A Truly Felicity Moment

A Felicity Moment is a happy little moment given by grace in order to bring joy to the world.

And as much as I would love to post my originally intended “Felicity Moment” for today, I know that there is something much more pressing to write about. It is a promise, a promise that more Felicity Moments will happen, but they need to be placed in the proper context.

Because as silly and sweet as I can be, it is not without purpose.

Because as enjoyable as it is to write about the little things, I need to be honest with my Dear Readers.

I’ve been hiding.

I have been hiding my true passions, my true hopes, my truest desires from the world because I did not want to lose anything. My passion is for the suffering of Christ. My hope is in Him. My desire is that each and every soul I encounter meets Our Lord.

And forgets me.

Because I was made to be forgotten.

We do not know the Saints because they liked certain colors, did certain research, or lived at a particular time. We know them because of their love…a love that never belonged to them. We know the Saints because we know Christ. We remember Christ in them, and that is what matters.

We’re all made to be forgotten, made me to be absorbed in the love of Christ, joined together in Eternal Communion.

Like a rainbow, we all emit a different light, but our truest form of beauty comes from being one…together in the light which refracts from the rain.

Why…why do we keep telling ourselves to hide our light? Why do refuse to let light in to the darkness?

It’s because we rationalize.

We say that our time to fight for truth and justice can come later. We say that we are too weak, too naive, too young, too ignorant, too cis, too trans, too conservative, too liberal, too old, too busy. We can always come up with a reason to wait to be our full selves. We can always say that there is a reason to be hidden in our little stone houses, afraid to come out to the world in the light God made specially for us.

There is one moment that I will never forget.

I was standing in this exact same spot with my crush two years ago. An old man was standing in front of the chair chanting the Psalms. Within seconds, I realized he was praying Compline. I pulled out my phone and started to pull up the prayer. Even though I knew that my crush was not religious, I was prepared to join in the prayer with this old gentleman.

I was living away from home for the first time in my life, and the prayer was my first taste of the Universal Church outside of Mass. It felt like home…

But then my crush started to openly laugh at the old man.

And I weakly joined in.

I laughed because I did not want to lose my chances with this guy. Even though I knew that it would never work out with this guy, I hid my greater desire for a chance to experience romantic love again. I hid my heart out of lust, out of fear, out of an irrational series of thoughts that still run through my mind.

I rationalized hiding my burning desire to pray with the Church by saying that I did not want to scare off my crush. I told myself that I didn’t want to scare my crush away from the Church, but really…I did not want to scare him away from myself.

You know what the old man did though?

He chanted even louder.

“When we realize that Christ truly has a courageous love for us, we are inspired to have a courageous love for Him, and that leads us to love everyone else like Christ does.” ~Fr. Pete

There never was a later.

If we are honest with ourselves, all we ever really want is to be loved. Yes, having a career and the means of survival are key, but at the end of the day, it is love that we want…what we need. You can lose your job, be thrown in a concentration camp, watch all of your friends walk away, and you can still have the one thing that can truly make you happy.

From the moment of our Baptism, we received the Spirit of Christ in our hearts.

We received the unconditional love we always wanted.

The powers of Hell will never prevail against that love. It is only our own decision to lock that love away, to hide in our little stone houses with the windows shut and the lights off which hides us from the truth that we are truly loved.

When we realize that, we realize that we have nothing to lose.

There never was a later. Because if we lose what we thought we wanted all along, then we will receive Heaven instead.

From the moment the scandals came out, from the moment Satan’s 100 year hold on The Church was unbound by Our Lady, I have felt nothing but fire in my chest and a nervous feeling in my stomach. Yes, I have my written exams for my PhD candidacy next week, but my real test as a consecrated child of Our Lady of Mount Carmel has already begun.

I hid my faith so many times because I thought I knew what it meant to truly be loved. I hid my faith because I wanted to be able to connect with people like I see all of the neurotypical people do.

But that’s not who God made me to be.

