Tout ce dont j'ai besoin

J'ai tout ce dont j'ai besoin- I have everything that I need!
I was thinking about this today: I am so happy right now! I have a wonderful family that I love hanging out with, and wonderful friends to love and support me. I have a great job and I love going to school, I look forward to learning and even doing my homework, chemistry is the most fascinating thing in the world. I have food and shelter (a house we made so beautiful!) and I have the freedom to read my bible and talk to God whenever I want.
Why has he blessed me so much? I don't understand. I am so overwhelmed with gratitude. I don't deserve all this lavish blessing; especially after spending most of my life complaining about what I didn't have.
Last year some painful and difficult things happened, and it wasn't until now that I have begun to see how the Lord actually orchestrated all those events- allowing them to cause me such grief- because he deeply loves me, and he is committed to the spread of his glory. I was so disillusioned that God didn't answer my prayers, but now as I see them in perspective it brings tears to my eyes that God was so faithful and good in NOT answering them.
Thank you, God!

God's Faithfulness

Sometimes I am so amazed at God's faithfulness. I screw up so much its not even funny. The other day I went out with some friends and siblings and we were having dinner at a pub downtown. (A classy one.) At the table next to us were 5 guys who had already had much too much to drink and were getting rowdy. We were talking and laughing and joking at our table and I said how I felt that I'd gotten much more mellow in the last year and wasn't as likely to be aggressive or angry or intense as before. There was unanimous disagreement and lots of laughing and I determined to prove how much more mellow I really had become.
A little later one of the guys next to us came over, very drunk. "I like your hat!" he said to my brother Sam in a slurred voice. "Thanks, man." Sam said.
"I want to see your hat on this girl."The guy said, pointing to my friend Sophia next to me, a gorgeous Malaysian girl. His voice was slurred and he was leaning a little close to her.
"No way!" I answered, giving him a death look. "You leave us alone!"
"I just want to put your hat on her head! Come on, man, I'll give you ten bucks!" He waved a crumpled bill at us and leered at Sophia.
"Listen buddy," I said fiercely, pointing to his table. "You sit down right now!!! We don't want to listen to you."
I got to my feet holding my fork like a weapon and tried to reach across Sophia to shove him backwards as he protested that all he wanted was to see Sam's hat on Sophia, leaning a little close to her.
"Get away from here and don't you come and talk to us like that!" I cut off his ramblings. "Sit down and SHUT UP right now!"
He retreated a little and slunk back to his table, his friends laughing at him. I sat down again, hot and angry, wishing he had kept talking so I could've hit him, and suddenly I realized everyone at my table was staring at me.
"Heather, I can't believe you just lost ten bucks!" Sam said, and everyone laughed.
It suddenly dawned on me, here I was sitting with 6 people who could have easily stood up for themselves, and here I was yelling at a harmless drunk and ready to fight him with my fork, me being all of a foot shorter than him and wearing high heels and a dress. I who thought I was so mellow and chill about everything.
The guy came and apologized before he left and I smiled graciously and said it was okay, and later I laughed about it. It's not the first time that instead of being gracious I've wanted to fight: last year at school I punched two guys out. (One of them put his hand in an inappropriate place) Come to think of it, last week wasn't the first time I tried to fight someone with a fork: a friend at school called me a bad name and I leapt over a couch to avenge my honour, fork in hand. Unfortunately, one heel got caught in the arm of the couch as I tried to fly over it and I ended up flipping backwards and had to be helped out of the arm of the couch where I was stuck.
But the point is not about forks: it's about God's faithfulness.
Despite my trying so hard to be good and gracious and failing, and despite my stupidity in nearly always responding aggressively to big guys that I couldn't possibly win against, God always protects me, and he always forgives me, and he always gives me a second chance. What would I do without him?
What would I do without his wonderful grace? His mercy? Him always being with me, never leaving me alone? I am so grateful for Jesus! I am so thankful that I am truly alive in him and that he leads and guides me every day.

