Nobel Prize in Dreams

It sucks when the position you want is held beyond reach.

It really sucks when you know that you will eventually have that position.

Everyone has been in this place in one way or another. We sit on the JV team, just waiting for someone on Varsity to graduate, or for someone to be injured so you can sub in. We work on a staff with the managerial position is just out of reach, and we work extra long exhausting hours on the line in hopes of a better position after just a couple more months.

Just a little longer.

Just a little longer and we will be where we want to be.

For the past two years I have been sitting on an experiment. It was an experiment that seemed entirely straightforward. Our lab proposes that cholesterol is delivered through the cell in lysosome membrane tubules. It only made sense to me that if there wasn’t any cholesterol around that these tubules would not be in the cell, and if you added cholesterol to the cells that the tubules would come back.

It seemed like the perfect project for a first year to try.

But my advisor just kept telling me to wait.

Frustrated, I went on to do the other projects that we needed to complete for the big paper. It was not like any of these projects were easier than the one I proposed. Working in mice is challenging, and you don’t get a re-do once you sacrifice them. Sectioning cerebellums from these mice is challenging, and you have to get it just right to observe what you need. Staining has numerous steps that are easy to mess up.

It made absolutely no sense for me, the first year with no background in anatomy, to be doing this work.

And yet that was the position I was stuck in.

Sometimes the position we are given does not make much sense. We feel underprepared, or unmotivated, or just plain uncomfortable. Those who have gone before us will say that it is “all part of the process” and then they will say to “trust the process.” Yet there were are, in the most unlikely set of scenarios, dreaming of better days.

Day dreaming does not help you in the moment though.

I wrote previously about what to do in the waiting period. When we are waiting, we should be present and acknowledge all of the wonderful aspects of the lives we are living. After all, there has to be a reason we are in the place we’re in. Nothing is without meaning.

But I missed a very important point.

You have to keep dreaming.

Our dreams reflect our deepest desires. These desires are a beautiful gift from the God who loved us first. They remind us of who we are meant to be, and they inform our decisions. If we want to be a performer, then we seek out shows to play in. If we want to be a professor, then we engage in research. Dreams are not a bad thing, and we should never give up on them.

After all, Saint Joseph came back to Mary because of a dream.

So then comes the challenge. We have to be willing to see the dream within the nightmare. Maybe we are not doing the work we want to be doing, but that job can share aspects of our dream job that we can hone in on. Maybe we are dealing with a difficult move, but maybe that new home will have little pieces of our past life that we can hold fast to.

To see dreams in a nightmare requires us to be present in the moment.

And it also requires us to take every opportunity to prepare for our dreams.

Over the past two years, I had to learn where my dream fit in to the nightmare of mouse work. I knew that my mice could not metabolize cholesterol. Their livers degenerate at a rapid rate. at a In order to inform myself about this defect, I pulled out all of the classical literature that I could. I read from Nobel Prize papers, and I read from current research, and I did my very best to understand the system.

But there was a huge gap in the literature.

The Nobelaureates who discovered statins, the most prescribed drug in the United States, did not understand why cells could sense cholesterol’s presence in two hours’ time. They said so explicitly on their seminal work that was the cover of Cell on the day of my birth.

My heart started to race. 

Everything I had been working on made it apparent to me that our hypothesis would fit this Nobel Prize winning model. If I did not do all of my reading to understand my mouse project, I would never have seen this connection.

You could imagine my excitement when my advisor gave me the go-ahead for the project I had been anticipating for two years.

By allowing a dream to persist in a nightmare, we prepare ourselves for the future. Like I said, our dreams inform our decisions, and if we are willing to hold on to hope, then we will make the decisions necessary to make our dreams come true. It doesn’t matter where we learn how to live out our dreams. All that matters is that we live our best lives and never give up hope.

“Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

~Romans 5:3-5

God gave us dreams to remind us of our Heavenly home. He knows what will make us truly happy, and He gives us little dreams to help us become the men and women we were made to be. We are all made to be happy.

