most of the time, they would just ask for some help and walk away.

I rarely received a single thank you.

My dad was rarely thanked for what he did, so I took that on, and I moved forward with my life. No use hurting over something I could not control.

Then one day I saw a girl I used to be very close to. She was a beautiful girl who loved people with all her heart, and she was very much loved by her own family. My dad had introduced us one night, and we used to talk all the time. We still talked from time to time, but she had become more like the people my father helped: asking for specific things and not really spending any time with me.

I missed her so very much.

Anyway, she had gotten in to a bit of trouble, and she felt like she could not possibly make up for her mistakes. The truth was...she could not make up for what she had done, not on her own at least. She needed someone to stand up for her, to stand tall among all of the people who constantly reminded her of her faults.

The only way was for me to stand up in front of everyone and scream that I loved her.

It was the only thing I could do.

There was just one problem.

She refused to look at me.

Day in and day out, I would make the trek up the rocky hill and scream until I could not scream any longer. I would cry out to all of the world that I loved this girl. Unfortunately, she was too wrapped up in her own little world to even think of me.

During that time, she and I still talked. She apparently had no idea I went up the hill every day, even though I dropped as many hints as possible. The conversations were dull. The girl would just go on and on about the little things she wished were working better in her life. Sometimes she would ask me how I was doing, but she rarely listened.

Sometimes I would send her gifts, things that helped her in her day to day life.

Sometimes I wrote her letters.

Sometimes I passed by her home, just to make sure she was ok.

Still the girl didn't see me.

Finally the girl lost it. She seemed to be completely broken. The once very sweet and happy girl I loved so very much hid herself from most of the world, except for a few wonderful souls that my father sent to take care of her. Even though I was her friend, my father still took care of her. He is amazing like that. The girl noticed those people, but she still was a shell of her former self.

I could not take it anymore.

I rushed down the hill, and I fell down from my lofty place. I was cut, bruised, physically broken...but I could not possibly let my dear friend be like this anymore. If it took a little pain on top of the public humiliation, I would do it. Again and again I would do it for her.

The girl was not too far from my hill. Even though we spoke often, she rarely left her place. It was difficult for her to climb the hill. As I neared her home, I heard her crying.

"See me," she sobbed over and over again, "Please, someone see me. See the person I really am. The person who just wants to love other people and not have to constantly fit in. See me."

"See me," I said back from the other side of the door.

The sniffles stopped for a moment.

"See me Felicity," I said again, a little louder this time.

"What?"

"See me Felicity," I smiled and looked at her through the window, "See me, cut up and broken. See me, calling out your name from that hill every day. See me, the man who will give anything to anyone. See me."

"I see you," she smiled in a sing song voice.

"I love you."

"I love you too Jesus."

Ok, perhaps the story does not exactly go like that. I may have taken a few liberties, but the message is the same: God loves you. He would be a complete fool for you, and He would do that just for you. In fact, He did something incredibly foolish. He died on the Cross even though He knew that there were people that would refuse to see Him.

Even so, Christ died for us.

He loves you so much.

He loves you so much that he calls you every day from Heaven. He sacrifices Himself so that we may have a happier life. He sends us friends and family to guide us, and He knows what we are feeling. He's been rejected, just like we have. More importantly, he's been ignored.

He's been lonely on this Earth.

He sees you, and He loves you so much.

See Him, and let him love you.

Because Dear Reader...you're that important.