God made me to be the Kid Captain of Team Newton (the next Martins if I’m being honest), a sister to Therese of Lisieux, a daughter of Teresa of Avila, a friend of Felicity and Perpetua, a student of Luigi Variani, a companion to Gemma Galgani…God made me to be a Saint.

To be a Saint is a lonely road. I will lose many friends, be judged every day, and experience many doubtful moments.

However, I know that when I draw nearer to Christ that people see something different in me. They come to me more often, and they find comfort in a way that does not come from my heart. In time, they forget that it was me that they came to comfort because I am no longer me, but rather I am Christ. Felicity is ok, but Christ is a greater memory.

I only prayed for two things for myself for my entire life: that my nausea would go away and that Jesus would bring my Saint Joseph.

There is nothing I could want more to experience on this earth than raising up a family of Saints. However, I know that my flame burns differently, and I know that I can no longer hide it under a wicker basket. The Church needs souls who can smile and skip in the rain. The Church needs brave souls who realize that they nothing to lose.

There are tears in my eyes as I write this, but I must write these words. 

For the sake of the Gospel, I may never receive the one gift I always wanted to receive. It is my hope that my Jesus will provide my heart with a soul who is unafraid of my spirituality, who is willing to fight in this war beside me, who will fight for me.

That man may never come.

I will continue to believe that my vocation to be the happy little rose which grows best on the base of The Cross will not leave me alone. However, my cross is a perpetual loneliness caused by a smaller right cerebellum and other unknown genetic components. It is an ingrained falsehood put upon me, a lie the devil will remind me of every chance he gets. 

The devil will tell me that I will always be alone...but I know the truth.

I will always have Team Newton, the Communion of Saints, and Jesus Christ Himself.

I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

So do you Dear Reader.

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with His angels in His Father’s glory, and then He will repay everyone according to his conduct.’” ~Matthew 16:24-27

Peace Be With You

“Peace be with you.”

Such a simple little phrase, and yet it means so much. This Sunday, the pews around me were so empty that a woman had to walk across the aisle to give me a sign of peace at the last minute. It was such a small gesture, but it meant the world to me.

I did not need the peace for the sake of our hurting Church.

As I said last week, the scandals have not shaken my faith. As Saint Peter said in the Gospel this Sunday, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) The Lord always provides me with guidance and love, despite the lonesome feeling I’ve had in the pit of my stomach ever since the beginning of the summer.

Why did I need to receive a sign of peace?

Because I needed a reminder that even in the chaos and stresses of this life that all is well, that I am saved, that I am unconditionally loved, that I am where I am supposed to be.

One of the most frustrating things to hear as a young adult is that “you will just feel peace when you get where you need to go.”

Yes, there is a sense of belonging, a sense of peace, a sense of well-being when we find our calling, but it is not all sunshine and rainbows. However, that does not mean that everything is going to be easy. 

If anything, finding where we are supposed to be leads us down a challenging yet rewarding path. Finding your place is not finding your happy ending. It is finding Christ’s yoke for you. It’s a light burden, but it is a burden nonetheless.

Just because you are doing what you are supposed to do does not mean that you will “feel” peace at all times.

As most of my Dear Readers know, I am currently preparing for my Written Exams that start next week. Writtens test your ability to synthesize information from each of your committee members’ fields, design experiments for questions in those fields, and apply that knowledge back to your own research. Because I enjoy reading and spend time talking to my friends about their projects, I have heard nothing but confidence from my peers. Even my advisor has told me that he wasn’t worried about my exams.

But writtens are difficult.

Even though I love research and developing hypotheses, I do not know the first thing about macropinocytosis or dimerization without coiled-coil segments. I know about a specific protein doing a specific job in a specific organelle.

I know that I know nothing.

They say that’s the first step, but it doesn’t exactly make the studying all that much easier.

Just because you know that you belong somewhere does not mean that you will not have to face significant challenges, have to jump hurdles, or be challenged. If anything, it is the fact that you are where you belong that will challenge you.

The world does not want you to be content because they are not content.

So you are called to mediocrity, you are called to hide your passions, you are told to “take it easy” when you are comfortable pushing just a bit further.