“DR VAUGHAN!” I screamed and ran out of the microscopy room in to my advisor’s office. Dr. Vaughan looked up at me with a clearly concerned face. It was not often that I sprinted in to his office.

“It worked!” I cheered, but a little more quietly.

My advisor then asked me to explain what I saw. As I attempted to calm myself down, I described what I saw. I told him that I recreated the Nobel Prize paper’s conditions, and I told him how I was directly testing my hypothesis. I told him every single stage as if he had never heard it before. Then, after going through all of the preparatory steps, I looked at him and described the lysosome membrane tubules responding to the cholesterol.

In a state of near disbelief, my advisor chuckled.

No one had expected this to work.

But I did.

I do not believe that this moment would have worked out the way it did had I not been forced to wait. In the waiting period, I had to let my dream develop. I prepared myself for the life I wanted to live, even if it was just a new experimental design. Each day I worked on the mouse, I grew in confidence, and it was that confidence that allowed me to make such a huge claim for my dream experiment.

This wait is what made the moment all the more special.

Perhaps that is why patience is a virtue; it reminds us of the inherent value of the future.

“The waiting is the whole point” ~Kelly Courington

There is a dream that I still am holding on to in my heart. I know that there are wonderful things to come, but maybe I just need a little more time to prepare myself for them. There are probably some conditions that I have not properly controlled for, or maybe I do not know the right background information.

God gave me this dream, and I will not give up hope.

I will continue to prepare myself for what is to come, even if it hurts. My heart will be broken time and time again. My nightmare situations with terrible experiments and people will try to knock me down, as they have been for far too long. Still, I will not give up until this little dream, a gift from God, is in my life at last.

“So, whatever happens I will not be afraid

Cause You are closer than this breath that I take

You calm the storm when I hear You call my name

I still believe that one day I'll see Your face”

~I Have This Hope, Tenth Avenue North

Do not give up hope Dear Reader.

No matter where you are, no matter whom you are with, no matter what you are doing, there is hope for a brighter future. No moment is perfect, but they can be perfected more and more each day. Your dreams are valid, special, and loved by the God who gave them to you.

I believe in your dreams Dear Reader.

And you should too.

You Deserve Joy

364 days ago a little girl wearing a purple peacoat with matching hands sat on a swingset at 9:47pm when it was 42 degrees outside. On a hopeless mission to maintain something she overworked and overestimated, her heart sank as the temperature in her hands drew the purple in to a light shade of blue. She shivered from the fever she was running, and she ached from the cold surrounding her.

10:04pm came around, and that little girl made a choice.

She chose joy.

She chose joy at the expense of her happiness.

That last sentence may come as a surprise to some of my Dear Readers. In today’s society, we often use joy and happiness interchangeably. I have spoken about this previously, but I would like to combine the notion that happiness and joy are not one and the same with another theme that has been appearing in this blog and in my journal entries for the past few months.

Just as a refresher, happiness is a feeling. It is a chemical change in the brain in response to a positive stimulus. For example, happiness comes when we eat our favorite food, drink our favorite beverage, go to an amazing concert, or watch our favorite team win a rivalry game.

But happiness is not sustainable.

The sad truth about biology is that nothing stays the same forever. We all know about how drug addicts require more and more drugs to maintain their high. The same goes for happiness. Because the receptors for the chemical release are at a specific concentration and are regulated specifically, we cannot maintain this same rush for the entirety of our lives.

Happiness is transient.

But that is not a bad thing.

The film Inside Out reflects the value of having all emotions in our hearts. For the majority of the film, Sadness is identified as a villian of sorts. Everyone in Riley’s mind is trying to keep Sadness away, and no one really understands why Sadness even wants to be a part of their community. That is, until the end of the movie.

Sadness reveals why the saddest moments of Riley’s life are her favorite.