Christmas

Last night at around three o-clock or so I looked out the window from work and there was snow coming down, big flakes drifting softly in the pale orange light. I wanted to tell someone, but all my patients were asleep, except for one old man who couldn't talk back to me because he couldn't breathe. I sat next to his bed and told him about the snow, and how I'd been skiing the day before. I told him that I'd decided to try a double black diamond run and fallen down every time I tried to turn, all the way down the entire hill, and he laughed under his oxygen mask.
When he was drifting off to sleep I left him and sat in the nurses station and ate christmas candy that someone had left and thought about family and christmas and love, and God's gift of Jesus to us.

Hello Nurse

Today I am reminded once again why I don't want a career as a nurse.
I drove home from the hospital, the heat on full blast, mouth breathing, but I still couldn't get the smell out of my nostrils. Soap, urine, and crap. The whole day I am leaning over patients, trying to cajole them into swallowing their pills, cleaning up after them, getting yelled at (except for one guy who told me that nice girls like me were few and far between).
One patient had a serious respiratory infection and I had to wear a mask anytime I was in her room. In spite of being nearly asphyxiated, the mask was good because she could just see my eyes and didn't know I was gagging behind it.
But of course I would never say any of this in front of a patient. I look at them in the eyes and smile, and by treating them with patience and dignity despite the smells and the gross stuff, I tell them that they are valuable and precious and I care about them.
I think nursing is a great career, really. I support anyone who wants to do it, they'll get paid lots, it can be really exciting.
But even after I came home and washed and changed, the smell is still lingering in my nostrils. Oh man. Thank God for a strong stomach.

Petroleum, God's gift to the world

Besides Jesus, I would have to say Petroleum is pretty close up there on the list of amazing things God has given us.
First of all, when I think of Petroleum I do not think about fuel! Aaaaghhh! (I think that's how you spell a very agonized yell). The fact of the matter is that about 90% of Petroleum goes to fuel: yes, cars, trucks, factories, all that. It vaporizes into carbon dioxide and water and some shorter carbon chains and ends up totally wasted (except for the marvelous gift of acid rain, of course.)
The real reason petroleum is wonderful, however, is because of Polymer molecules and polymer chemistry- which unfortunately only accounts for a measly little 5% of petroleum usage.
For those who haven't heard my long lecture about them yet: polymers are long chain molecules of repeating units, like beads on a string, that can be millions of units long, but are a minimum of 100 units in length. Think rubber, Nylon, polyester, Lycra, Mylar, Kevlar, latex, Teflon, Dacron, etc.
It's hard to think of an area of life that is not affected by polymers. Cars, for example. Chairs. Foam mattresses. All the plastic in the world. The computer I'm typing on, the packaging around my food that keeps it fresh longer, the paint on my walls.... And just when you might think you can live a pure life and do away with polymers- think again! Wood contains cellulose, which is a natural polymer. DNA, protein, some sugars- these are all natural polymers!
Synthetic polymers make our lives easier, safer (latex gloves), better (lighter aircraft because of machined polymer parts), and so much happier.
Happy Heather's Hullaballoo categorically supports the polymer industry and all forms of polymer science and technology, because Happy Heather's Hullaballoo wants to make the world a happier place.

Exams

Well, I am almost finished my exams. I have one more in about half an hour that I am avoiding like the plague. The funny thing was, I thought I was taking 5 courses this semester.... until I looked at my exam schedule and realized I had 6 finals!
In a few short hours I will be free. Freeeeeeeee!!!!!! What will I do? Clean my house, for starters. Do laundry, clean out the fridge, return library books.... Tonight I'm going out with a friend.
"I'll have a Corona please, with a lime." I'll say.
Then after that I'll say "I'll take a rum and eggnog."
If I am still standing (which is unlikely considering my low alcohol tolerance especially after a semester of not drinking), I'll ask for a Mike's hard lemonade.
Then Helen will have to carry me to the car and put me in bed at the other end and I will drift off into sweet sleep...
Just kidding. (Not about the Corona, but about everything else)
Speaking of Corona, which means crown in Latin, Italian and a few other languages:
On the serious side, the very serious side... I have been thinking about King David lately. Now, that man was something else. His heart was really and truly after God. He screwed up bigtime with Bathsheba and Uriah, and a couple of other times, but he was always right back to God, repenting, worshipping, starting over again. He was zealous and passionate for the Lord.
I really want to be like that. Who cares about everything else, what anyone will think of me; I want to love the Lord, with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my body.