Peace is not a feeling of comfort. It is a quiet confidence that all is well, a reminder that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing. To be peaceful does not mean that you will not be in the midst of a battle. No. If anything, true peace comes when you are fighting against the world, against your inner-self, against anything that tries to tell you that you have to stop trying, to stop believing, to stop being who you were made to be.

Like joy, peace is a state of being, a state that we can share with anyone at any time.

It is forgiving our failings and those of others, trusting that we are going to get where we belong some day…together.

But what do we do when our hope is spent and we just want to give up? What do we do when our peace is stolen from us by our fears and failings?

Do we lose our place?

No.

The quiet confidence which comes with peace is a grace from God. As I have said time and time again, God does not take His gifts away. Sometimes He re-wraps them and places them in a new location for when we are willing to find it again, but oftentimes it is our own blindness which hides His gifts from us. However, as soon as we cry out to Him, God starts to work in our world.

Because we’re not alone in the fight.

Our Jesus is fighting for us, every moment of our lives.

Yes, it is true that Our Lord is here, fighting for us in every battle. He gave us our mission, and He will do everything and anything to ensure our happiness. Jesus wants us to be our most real selves, and we can only do so if we are living the lives He made for us.

He knows that no career is easy. He grew up as a carpenter’s son after all.

He knows that no relationship vocation is easy. He grew up as a child conceived out of wedlock and lived a celibate lifestyle.

However, Jesus also knows that the challenges associated with each life, each cross we bear, is a gift. Regardless of the struggle, we are sanctified by each and every one of them. Each hurdle in the workplace gives us a chance to be patient and to practice our God-given talents. Each abnormality or conflict in a relationship gives us a chance to love fully and unconditionally.

We become who we were made to be through fighting the battles God allows us to fight for Him.

And we’re never fighting alone.

It’s no secret that Sundays have been particularly lonely for me. After having an academic year with a community filled with support and love for the strange little soul I am, there is nothing more painful than walking in to Mass without a single soul to sit with. Even though I knew it would be difficult, I went to the same Mass I used to attend with Short Course.

This Mass was not only difficult because I was lonely, but it was also difficult because another press release about the sex scandals had just come out. These included actions taken by Pope Francis that could not be ignored.

With tearful eyes, I watched our priest struggle through the Liturgy.

I could see the tears in his eyes as he held up the Blessed Sacrament, tears that were so small that few souls in the congregation would be able to see his heartache.

It was then that I realized that I was not the only lonely soul in the room. Even if the priest has a concelebrant, he is still standing alone with the Eucharist in his hands. He leads us and reminds us all to have hope, even in his own heartache. If anyone could feel alone, it would be our priests.

So I gave what little I had.

I smiled up to Heaven during the Offertory and whispered a small prayer. I prayed for the priests, and I prayed that I would live out my own vocation outside of the consecrated life as best I can so as to give them hope.

I looked up to the Crucifix which hung over the priest, and as I did so, I noticed something.

He was smiling at me.

We regain our peace when we remember the joy our actions give to others. Even if we are tired and do not know if we are doing the right thing, all we have to do is look around us. When we are fighting the fight Our Lord entrusted to us, then there will be a sense of joy in the world. We might not feel the joy, but that is ok. Our gifts are not given to us to be kept to ourselves.

Our gifts, our vocations, our dreams, our passions, our goals…they’re to bring Heaven to Earth.

Dear Reader, you have so much to hope for in this life. Our Lord is fighting with and for you every moment of your life. You are called to greatness, and you are going to change the world. Maybe all you will do is give a little smile to a little soul, but that gift will mean more to Heaven than you could ever know.

So maybe there is something that you know brings joy to the world, but you are scared that it will be difficult.

Fight for it.

Maybe there is something that you found, but it seems too perfect for someone as broken as you are.

Fight for it.

May my prayers, however small and weak they may be, serve you in your battles. I thank God each and every day for the opportunity to share my stories with all of y’all, and I pray that you all find some peace in my words.