It’s not because Riley is sad. It is because when Riley is experiencing sadness, she is also experiencing love. Her family and friends and imaginary friend come to her aid in the thick of her sorrow. Riley’s sadness allowed her to see the love of those closest to her more clearly.

And with the love of her family, Riley can smile again.

That is something that Riley will never be able to forget: the love she received.

That is where joy comes in. Joy is not a feeling, but rather is a choice to acknowledge one’s well-being. Joy is the choice to recognize that even in the most difficult times that there is something to have hope in, something to believe in, something to work towards.

Joy does not require happiness.

Joy requires love.

Now there are two aspects to love: giving and receiving. Both of these aspects are essential to finding joy in this life.

To give love is to will the good of another. This means that when we love someone that we help them see that all is well. By the gift of love, we reveal the light in the darkness, we open tearful eyes, we improve the overall health of one’s heart. This heart, in time, will be brought to joy because it is aware that there are far greater things than the pain in this present life.

We love others, and we bring them closer to Heaven.

Whether you Dear Reader believe in God, your love is what draws others closer to Him. It doesn’t matter who gives the love because it is not our’s to give. Love comes from God.

That is why we do not lose anything when we love someone.

The love isn’t ours’ to give.

It is particularly easy to give love to people we agree with. It is even easier to give love to those who are kind and loving and easy to like. However, these souls are not the ones who need love the most. The souls that require love are those that are disagreeable, unknind, and overall uncomfortable to be around.

They struggle just like we do.

And if we love our enemies, we can bring joy to their lives.

The light that once filled the darkness will not only remind the soul we loved of their overall well-being, but it will also remind us of our own worth. To love our enemies allows us to see the dramatic contrast between the darkness of this world and the light of Heaven. That is why we need to give love just as much as we need to receive it.

But that takes a risk.

It is scary to put our hearts in harm’s way. Whether that be in a person we do not know, like I spoke of last week, or if it is through sharing our stories with those who need it most, the potential suffering which comes from giving our hearts can be terrifying. Could we really experience joy by risking our hearts? Could a sacrifice be worth it?

The simple answer is yes.

The more difficult answer to swallow is this:

Now, if you look at that image, you are faced with the second aspect of love: receiving.

Receiving love is difficult for many people. It is not because we do not wish to be loved, nor is it because we are unworthy of love. Many of us are unwilling to trust that the love is real. We are unwilling to believe that this love could really be there for us.

The thing is…

If we do not receive love, then we can never truly understand joy.

In order to receive love, we have to understand how to trust. This takes occurs in multiple stages

First, we have to trust that there is good in this world. Just because everyone is spreading nasty rumors about you or flip you off in traffic or hate your belief system does not mean that everyone is harsh, impatient, or spiteful.

Second, we have to trust that we have people who love us. Many of them will come in times of joy, but the ones that stick with you through it all are the faithful friends.

“A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure.” ~Sirach 6:14

Third, we have to have people who will never leave. A family. My family is always there for me. They will love me no matter what, and I love them no matter. With them, my heart is filled with joy.

Fourth, we have to believe that we are able to receive love and that we deserve love in its fullest.

If someone loves you with pure intentions, trust that their actions are good. Maybe you know them very well, or maybe they are a complete stranger. It does not matter who loves you. If pure love is present, then you are safe. There is no reason to completely close ourselves off from love.

I know that many of my Dear Readers have been hurt.

I know this because I have been hurt by many unkind souls. We all have been hurt.

You were not hurt because you were not worthy of love. You are a beautiful and dignified Child of God who deserves the very best. If you were hurt, then that love was imperfect. If you were lowered by the soul you interacted with, then you were not loved as you were intended to be loved.

But that does not mean that you were never loved in the fullest.

There is One who loves you for who you are, where you are, and whenever you find Him. He will not leave because He is eternal. He is waiting at the door, asking for you to let Him in. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, He will love you. He will protect you. He has held you in the palm of His hand.

That is why you know what love is.

It is not because you found love in the little moments.