Great words in other languages

Sometimes I think English is pretty boring. Other languages have some great words that express perfectly a concept that in English is awkward at best and impossible at worst. For example, greetings in English: Hi, Hello, How are you? But consider greetings in other languages: Mambo (Swahili), Bonjour (French), Salaam (Arabic), and Ciao (Italian). Mambo is an extremely versatile word that can mean good, blessing, but usually translated as 'what's up?'
Bonjour of course means good day in French. (have a good day). Salaam in Arabic is as widely defined as the Hebrew 'Shalom'- meaning peace, blessing, health, greeting, God bless, and so many more meanings rolled into one. My favorite, though is Italian Ciao: it comes from the Latin 'I am your servant'.
Imagine greeting someone, instead of with the English grunt 'hi', with 'Peace and blessing to you! I am your servant! Have a good day!' Of course that sounds a little silly to us, but I think it would be cool if when we interacted with each other our words were not neutral, but carried a blessing and an encouragement that set the stage for our conversation.
Other great words: in French one says 'J'ai peur' for 'I am afraid', but it literally means 'I have fear'. It is so much better to identify fear not as who we are, but as something we have that can be dealt with and gotten rid of.
The verb 'to kiss' in French is 'embrasser', but it can also be translated as 'to embrace' or 'to take up/in', which I think is way better than the lame old English 'kiss'. (when do you ever kiss without embracing?) A final great word is the Creole 'Jambalaya' which is a delicious stew with just about everything in it: chicken, sausage, seafood, vegetables, rice, tomatos, pork..... The origin of the word is a little uncertain, but it is likely from a mix of the French word for ham (jambon) and a Creole phrase 'ya-ya' meaning 'everyone's talking at once!' What a great name- a stew in which everybody's talking at once, where all the different ingredients are mixed together in a noisy combination of flavors.

Useless facts about life and chemistry

One of my favorite chemistry professors gave me this stellar piece of advice: Never memorize something you can look up.
The reason I think it is wonderful advice is that human brains do not have a limitless capacity: there is only so much one can stuff in at once and be expected to regurgitate on demand. For example, although I memorized hundreds of phyla of biological life forms, after I finished my last plant biology course I promptly removed those useless facts from my memory (yes, this is why we have encyclopedias) and instead filled my mind with more useful things. For example, Planck's constant, h; 6.626068x10(-34) or the three elements on the periodic table that are all named after the same place (yttrium, ytterbium and terbium), or how to derive about 6 million physical chemistry gas laws.
Oh man. Such useful knowledge.