Peace be with you Dear Reader.

I love you.

Barney: A Felicity Moment

I don’t really do change.

Regardless of the change, I tend to lament the change more than anything. It could be something as good as being done with the figure that took me two years, or it can be as sad as a break up, and I’ll still struggle with the change.

To deal, I have a few steps to move on.

The one that is the most “Felicity” is that I have to re-watch How I Met Your Mother all the way through.

Now I have already posted about my love for HIMYM. It’s true; I am totally Ted Mosby. As a hopeful romantic, my heart goes out to Ted. Where most people get confused or annoyed by his actions, I am step for step with him (minus the excess booze and sex). I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I believe in love beyond the point of reason.

This season, however, I noticed myself gravitating towards Barney, the exact opposite of Ted.

Unlike Ted, who believes that every connection could mean something more, Barney does not expect anything to come from the heart. He’s a player, and a fairly decent one at that.

I have a heart like Ted, but a mind like Barney.

Barney plans out every encounter. No matter who the girl is or what the situation is, Barney has a plan. He has a playbook for crying out loud! Even if there are some variations in the middle, Barney always knows how to maneuver around the situation in order to get the girl. Unfortunately, because Barney spends so much time thinking through how he’s going to sleep with women, he rarely considers the possibility of connecting with anyone.

I think we are all a little like Barney.

It doesn't have to be about romantic encounters. Regardless of the situation we find ourselves in, we all have a plan or two. For our careers, for our homes, for our relationships...the list could go on and on. We want everything to be perfect, to play out exactly how we want it to go, and we stick to that plan.

And like Barney, we tend to gravitate towards what seems easy.

This is not a bad thing. After all, Ted’s reckless love leads to a lot of pain. We should all know what we want in life. However, if we spend all of our time looking for what checks a box, what is easy to attain, and what makes logical sense, then we miss out on the connections, on the passion, and on the joy of what life brings.

We have to be willing to let the thing we least expect happen.

Barney? He fell in love.

However, because Barney is Barney, he still managed to plan out his entire love story with Robin. Unable to handle the challenges of their relationship, Barney and Robin get a divorce. It’s a tragedy, one that many viewers dislike, but it makes sense when you consider who Barney is. He’s a planner, unable to adapt to new end goals, unable to maintain the future.

Falling in love with Robin was a surprise, but he calculated how to handle the pleasant surprise.

But God doesn’t let our lives end without a chance at true love.

Barney received another surprise. He met another girl, and he loved her from the moment he met her. It was unplanned, uncalculated, and unconditional. All he could do was love her with all his heart.

There was no plan. Just. Love.

This principle does not just have to apply to romantic relationships. We all plan out our lives, and we all are a little taken aback by surprises. We do not want to change, and we do not want to take a risk on something difficult. Even with a heart like Ted, a heart filled with faith and hope and love, I still calculate too much. I mean…I have a game plan for every single life transition.

Maybe it is not about expecting the unexpected. Maybe it is not about planning. 

Maybe it is about seeing the challenge before us and recognizing that we can beat it.

The challenge is simple: love.

Yes, there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. If Ted’s story, a nine-season story, is indicative of anything, it is that life is complicated. However, the story ends well if we are willing to accept the challenges before us in love. It took two major surprises for Barney to learn to accept a challenge out of love instead of lust. It took a lifetime for Ted to learn how to accept that love can be as simple as stealing a blue french horn.

It’s our decision to make the plans, to weigh the costs, to fear the ending…

But it’s also our decision to love whatever comes our way.

With this transition in to Third Year, my first year without classes, my first year as simply a researcher, my first year without any of the undergraduates I started graduate school with, my first year without a clear leadership role or position of purpose, I am taking on the challenge.

I am going to be Ted again.

I don’t just mean in romance. I’m completely comfortable being in a committed relationship with my research and serving as a spiritual mother to anyone in need. To be honest, a guy would have to probably hit me over the head with a brick to remind me that there is a life outside of the Liturgy and the Lab.