It was because there was One who could put love in the loveless places. He placed Himself in your heart and whispered “it is ok” over and over again. He was the one who told you that it was ok to love, to take the risk, to believe that there was good in this world. Whether you choose to believe it or not, He is there, and He loves you for all you are, were, and will become.

And with that sort of love, all is well in the end.

With Him, we can choose joy.

At 10:02pm, the girl in the purple peacoat made the Sign of the Cross with shaking hands. She knew that what was to come would not be easy. She knew that she would be lonely. She knew that she would make mistakes. She knew that there would be many trials in the years to come, but she did not care.

Life was more than a swingset, a 450 mile distance from home, a poor understanding of biology.

Life was made for love to exist.

10:04pm, 42 degrees, and the girl slid off the swingset and walked to the Green Nissan Rogue. She cried. She yelled at her God about the loneliness that followed her to her lab bench. She tossed and turned in her bed, unable to answer any of her own questions.

But she knew it was going to be ok.

God protected her for her entire life. Why would this time be any different?

364 days later at 12:07pm, 54 degrees and raining, the girl sits at her lab bench. Her phone is buzzing from her Sacramental Prep group chat. The basement of the Biology department is blessed with many smiles, discoveries, and souls. Projects and people that rocked the girl’s happiness were overcome and a poster hung in the hallway because of those moments.

“In order to be a stronger person, you need to survive an un-happy period” 

~Dr. Kevin T Vaughan.

The girl may not have been happy every moment, but she had joy in her heart. That is why she is here, and that is why she can succeed.

Joy is possible, even if happiness is difficult sometimes.

Give Love

Receive Love.

Choose Joy.

You deserve it.

No Expectations

They say that the world is filled with loneliness.

Without someone to cling to, we often feel, as Taylor Swift would say, “lonely in a crowded room.”

This disconnect makes it difficult for us to take risks, to go places, or to pursue what we really want in life. How many times Dear Reader, have you chosen not to go somewhere because you weren’t close to anyone at the event? I know that I have forgone many opportunities because I was alone. That is not the best way to live life.

But how are we supposed to go anywhere without feeling uncomfortable?

The answer to that question is rooted in a separate and hidden question: how do we become close to anyone?

I think we often forget how we feel in the beginning of our relationships. In the midst of the many comfortable relationships we have, we tend to ignore the unknown and awkward interactions. Somehow we forget the first interactions, the first meetings, the first jokes, and sometimes we forget how we met in the first place. This is not a bad thing, but when we forget the beginning, we lose the beauty of the end.

What happens at the beginning of a relationship?

It’s awkward.

Super awkward.

Maybe it is not awkward for all of my Dear Readers, but I think I speak for many people when I say that the first few encounters we have with a new person or a new group of people is awkward. They do not know the fundamentals to our lives, such as being allergic to certain food items, and they certainly do not know our backstories. The vast amount of information left to be shared with this new person can seem daunting. 

There is not an easy place to start.

But maybe there is.

One of the greatest parts of being an RA is the opportunity to meet the students where they are. Most of the students do not want to be your friend from the get-go, but when they need you most, they will come. Usually they come at some odd hour of the night, pound on your door, and by the time you open the door, they are reduced to a puddle of tears on the floor.

There is no time for fundamentals.

All you can do is pick them up, brush off the dirt, and jump in to their lives as they are in that moment. No backstories. No questions. Most importantly: no expectations.

I cannot begin to describe the number of friendships I formed by being in the right place at the right time. Some of these moments were joyful, such as a school dance. Other moments were intense, such as being thrown in to a particularly difficult cell biology lab gorup, and many were heartbreaking moments that I wish never happened to those souls.

All I had to do was be there, with the person, and accept who was in front of me. I could not make them less happy, less stressed, or even less sorrowful. Each friendship I formed came from quick acceptance and love.

Most relationships do not happen this way though.

Most relationships take time.

