A Decade Later

"Hello, Fritz."

"Hello darling," he said, hardly even looking up from the paper in his hand as he walked quickly past, mumbling to himself. He looked very busy and important - a favourite pastime of his. "How are you?" I asked, a little more loudly so as to make him stop traveling the direction in which he was - away from me and out of the room. This time he looked up. "I'm fine, thank y--?!!!" The end of his sentence dropped off. He had finally realized who he was speaking to. The next 3 seconds of his stuttering speech are not appropriate to repeat here, as they would have made a sailor blush. He then picked me up and hugged me tightly, still unable to form complete sentences. I had done something very few people could - I had actually shocked Fritz into stutters and stammers. Close by us Jack Warren, who had also realized my identity, just stood staring. And when they found out I was married, I thought they were both going to faint.

The last time I had seen Fritz or Jack was about 10 or 11 years ago - when I myself was about 10 or 11 years old. Fritz was living in North Carolina at the time, where he and my dad shared a house, and Jack was a good friend of my father who I saw on occasional weekends. Fritz used to make me eat my vegetables, tell me not to run in the house, and forbid me to go outside in the winter without socks or shoes. I also tried to use him as a scapegoat when I got in trouble.

"I think Fritz did it," I would confidently tell my father. "Are you sure?" he would ask me with raised eyebrows. "It was Fritz who took your fresh green beans and dumped them into the trash can?" "Oh, yes," I would reply. "He thought they looked yucky - not very fresh at all - and he threw them away so I didn't get sick on wilted vegetables." I smiled and patted my father's shoulder, hoping that would help. "But don't get mad at him, daddy. He was just trying to protect me." I was banking on the fact that fathers always forgive those trying to protect their favourite daughters from dangerous, wilted vegetables. Needless to say, it was me, and not Fritz, who received the spankings that night - not for throwing away my green beans, but for lying.

It was great to see Fritz and Jack this weekend, catching up and laughing because Fritz hadn't changed a bit in the last 11 years. We reminisced with stories like the one about the green beans, and about the summer when I begged my father for a dog and told him that for the times I wasn't around to take care of it (which was all but 8-10 weeks of the year), Fritz had happily volunteered. He of course had done no such thing. While we chopped vegetables and stirred the apples and stewed plums, Jack inquired after my mother's well-being and updated me with the recent developments in mutual friends' lives - none of whom I had seen for years.

In the end both Fritz and Jack kissed my cheek, wished me well, and swore to let my father know of his grave mistake. He had failed to inform them of their little girl's marriage.

Simple Words

"I want to go, but I'm not worthy," I told my bishop tearfully, looking down at my hands which were folded in my lap.

His face was kind, but he spoke seriously and I knew the words were not really coming from him. "Yes you are. Please don't punish yourself for the past anymore. Know with a surety that your Father in Heaven loves you." He made me look him in the eye as he emphasized his last point. "You are worthy."

I've been needing to hear that for 6 months. How can I possibly doubt?

God and Science

She might have been crazy. One of those loud-mouth-make-a-scene-holier-than-thou-look-at-me-I'm-a-Christian types of crazy. I'm not sure how to deal with those kinds of people.

The girl walked into the first day of 'Astronomy 101' 25 minutes late, which is never a good way to start a class. She had already missed most of the syllabus and the introductions. Professor Suarez asked her to do what the rest of us had done - say our names and why we were taking Astronomy. She only had one rule. We couldn't say, "Because it's a requirement" or"Because it's the science that takes the least amount of math". Even if those are the reasons, it shouldn't be very difficult to make up something like, "I want to learn how to find my way around if I'm lost in the woods."

"Well, because I have to." The girl flicked her hair back and her large, dangly earrings jingled. "I hate science but I have to take one." Prof. Suarez started to argue with her that her answer was expressly not allowed, but decided to not fight that battle and start talking about the history of astronomy instead. She began with the Big Bang, 15 billion years ago, and continued until she reached the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. At the end, crazy girl stood up and announced that she was dropping the class because she couldn't believe in God and the Big Bang at the same time, and she believed in God. She walked, or rather sauntered, out of the room - flipping her hair on the way out.

I just don't understand it. Who says that God and the Big Bang can't exist at the same time? Who says the two terms are mutually exclusive?

I don't believe or disbelieve the Big Bang Theory. But this is what I know: The Universe is held together by natural laws that just are, that just exist. Gravity is an example of one of them. The Bible tells us that God works by natural laws; so why couldn't He have been the author of the Big Bang, using the 'ways of the universe' to create His magnificent works? God and science don't have to be on opposite sides.