What I mean is that I am going to go back to how I once was: hopeful beyond reason, foolishly in love with The Lord, and happy to share my story with anyone who is willing to listen.

We’re not all called to be Ted’s. We’re not all called to be Barney’s.

We’re called to love. Simple as that.

With the heart of Ted Mosby, I am going to love with all of my heart again. I am going to try to make it rain, going to jump in to life without fear, going to be willing to change my plans if they are just not going to work, going to believe in the foolish heart God blessed me with.

Challenge….Accepted.

Anger

It is with a heavy heart that I write this blog post. As many of my Dear Readers may be aware, yet another sex scandal within the Catholic Church has risen to the surface. I am exceptionally blessed with a steadfast faith which has not faltered in light of these evil actions. Rather, my heart is hurting for all of the souls that wish to come Home, but they are afraid. They are afraid of being accused of being evil themselves, and they are afraid that the place they once believed to be safe is dangerous and evil.

As I watch the pews lose their valuable members, I cannot help but feel anger. Anger at the men who abused their power and the men who refused to bring these actions to the light, anger at the souls whose faith could not withstand the scandals, anger at the souls who do not allow me to a part of their community.

But that’s the thing…

Anger should not last so long. Just anger is a recognition of a wound, of an injustice caused to oneself or their neighbor, and bringing that injustice to the light.

Where does this long-term anger come from?

It comes from wounds we hide from the world. We are so scared that our wounds will make us look less than perfect that we let these wounds fester. If there is something or someone that appears perfect in our lives, we tend to avoid those things out of fear. We fear that our brokenness will taint the goodness we see before us.

Here, with the Church’s darkness coming to the light yet again, many of our worst fears are coming to the light.

And so anger evolves out of that fear.

But…we need to stop being so afraid of our brokenness that leads to this long-term anger. Because, as Master Yoda once said, 

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Because we are so afraid of our wounds, of our sins, of our pasts, we choose to take it out on the world. And as our angry rants and tweets and posts go out over and over again…many souls are suffering all the more.

All I see are the souls that wish to come Home, and yet they are afraid.

They are afraid of the terrible unknown acts within the Church becoming a regular part of their lives. They are afraid of the accusations they may have to face. They are afraid.

And as I watch those little souls turn from the Home they once believed in, I find myself feeling alone yet again. I have helped so many souls find a home in the Church, even souls that once believed that God never loved them. My undergraduate community was so small that I could hold everyone’s Communion wafer in the palm of my hand, and I loved it just the same. My family group chat is filled with prayer requests and happy praises.

After so many years of bringing souls to Mass with me…I’m alone again.

“You may think your only choices are to swallow your anger or throw it in someone’s face, but there’s a third option: You can just let it go, and only when you do that is it really gone and you can move forward.” ~Ted Mosby

Yes, we need to have just anger and let the injustices come forward.

But we need to start sharing the hope that resides in our hearts.

Our hopes have been dashed and broken. It is not just this scandal that takes our hope away. It is the heartbreaks. It is the “no’s” from Heaven. It is the seemingly perfect moments that are taken from us because we were just a little too scared to believe that something magical could happen.

We replaced hope with fear and anger.

Not just the Church, but every single person on Earth…myself included.

Faithful or not, we choose to be angry because it’s easier to be angry. You can do something with your anger. You can get vengeance. You can rant to people about it. You can act out. You can post on the internet. You can be somebody with anger. Just look at all of the TV judges: they are all so angry.

We are angry because what we see is not what the world sees.

We’re hurt, and instead of letting people help us, instead of letting God help us, we choose to be angry. We choose to yell and scream and hate because it is so much easier to rant than it is to be healed.

Anger is immediate.

Healing is patient.

In the spirit of hope, I am going to share a prayer with my Dear Readers. This is how I pray for souls. I am sharing this because The Devil does not want me to see that although I am alone in my pew every Sunday now, that I am not truly alone. He wants me to be angry that in the midst of losing the security of saying, “The Church has handled the sex scandals,” that I also lost the only community I felt like I truly belonged in.