If we were to think back to all of our current relationships Dear Readers, we would see how long it takes for each friendship to form. Through several moments, we draw closer to those we are granted to share a life with. Some of these moments are joyful, some are stressful, and others are sorrowful. Regardless of the moments we share, we got to know each person in our lives by sharing these moments.

But there is a key part to those moments.

We had to be present for them. We had to care.

When I say present, I do not mean that we are in the room. Being present means you accept the moment as it is, and you do not hold it to any particular expectation. You share that moment with the soul you were granted to meet, and you allow it to happen as it is meant to happen. Even if it is painful, the memories we share with the people we befriend are opportunities to draw closer to them.

The real them.

If we do not accept the person for who they are in that moment, then we do not really get to know them at all.

Now this does not mean that we cannot hold others to hide expectations. To be present with a person means that you recognize who they are in that moment, and you recognize how their life can be changed in each moment. You can help them reach their potential through love, but you cannot change how they are going to act in the moment.

All you can do is love the person in front of you.

Not the person that used to be there.

Not the person who will be there someday.

The person in front of you.

This past weekend I got to spend a few days in Nashville with my family. I did not make any specific plans as to what I would be doing in that time. All I wanted was them. However, the months that passed fogged my memory of what home would feel like.

It was loud, but not in a bad way. Team Newton is filled with joy, and laughter, and fun. This means that everyone has something wonderful to share, jokes to tell, and love to give. Our dinner table typically has five different conversations going at one time, and it can be easy to lose yourself in the dialogue.

I was overjoyed with the love and happiness in the room.

However, I was stressed by the noise. I had no clue where I was supposed to fit in to the conversation.

Then I took in a deep breath, and I stopped putting an expectation on my interactions with Team Newton. I let my mind stop moving from point A to point Q, and I let the conversation flow as best I could. Without expecting anything other than love, I fell back in to the natural dialogue of my family.

Now that I am back at Notre Dame, I would do just about anything to have that joyful noise in my life again.

Team Newton is a special group of people. I was born in to these relationships, so the beginning times are difficult to remember. However, I think that this brief moments upon my return to Nashville taught me a valuable lesson about my family and relationships in general.

My family is nothing but the love of the Holy Family, and I am eternally grateful for that truth.

Relationships begin when we expect nothing but love.

The beginning of any interaction is awkward. However, if we stop trying to make ourselves fit in to the dialogue, if we stop trying to make something happen, if we expect nothing other than love, then we can overcome the awkwardness. Each relationshp in our lives emerged because we were able to surpass discomfort with love. It may have been a series of small moments, like those I share with my undergraduates, or it may be a big event.

Any person we encounter can become a special member of our lives.

All we need to do is expect nothing other than love.

Not love from them, but love from ourselves.

So if you are trying to decide if you should go to event Dear Reader, go to the event. If you are trying to decide if you should ask someone out Dear Reader, you should ask them out. If you are unsure about anything because of the unfamiliarity of those around you Dear Reader, then you should take confidence in the fact that there are no expectations in this life other than love.

Love always wins.

Even over the awkward silences you think will never end.

With What We Have

One of the hardest hurdles to clear in the adult world is the feeling of insignificance.

Regardless of our careers, we can get caught up in the sheer number of souls surrounding us. If we do charity work, we notice the many people we cannot serve. If we teach, we notice the students that cannot comprehend our work. If we work in medicine, we notice the patients we cannot treat. And if we are in academia, we notice that our work in so insignificant to the greater population that no one understands what we’re talking about.

The number of times I have to try to get other people to be excited about lysosome tubulation, even folks in Cell Biology, is higher than I would like to admit.

But that doesn’t mean that my job isn’t of some value.

I think it is safe to admit that every job in this world is important. We all know that if there were no volunteers, teachers, medical professionals, researchers, or anything else that the world would be far sicker, far more chaotic, and far more lost. However, it is difficult to make your own personal worth clear.

Especially to yourself.