Fighting God

World AIDS day is coming up, but it doesn't really matter because I always think about it anyway. It is such a tragedy. Although in North America AIDS is inexorably linked to sexual and other lifestyle behaviors, (98% or so ) in other countries it is not so clear-cut. Take for example a country like Swaziland with a >30% AIDS rate: thousands of children are born with AIDS, not because of a poor choice; they are innocent victims.
Or how about Malaria. Actually, Malaria kills more people than AIDS does, it always has, and the rate of it is growing. It is completely treatable, but the vast percentage of people who don't have access to medical care make the yearly death toll from Malaria about 2.7 million. Innocent victims. (I should know: when I got malaria I did absolutely nothing to deserve it.)
Cancer is another one. Almost everyone in the world will somehow be affected by cancer in one way or another. I spent my entire childhood holding my breath in gas stations so I wouldn't breathe in carcinogenic fumes, avoiding junk food, not using a microwave, eating disgusting herbal concoctions- but guess what! An average day in the chemistry lab I am breathing in chloroform, getting benzene all over my hands, spilling acid on my jeans, inhaling ether: my kids are going to be born with three heads and I'll probably die at 39.
I've concluded we can't prevent suffering. God will get us one way or the other: not that he is cruelly waiting to hurt us, but that he loves us so much that he has to hurt us. I can't hope to offer a reason for the innocent victims of AIDS, but I am seeing in my own life that so many things I consider tragedies are truly from God's hands. It is pretty easy to get mad and yell and shout when I slip in a puddle and drop all my books in the water, when I get a bad grade on something I worked hard for, when someone hurts me or a friend stands me up: but these things are from God. He gives! He takes away! Sometimes it seems he takes more than he gives. But blessed be the name of the Lord! He is using these things to make me more like him, to help me love him more, to mold my character so I can be used by him. And for a lot of other reasons I don't understand.
"I know you can do everything." Job said. "No plan of yours can be thwarted.... surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.... My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you!"
I've pretty much wasted a lot of time fighting against people, against suffering, against God. But I've made a decision that instead of fighting against what God gives me- I'm just going to receive it. Receive what comes from his hands, whether it is painful or wonderful, because I know it is from him and I know he is good.

The best drinks in the world

The best drinks in the world:
Eggnog
Earl grey tea
Rum & Eggnog
Good coffee
Sleeman's beer
Chai tea
Any black tea with milk
Eggnog
Eggnog

Two years ago I thought I'd finally died and gone to heaven: I was grocery shopping right after Christmas and all the eggnog was on sale. Still, even on sale eggnog can be expensive. I went to the manager and asked him if I bought a lot of the eggnog, would he give me a better deal? He asked how much I wanted. I said, what if I bought all of it? So at 79 cents/liter, I bought 32 liters of eggnog. Someone helped me carry it home in crates and I stacked it in my freezer, my fridge, and all over the counters. I was still drinking it a couple of months later.
Some people say that I love it because it comes only once a year, and that if I had it every day I'd get sick of it. I disagree. Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
God is the same way. (You might think I am stretching this analogy too far!) When he blesses us, he doesn't just give out a little bit of blessing and say, okay, now you have to wait awhile until you're desperate to be blessed again.
He gives lavishly. Abundantly. Over the top. Just like this amazing snowfall we have right now in BC! I'm getting frustrated with missing school, but it is so beautiful! So cold! So wonderful!

Let it snow

Snow, snow and more snow! I love it so much. Everything is totally white and clean and bright and blanketed in about a foot of it. Everything is cancelled, everything is still and quiet, neighbors are out shovelling and some brave souls are trying to drive. I am still stuck in Burnaby, of course. I tried to drive out to Langley last night but one of the chains came off my car tire and then after skidding my way around for about 20 minutes I gave up and went back to Mom and Dad's to spend the night. I'm going to try again today, hopefully I make it!

Snow is amazing. In every handful there is a billion beautiful crystal structures that rival the finest architecture or the most intricate lace, yet as soon as a little heat touches it, the crystal structure is disrupted and the water transitions into a chaotic, disordered state we call liquid. All that beauty, gone! The interesting thing about snow crystals/snow flakes is that they are a perfect mix of kinetic and thermodynamic considerations. On the one hand, the formation of snow crystals from chaotic liquid to a very ordered structure is thermodynamically unfavorable in that the entropy of the system decreases. (For non chemistry/physics people, this means they get MORE orderly instead of LESS orderly, which violates the principles of thermodynamics and the way the universe generally works.)
On the other hand, it is kinetically very favorable for snow crystals to form, because in their ordered state they are in a place of lower energy, which of course is a great thing. (I follow this principle all the time in my human kinetics class: the less energy I have to expend, the better!)