But I am not going to be angry.

Not anymore.

Here is my prayer. It’s addressed to you, my Dear Reader, because I believe that if we start praying for one another through our stories and our crosses that we will start to heal each and every broken piece of our hearts.

Because prayer is not a wimpy request.

It's a battle cry.

Dear Reader,

I pray that these words grant you rest. Whether it is life on Earth or fear of losing Eternal Life that tires you, I pray that by sharing my brokenness that you might find healing. For as we hold the crosses of others, as we gaze upon their broken hearts, we love them. Love grants us rest. That is why I have great hope: I know that when love is allowed in during times of fear that all is well.

My Interior Castle was broken down by a great storm nearly eight years ago. When that happened, only a single room remained: the bedroom of my Jesus. Because I allowed another soul’s evil actions destroy my Caste, I avoided the room. I knew that if I came Home that i could love properly again, but I was too scared of losing Heaven that I avoided my vocation. I avoided my call to love patiently, to be brave, and to believe in the possibility of true love on Earth.

As I started to draw nearer, I noticed that the tiny shack of a room had changed. The Carptenter’s Son took the brokenness of my heart and built something new: a little stone house. From the outside it looked imperfect. I didn’t even recognize it at first. However, my Jesus did not leave me without a place to rest.

There was a second little house. I knew it was a house right away, even though it was broken on the sides and the roof was uneven. I could rest there. In another broken house, my soul found rest. Again and again I traveled to little stone houses, finding rest in their uneven yet sturdy walls. As I learned to love again, I returned to my little stone house.

You may believe that you are too weak or too broken to come Home. You may see the broken pieces of the world and believe that there is nowhere for you to rest. The truth is…when we go in to the little stone house of someone’s heart we find peace.

Why?

Because Christ is in every little stone house. The Carpenter’s Son is fixing the foundation, adding support, and refining the details of each and  every human heart. Even if you fear the desires of your own heart, there is no reason to fear the broken houses. The more they break, the more we encounter Christ. We help Him rebuild the little stone houses.

I have hope because I know that the Carpenter’s Son will always be building up houses. Even the most broken and evil hearts can heal…if Christ is allowed to work. By joining His mission of love and hope, each and every heart has the opportunity to be healed.

After nearly eight years of traveling form house to house, I am finally home. I was so angry that it took so long. It was not my Jesus’ fault; it was my own. I realized that my house will always hold my Jesus, and with Him, the promise of a happy life. So does your house my Dear Reader.

Someday I will receive the gifts my Jesus promised to me before I let my Castle crumble down. Someday I will rest forever in Heaven, but for now, I will continue to take care of these little houses, hoping for the day that a soul may rest in mine forever.

Never give up my love. Our brokenness will never be too much for our Jesus. We just need to continue on in hope and in love.

Love always in Him,

Felicity

STARD9: A Felicity Moment

Most folks don’t like to talk about their work outside the workplace. Work is exhausting, and most of us are just trying to get through the week. 

Not me.

I love my research.

If skipping in the rain is a Felicity moment, then talking about a strange protein called STARD9 is definitely a Felicity moment. Because I talk about my research so much, a good friend of mine gave me a “STARD9 Quota” for the academic year. Therefore, I am posting this Felicity moment today, so as to share why I talk about my research and why it makes me so happy to do so.

My job is not just a job. It is not just something I do. 

If anything, my job is a part of who I am.

We are all given a role in the world.

Although our careers are just a part of our vocation, we often forget that our work life influences every other aspect of our lives. Yes, we can compartmentalize and avoid talking about our work, but we cannot avoid the fact that each career, each job, each contribution to the economy comes with a unique culture.

Being a scientist is so much more than sitting at a bench, teaching classes, or writing grants.

What most folks do not see is the cultural aspect of science. It varies a little bit between each field and sub-field, but there are some experiences we all share as scientists. We all share the struggles with funding, even in a good economy. We all share a dependence on government money to work, regardless of our political affiliation. We all share the grueling experience of graduate school, which is an experience filled with late nights, stressful conversations, examinations, and risky experiments.