Most of us believe that if we receive recognition or praise from our peers that our worth will be made evident. If our boss notices us, then maybe we will be able to matter a little bit more. If our business succeeds and we have a lot of money, then maybe we will be able to make a greater impact.

If people say they see us, then we must be important.

Right?

Unfortunately we cannot articulate the worth of our fellow man to the extent they deserve. No matter how much you love someone, you cannot fully define their worth. When we search for purpose and value in the lives around us, we run the risk of great disappointment and loss. It’s not their fault; they are only human.

Even when we recognize this truth, we still try to make our worth made manifest in the souls around us.

This is particularly true in my own life.

I mentioned previously that my advisor forgot my entire project. While he is human and has the right to forget these things, it is extremely disheartening to work on a novel concept for over a year and remain in the shadows. And as I saw each person talk about how their lab meetings went and how their data meetings were going and how their advisors actually had the time to go over their grants, I found myself growing more and more concerned.

Then my advisor told me that my images were not quite good enough.

This quickly went from being a valuable critique of my work to a downward spiral of self doubt. Maybe my advisor didn’t remember my project because I wasn’t a good enough biologist.

In such a case, there are two decisions that we can make: fall in to a pit of despair and doubt, or work your way out. I’m not proud to admit that for a solid week and a half I could not look at the letters STARD9 without feeling ashamed of my work. However, I knew that I could not get my PhD by hiding from my research.

But the mice were already dead.

I had to do the best I could with what I had.

After a month and a half of building off of my original projects, my remaining tissue samples, and a lot of support from my friends and family, I managed to complete my project. I did not have a lot, but I had enough to do my job. I got over myself, did my science, and found confidence in my work.

My work became important because I did my best with what I had.

It didn’t matter if I wasn’t at the level I wanted to be at. What mattered was that I was striving to be where I needed to be, and I did not let my lack of experience or know-how to stop me from striving to do my best work.

It all culminated in the CelluLART meeting, which I spoke of previously.

High power researchers thanked me for my work.

And while I loved knowing that I was considered valuable to the greater scientific community, it was the fact that I knew that I had done my best work, that I showed up on my own, and that I could be my own scientist that fueled my heart. The fact I received such high praises was a secondary award to the self-confidence I gained by doing my best with what I had.

It’s easy to say that we can make our work on this earth valuable to ourselves. However, what if there is something more difficult to prove, invisible to human heart, and yet all the more necessary for our souls?

Are our efforts really all that important to God?

Many of us are searching for something greater. Many of us are asking God for specific things. Many of us are trying our best to understand what God is doing in our lives, and we will do just about anything to make His Will known to us.

Silence.

So then we try something else.

And yet the silence remains.

I am a huge fan of Novenas, which are nine-day devotions in the Catholic tradition. I actually participated in two very well-established “miraculous” novenas. One was the 54-Day Miraculous Rosary Novena, and the other was to Saint Joseph. I asked for something very specific, something that God had already told me I would receive, something I believed with all of my heart I could make happen.

All I needed was for God to hear me.

All I needed was to prove my worth.

These novenas did not end with the answer to my prayer. They ended with a mouse having seizures and an invitations to participate in teaching Confirmation at ND. The answers were not like anything I asked for because they were seemingly coincidental and uninteresting, but they were answers.

Still. I was pissed at Jesus.

And boy did I let Him know it.

But when the angry tears stopped falling from my eyes in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I felt a pain that I knew all too well: self-doubt. Perhaps the reason why God did not answer my prayers with the most miraculous novenas I knew was because I had not prayed well enough. Perhaps I said the prayers out of order, or with an impure heart, or maybe I was not worth of the gifts God promised me.

Or maybe my needs weren’t as important as those of the world around me.

“One tear in the dropping rain

One voice in a sea of pain

Could the Maker of the stars

Hear the sound of my breaking heart?”

~Hold My Heart, Tenth Avenue North

I just could not understand what I could do to be a better Catholic and earn what God promised me long ago in the Frassati House chapel and at SEEK2015.