However, besides the great example of thermodynamic and kinetic push-and-pull, I think by far the most wonderful thing about snow is how transitory the beauty is. If I was God, would I be willing to make something so incredibly intricate and beautiful, and then just allow it to dissolve away in a matter of seconds? All that work for nothing?
The question is, does God create beautiful things just for the sake of creating them, whether or not humans will actually appreciate them, or whether or not they serve some great useful purpose?
I remember the first time I saw a snowflake up close enough to see the actual structure of it. It was an emotional experience, as if I was suddenly a spectator of something so much bigger than myself and I was looking through a window into another universe. I lay on the snow contemplating that the one flake I held in my hand was one of billions and billions of others, yet God cared enough about it to make it so amazing and to let me see it. God, you're really the amazing one!

Funny funny funny

Last night I went to Grant Fritzke's house for American Thanksgiving. We laughed and joked, and I laughed so hard I cried. I even laughed so hard I choked on a pickle. Apparently, laughter is the best medicine. I read that the average adult laughs 17 times a day, but the average kid laughs 100 times a day, which probably explains why they are so fun to be around.
I've decided to spend more time laughing and rejoicing, and less time complaining and arguing.

1122, the magic number

Actually the magic number was really 1000. Natalie Leoganda and I have been taking in recyclying every week and sending the money to JOY hospice in Uganda. We have my mom's little Honda Civic to pack everything in, so there's not a lot of room to fit bottles. Usually we start with the trunk: drag bags of bottles out of Northwest and pack about five garbage bags into the trunk. We have to slam it closed. Then we drive to Robson and start packing the back seat, moving the front seats forward as far as they can go. We put about 10 garbage bags in there. Then Nat sits in the front seat and I load a bag or two onto her lap. Then I get in the car and we drive to the bottle depot. The only problem is being able to breathe with the smell of sour juice and rotten milk all around us, but we usually make it. Our goal has been to fit 1000 bottles in the car, and today we did it for the first time! Actually, 1122 bottles. (That's $58.00)
It's a ridiculous way to make money, really- but at least we're saving the environment one bottle at a time and saving humanity one pill at a time (the money all goes to buy medications.)

Quantum mysteries

So are quantum entities particles or waves? Neither, but something else entirely- something unknown in itself. It exhibits either 'particle-life' or 'wave-like' features, depending on the conditions. If you ask a particle question, you get a particle answer. If you ask a wave question, you get a wave answer. In this way subject and observer are inseparably linked in quantum theory....we can say nothing about what the quantum world is like in reality; instead we recognize the validity of alternate and mutually exclusive approaches to it. (The Soul of Science, 1994)

Kind of like the Trinity, I guess. How can God be one and three at the same time when the two are mutually exclusive? No real entity can be both at the same time, or can they? Faith in quantum theory requires a colossal leap from my human understanding to something that is a little beyond intelligibility. It requires a healthy dose of humility in admitting it is true even though I can't totally understand it. The striking beauty of quantum physics is that it works, so I am forced to accept its truth even if I can't visualize it. It is remarkably predicitive, it is experimentally satisfactory, and we see its 'fingerprints' in the everyday behaviour of atoms and subatomic particles. (if you even want to use the word particle!)
And God is a little beyond intelligibility too, but the more I look at him and study him and experience him, the more I see his beauty and the more I understand him.
"Who has known the mind of God?" Paul asks in his letter to the Corinthians...."But we have the mind of Christ." How amazing that God would welcome us into the mystery and beauty and relationship of the Trinity. It takes a colossal leap of faith, and a very substantial dose of humility.

Late night thoughts

I learned a song in Africa that was hard to sing and even harder to dance to, but the words have stuck with me a long time. "Eyalama, eyalama, jokedeke. A tikolo a ngo twana jokedeke." Loosely translated, it means "Thank you God, because if it weren't for you, we would already be dead in our sins."
See how awkward English is trying to translate that gentle phrase! But I have been thinking about this great reality. If it wasn't for the living water that I had in Jesus, there would be no life in me; I would be a walking corpse. But he feeds me with his life.
A businessman spoke at TWU and taught me this prayer, one that appears throughout the New testament and that we can pray all the time: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
It is this tacit recognition of the reality of our totally dependant state on God that allows us such great joy!