We share a culture of hard work that often goes unnoticed.

We share a culture of perseverance during adversity.

We share a culture of faith in logic and reason.

As one might imagine, there are many difficult days as scientists. Our lab has a unique way of dealing with that: humor. It’s rarely about science, let alone our research, but if we are going to talk about our project…it’s likely going to be attached to a joke. That’s how a cytoskeleton lab seems to work it seems.

Despite the difficulties associated with being at the cutting edge in a lab utilizing classical experiments for almost our entire research, we get the job done, and we get the job done well.

Why?

Because we’ve learned how to smile.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have known that I was called to make people smile. Felicity literally means “happiness.” I was called to love the loveless. 

Therefore, I take great joy in bringing happy moments everywhere I go. My research is easy to tease, completely misunderstood, and probably the last thing one would expect to make someone smile. And yet, as I joke and let people tease me, I can see people smile. For a moment, I get to be a part of the healing process. It doesn’t matter if they are a scientist or not. STARD9 can still get an uncomfortable yet entertained smile…even a pity chuckle sometimes!

Just as our faked smiles turn to real ones in my lab, so too do those forced smirks and teasing comments.

Now, I know that most of my Dear Readers are not scientists. I also know that those of my readers who are scientists come from different lab backgrounds and have different vocations. However, that does not mean that we cannot take what we gain from our careers and give that back to the world.

My dad is a doctor, so he brings healing to our home.

My mother is a home maker, so she brings a hospital and loving presence everywhere she goes.

We are all called to love. We are all called to service. We are all called to make this world a better place. We all share this mission, but we all have a different way of accomplishing that mission.

Yes, we all want to forget about our work as soon as we get home.

But we shouldn’t.

Sure, we can forget the in’s and out’s of the day. Scientists can forget about the experiments they did that day. Real estate agents can forget about the leads they cannot get to until the morning. Mothers…well they can’t forget their children, but they can forget about the dirty diaper they changed that morning.

But we shouldn’t forget the good things we can take from our careers and what those things can do for others. We shouldn’t forget the details in the day that made us smile.

Because if we share those details with others, if we take the time to use our careers to better the world, then it stops being just a job. It becomes bigger than a label, than a means of income, than a stepping stone. 

Through love, our career becomes an absolute joy.

STARD9 is a tiny detail for anyone who studies motor proteins, cholesterol transport, and lysosomal membrane proteins. It is a tiny detail in our department. It is a tiny detail to anyone who does not know about my project and sees my blog posts (there are in fact some folks who went several months without knowing about STARD9).

But it’s my pleasure to make STARD9 known.

Talking about STARD9 in my Confirmation class made it possible for me to explain the value of Mary and the Saints. Joking about STARD9 made it possible for me to be a part of scientific conversations before I had the confidence to talk about the real research. Sharing the STARD9 story made it possible for numerous parents of children with rare diseases to smile.

I know that it’s weird to love my project so much.

The truth is: I do not love my project. 

I love what my project has done for the world. I love what my project has done for me.

Dear Reader, you have a special role in this world. Maybe you are searching for your place. Maybe you are frustrated by something that you experience at work but cannot seem to find outside of work. Maybe you have a skill that could help someone, but you never considered it because that skill set does not seem to apply to the “real world.”

You do not need to talk about your job.

You just need to allow it to become more than just a job.

Eat Something

Yesterday’s First Reading was about Elijah in the desert waiting to die.

It’s an odd scene, especially if you know what happened right before he decided to go out to the desert to die. Elijah had just worked an incredible miracle which proved that the God of Israel was greater than Baal. Obviously it makes sense that the Queen pushing for Baal hated Elijah, but what happens next is surprising.

Nothing.

No one really converted.

Despite the wonders God worked through Elijah, despite his faith and hope and courage, nothing really seemed to happen. Sure, the battle was won, but the war for the peoples’ hearts had barely begun.

Exiled and exhausted, Elijah waited to die.