Many of us feel this way when our prayers are not answered right away, or in the way that we predicted that they would be answered. We feel like God has forgotten us, or that He does not really want what will make us happy. Even people with seemingly unshakeable faith hit periods of dryness and hurt. However, that does not make their prayers any less valuable.

The gift is found in the waiting.

It is found by sitting in the silence and discovering that the answer was there all along.

When we pray, we bring what we can to the Lord, and He does the best with what we give Him. Now that may mean that there are some inconsistencies between His answers and our interpretations of our requests, but that does not mean that the answers never really came.

Just as I gave my best with what I had in the lab, so too did God do the best for me with what I had in my heart.

I will not share exactly what I prayed for in those Novenas, however, I will share what I received beyond the mouse and the invitation. The mouse seizures brought my lab forward, and gave me some closer friends that I would not have made otherwise. The invitation to Confirmation gave me a community of beautiful souls with open hearts and hands to hold during the Our Father in Mass at last.

Although I was asking for originally never came…

I received what I wanted all along: the love and reminder of my worth that I had forgotten.

No prayer is unimportant to God. He wants to listen, and He wants what is best for you. Maybe in the moment it feels like He is not listening, but I can assure you that He is always listening with loving ears. When He answers your prayers, He answers what is at the heart of our prayers. 

He gives us the best with what we have in the moment.

You do not need to do anything fancy. You do not need to go outside of who you are to be heard by our loving God. All you need to do is be willing to talk to Him. Be present in the space you are.

Do the best you can with what you have

And He’ll take care of the rest.

“You take my eyes off of the future

You lead my heart out of the past

You are the promise here in the moment

Where I find my rest

You are as good as it gets”

As Good As It Gets, Matt Maher

So remember Dear Readers: nothing you do is insignificant. It has value in the world, whether you can see it or not. Your life touches the lives of others, and it gives each person a greater purpose in this life. Most importantly, you are important to God. He wants to hear from you, and even if your prayers are not answered the way you expect them to be answered, that does not mean that you are not good enough.

You are good enough.

You are important.

You are loved.

Storytelling

I love to tell stories.

Ever since I was a little girl, I would take my toys (or on some occasions my hands) and tell stories. As a child they were were entirely fantasy, not based on anything in my life. They were all about a lizard searching for his father in a strange world. As I grew up, and lost my lizard toy, I ended up creating stories with more in depth plot lines, drama, and sometimes I even recreated conversations from earlier that day.

And as I became more busy, the toys remained on my bed or in a drawer. They were always ready to tell a story or two, but perhaps they weren’t quite the right characters anymore.

I needed an audience.

My family was my first “audience,” if you will. Because my parents fostered a spirit of trust in our household, I always knew that I could tell them everything. I could walk through my entire school day, share every grade and concept, and I could tell them every interaction I had. If I did something wrong, they could help me figure out how to do better the next time, and they loved me through each moment.

When I got my license, I encouraged my siblings to do the same with me. Some of the most powerful conversations I have had in my life, including the one which lead to my reversion, took place behind the wheel.

And as I moved on to college, and even graduate school, I gave people a place to share their stories.

Stories not only entertain others, but they reveal truths about the storyteller.

When we take the time to listen to a story, we get to partake in another human’s life. In an inexplicable way, we are transported to another time where we can sit in the midst of another soul. If you choose to actively listen and empathetically share in their experience, it doesn’t matter what someone shares with you. The story could be about how they prepared their chicken last night, or it could be about how they went on an insane trip in Canada, and that opportunity to be with them would be just as valuable.

Every story we tell gives a piece of our lives to others.

And each life, whether it is unborn or near its end, is valuable.

However, there is a very important piece in storytelling that we need to think about. When you tell a story, you need to give the rationale behind the characters’ actions. Sure, you can tell people all of the facts, but that does not reveal the truth.

The audience needs to participate.

