From the looks of it, I should hate people. This could not be further from the truth. According to Myers-Briggs, I am an extrovert, but my incessant talking proves that point on its own. I thrive off of people being around me, and I love to be the center of attention.
Put these two things together, and you get a girl who needs to do things well who also needs people to like her in order to function. I have to have my life together, and I need people to know that so that they will accept me.
By looking like I had my life together, I attracted many different types of people. Most of them were wonderful, and I know in my heart that they were great friends.
The number of nights I spent alone in my room made me feel otherwise.
But there were was a unique subset of friends that seemed to help.
My Own Projects
These were only a few people, but they were unique individuals who had some form of issue that I could fix. Sometimes it was just by being the listening ear. Sometimes it was by saying something. Sometimes it was by making a major change in their lives. Regardless of how, I knew that through my friendships with them that I was making a difference.
Every time they reflected on our relationship, these friends would tell me how thankful they were for our friendship.
"We'll be friends forever."
"I don't think I will ever be able to make it up to you."
"You have put so much effort in to our friendship."
Friendships like these, where I made a change and felt good about myself because of it, became the focus of my entire life. I talked about these people to all of my other friends, and I identified myself through those relationships. Why? I was A) successful B) well liked because of it.
I thought that God gave me these friends
I thought that because I prayed for someone to always be there that this was what I needed.
I put my faith in them.
Faltering Faith
God does not just hand us our answers in pretty little packages however. He does not just say, "Oh yes that's exactly what you needed! I forgot!" and suddenly throw your exact request to Earth. Instead, He gives you something a little different and calls you to grow in to that environment.
For me, that meant taking away those friends or asking me to end those relationships.
People left.
I was so distraught and angry and hurt and confused. I would stare in to the mirror as I prayed furiously for hours, tears streaming down my face and nose dripping and stomach heaving from my sobs. In those moments I felt somewhat like Saint Therese of Avila when she said:
"If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!"
God did not want me to focus all of my attention of these parasitic friendships, and He certainly did not want me to grow cynical, sassy, and cruel because of them. Instead, He wanted me to find something real.
He wanted me to find Him.
Finding Faith
I had spoken to each of these people about the importance of God in our lives, and I pretended that my faith was strong. My rosaries were honest, but their intentions were no longer clear. My so called "faith" was built on a string of spiteful, angry words and sobs in to pillows.
God called me to be alone. This summer I moved out of my comfort zone, and I was no longer the best in the room. I did not have my life together.
I could not depend on myself anymore.
I could not depend on anyone around me to make me feel whole.
So I turned to prayer.
Saint Felicity
It was a terrible day when I finally broke down and asked for God to help me. My experiments were failing over and over again. My little brother was in the hospital, and my family was unable to talk to me on the phone. All of the other REU students were in their labs.
I was alone and failing at the thing I knew God made me to be.
It took all of me to not cry in front of people. In an attempt to hide my saddness, I rushed to the Basilica. There are four side chapels behind the main altar, so I went in to one of those. Inside, I found the Reliquary, which is a place that holds numerous relics to the saints.
Saint Felicity was there.
Because she was a martryr, I knew that she had enough faith in God to die for him. She chose to be attacked by wild animals and have her throat slit. She chose to give birth in prison.
"Now I'm the one who is suffering, but in the arena Another will be in me suffering for me because I will be suffering for him."
All for Christ.
I prayed that she would intercede and give me strength.
No longer did I feel so upset. Instead, I decided that I would just work harder in the lab. I may be lonely at this time, but if I do something of value, then I won't be lonely anymore. My PI will be happy, and I will be able to talk about something exciting when I get back to Belmont. God gave me this ability, so I would do His will by working hard.
I put faith in myself again.
Anecdote
Of course that faith failed. Nothing on this Earth is going to last forever.
My cells died again.
My time at Notre Dame was shortening.
Soon I would be back to where I felt lonely, without the friend that I had used to pretend that I was important, without the story that I thought everyone loved, without the fake faith that I knew broke me in the first place.
I lost faith in myself. I lost faith in science.
God did not lose His faith in me. So He showed me where to go.
After I tried to walk off the anger and hurt I was feeling, I came back to the lab. I had set up a new restriction digest so I could pretend to be doing something right before I took my break, and I had to run the gel to check for the DNA sequences. It had never worked before.
I felt completely lost.
So I did what my heart was begging for me to do.
I told God to give me strength.
The other undergrad in my lab came to our little undergraduate corner. He asked me what had happened to my cells, and he tried to make light of it, especially considering his experiments had not been going well up until this week. I could not join in and pretend that I was ok anymore.
My triple A battery had run out of juice.
I could not keep up the facade any longer.
Long story short, I started to cry right there in the back corner of my lab. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I certainly did not plan on crying to the other undergrad. I hardly knew him, and I did not want to look incompetent in front of someone who seemed to be able to do anything.
God stripped me of my falsehoods and gave me the courage to speak to someone.
After talking to him, I got my first hug since I came here to Notre Dame. It's odd what a hug can do for a person. What was surprising to me was that he offered to give me a hug. All of those people that I had filled my life with to prove that I was important never offered to give me a hug, nor did they make sure I was ok on their own. When I cried to them, they would force me to talk, but my fellow scientist just sat there until my sobs had subsided and I could speak clearly.
Then the grad student made jokes and laughed with me as he reinstructed me on some lab techniques, just so I could smile a little bit.
I returned to run my gel, and as I waited, I decided to read the Martryrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas , which is the story of the saint that I am named after. I figured it would be a good way to pass the time as the gel ran along. I did not expect it to work, but I expected God to make me smile and feel better. There was no way of proving that my experiment worked, but I knew something had to happen. God could not just leave me alone like this.
"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." ~Saint Augustine
My digest worked.
After five weeks of trying to do it on my own, I finally asked for God to help, and it worked.
Learn Better
This moment was God's reminder to me that life is not based on who thinks we are important, and it does not matter if you are absolutely perfect. He reminded me that I could not do everything on my own, and He reminded me that He would provide me with every need.
No person should cry alone.
No task should feel impossible.
There is nothing on this Earth that will be unfailing. We can try to be perfect, and we can try to make things last forever, but it not happen as we want it to. That does not mean that life is horrible or that we should give up. Instead it means that we should trust the one thing that will never fail.
Love Never Fails.
God Never Fails.
It's ok to have a Triple A Battery personality. It's ok to try to do as much as possible. It's part of who you are, and it makes you special. We need people who work hard and are independent.
But do not cry alone.
You have an amazing Savior who will never leave you alone. He may not physically sit in front of you, but He will find a way to help you feel better, and He will find a way to remind you that things are going to be better. He will tell you that you are special and loved, even if you did not believe it before.
And then sometimes He will send you people and circumstances that show you that Heaven is for real.
I am so thankful that God loves me so much. I will work for the rest of my life to try to show Him that gratefulness and I will strive to build true friendships and be kind to those who are lonely and lost. I will not hide behind a fake perfect smile. I will not need to cry because I will live as God asked me to.
But if I do cry, I will have God there to listen and friends there to care.
Life is beautiful my friends. Believe that.
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