I think many of us have experienced something like this. We accomplish some big task, and we expect big returns. We expect a raise, a promotion, a degree, a publication, a new relationship, a new social circle, a new life, and yet we end up with less. Sure, we get there eventually, but for the most part, the only thing we find is empty space where our great task once filled space.

It’s easy to forget just how much we’ve accomplished when we go back to the real world.

It’s easy to doubt our value after we finish what we were supposed to do and the effect is smaller than we expected.

“I don’t know what to do with myself,” I stared down at the keyboard in the corner imaging room. After two years, I finally sent the figures to my advisor. For the first time since joining graduate school, my mouse work was about to change. What into exactly? I had no clue.

I sat down in front of my computer and looked at my cell work.

As I looked at the images and counted the lysosome tubules, I thought back to my advisor falling out of his chair when I told him the results for the first time. I expected that moment to change the energy in the lab, and it did…for a day or two. Now I was looking at the results and lamenting the next steps.

Optimization.

Confirmation experiments that took a long time and told us what we already knew.

My motivation was shot, and I did not want to look at my old protocols again. Even though the mouse project was difficult, at least I knew the weight that experiment carried. At least, I thought they carried a lot of weight. Now that I finished the eight panel figure, I was not so sure. That’s the thing about science: years and years of work might end up as a single sentence in a textbook.

Talk about humbling.

“Do it with a grateful heart,” my mother used to tell my siblings and I when we complained about doing our chores. This was not very inspirational to the stubborn child I was. But as I grew up I started to grit my teeth until they turned in to a smile. In those moments, I realized just how important it is to go through each moment with gratitude.

All we have to do is take the first step. Even if we grimace a little, it’s better than sitting around.

Dear Reader, we rarely have something big or exciting happening in a single day. The big things come from several small moments, all building up to something bigger. It is our choice to be grateful for those boring tasks, those seemingly meaningless conversations, and those less than important responsibilities.

An angel gave Elijah some bread and water. Even then, Elijah chose to go back to bed.

So the angel gave Elijah a little more, and he finally had the strength to go on his way.

There’s something beautiful that we can all learn from this experience. So many of us are chasing highs. Sometimes it leads to exhaustion, the kind that we cannot seem to shake. If it’s a temporal low point, we know that we will overcome it. However, if we are experiencing a spiritual low point, like Elijah did, it seems unlikely that we will overcome it. We tell ourselves that maybe we just aren’t faithful enough to experience the spiritual high that we convinced ourselves we want.

But you are not the one who overcomes the hunger and thirst. That’s God’s job.

All we have to do is eat.

Just as we have to take small steps forward in order to overcome a slump in the workplace, in academics, or in social settings, so to do we need to take small steps in faith. When we stop chasing the highs, we start climbing up to them effortlessly.

A small prayer, a short conversation, a chapter out of a good book, an act of service, whatever it may be, all we need to do is take a small step forward.

And you don’t have to do it on your own.

Remember who gave Elijah the bread? An angel. Now, I know that we do not have the same relationships with angels in our post-modern age. Maybe we don’t have angels handing us stuff nowadays, but we do have friends. And as they said in my high school Kairos retreats, “A friend is a guardian angel in disguise.” God sends us souls who remind us of His love and to continue trusting in His glorious plan.

I have so many precious friends who have made it possible for me to sustain my faith life, including my Dear Readers.

But it’s not just enough

We have to eat.

At Mass on Sunday, Fr. Peter said, “Without the Eucharist we will wander aimlessly through the desert, never being satisfied.”

Jesus did not just give us His Body and Blood in a figurative way. He did not just give us these little pieces of bread and these sips of wine to remind us of Him in a nostalgic way. He did not die to become a role model in a spiritual way. He is The Way. He is The Truth. He is The Life.

The easiest small thing to do is to be in the presence of God in The Sacrament.

The easiest small thing to do is go to Mass.

It does not matter if you have never been or if you have not been in a while. You are welcome at our Table. You’re welcome in our Home….it’s your’s too.