They need to ask “why?”

Let’s take a very simple example: your favorite animal. If you were to just tell someone that you liked elephants, then they would not necessarily know anything about you. However, if they were to ask why you loved elephants, then you could share why you liked that how they walked on their toes and were highly aware of all of the little animals around them. By explaining why, you get to share how you value those who live with a presence but are still aware of all others around them.

The why is what makes us who we are.

Now, your audience may not be able to ask why yet. 

We cannot expect everyone to be like my parents, who asked about everything and anything and encouraged my siblings and I to be as authentic as humanly possible. Perhaps people do not know that “why?” is even a valid question when we tell a story.

So we need to give people the why:

Here is a great Ted Talk (Long Version) on why:

We buy people’s why. Because we are not the person or organization in front of us, we cannot fully understand all of the inner workings of their lives. However, when we see their greater purpose, we can’t help but acknowledge them.

This became abundantly clear at the CelluLART Meeting in Toledo last Friday. I gave my first ever Oral Presentation, and I told the STARD9 Story in front of the scientist who will be reviewing our big paper. I knew the story so well by that point that when I get nervous in a social setting the phrase, “STARD9 is a Novel Transmembrane Kinesin that is Required for Purkinje Cell Survival” was the only one that comes to mind.

I knew all of the experiments. I knew the work. I knew the blood, sweat, and tears required to generate the data. I could probably write the story verbatim here, but I do not wish to lose your attention Dear Reader.

This time I told the STARD9 story was different. I had to tell the audience why our protein was so important so our reviewers would publish our paper.

So I gave them a why.

This time I told them why each piece of STARD9 was needed to make the structure required to keep the cerebellum alive. I told them that these all needed to be together with another protein, NPC1, in order to make this happen. I told them why we thought STARD9 could make this happen.

When I could see that the audience knew why we believed STARD9 was important, I switched the slide to show that STARD9 did exactly what we proposed.

I heard a few gasps.

People moved forward in their chairs.

Because I finally gave the audience a why for our STARD9 story, they were able to connect to it in a way that I had never seen before. My friends back home knew why STARD9 mattered because I told them over and over. This audience had never seen our work, and many of them worked on entirely different complexes. However, because they bought our why, they were able to connect to the story.

Many high power professors stopped me in the hallway to thank me for the talk.

It was by far my greatest storytelling moment as a scientist.

However, there is another story that we should all be willing to share, and sometimes we do not need a single word to share that tale. It is a tale that has been told throughout the ages, and it is a tale that many know but are unwilling to accept. It is a tale of heroism, a tale of tragedy, a tale of hilarity, a tale of victory.

The greatest story I can ever tell is that of how Jesus Christ bore all of my sin on The Cross and died for me.

And He became bread and wine.

Fed by the Blessed Sacrament, I am able to remember Jesus as He is, was, and always will be. Consumed by His love, I can live my life. There is nothing perfect about me, but He is the perfect part of me that cannot be taken from me.

You do not need to share every single word of your story to tell of Christ’s victory over sin and death. All you need to do is live your life, and live it well. Each of us has a different story, and each soul has a different reason to smile, to dance, to be joyful.

Joy looks different on everyone.

But it can be seen by anyone.

A few souls have shared with me that they did not know why the world is brighter in my presence, but they know that something is there. They say that it is something that they knew once, but in the darkness of this world they forgot where the source of that light is found. Without words, without prompts, they come to me, and they find the Salvation Story on their own. 

Most of their stories end where I am not able to hear them, but I have faith that God takes them towards true joy.

But I do not shy away when people ask me to share my story. I will speak on that at a later date though.

“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” 

~1 Peter 3:15

But for now my Dear Readers, do not fear the world. Do not be afraid to tell your stories, both the spoken and the unspoken. Do not be afraid to give your why, and do not be afraid to ask someone else for their why’s.

All human life is precious.

And each story is important.

Perhaps it’s time we took a listen.