Introduction: Scientific faith and Christian Curiosity – a little bit about how I got here...

*WARNING* this is a long blog...

Just for fun!

These photos are from Down Thomas, UK
(not Seattle!)

 It was the August 2012, with my thesis submitted and awaiting my viva, I was finally nearing the end of the tunnel which was my PhD and I seriously started considering what came next. My thesis hadn’t really left me with any unanswered questions that I was in the position to ask (I had a lot of questions but no populations suitable for asking the question). This was when my supervisors suggested I think about working abroad. My initial reaction was somewhat hesitant (otherwise known as a loud internal NO!), but I said I would think about it. The Sunday after this found me innocently sitting in church minding my own business listening to people’s feedback from the recent Christian conference they had attended. Someone was speaking about ‘stepping out of your comfort zone’, and that’s when I felt it, that gentle internal nudge that tells you ‘this is for you’. The thought that is so alien to you, so contrary to what you want to hear, so much bigger than you ever would have considered, so ‘not you’ that you take a deep breath and you listen to God.

 

I have always been challenged by the story of that guy who came to Jesus and said I will follow you when I have buried my Father (Luke 9:57-62) and Jesus says you can’t put your hand to the plough and then look back. I can easily identify one of my treasures as my family. They are a blessing from God but there is still a temptation to put them and their desires before God. I have struggled, particularly over the last few years while my sister divorced her husband, to trust God with my family. I think it is often easier to be more cavalier with ourselves than accept that our loved ones might get hurt. I knew time abroad would mean ‘giving up’ my family for a while so it was with the heavy heart of a disciple a little torn that I took a step to follow where God called, a step out from my comfort zone and into God’s possibilities. I went into work and started to discuss where I might go in the world with my supervisors. My attitude was to push the door and see if it opened...

  

I started off thinking about three months abroad, this quickly escalated to six months, then one year. I knew I wanted to get some training in immunology (the study of the immune system). I knew we had an interesting population of people who have high risk of developing disease but haven’t actually gone on to get disease (we call them slow progressors), who potentially have interesting immunity. I knew I am simply appalling at learning languages. After a very positive response to my ‘cold e-mail’ I had a lab in Seattle who were willing to host my stay. That is, I apply for the money and pull a project together, the lab in Seattle are simply willing to have me and teach me (it’s not like a conventional job where the people I’m working with are the ones who interview me). Slowly but surely the jigsaw pieces of a project in Seattle (USA) came together. My first shot at a grant was an MRC training fellowship for a year. My application and CV was good enough to get me an interview but in the end the interviewers felt the project could be better developed and my future career path was unclear. What did it mean? Was the door shut or was this not the right door?  So we went back to the writing grant proposals.

In October I applied for project funding from Diabetes UK for a project that would take four years; I was now potential going to Seattle for up to two years (training and preliminary data) and then would have another two studying my UK based ‘interesting’ population back in Bristol. In November I applied for a Fulbright - Diabetes UK award for a year in Seattle and in early January I applied for 6 weeks in Seattle for training from the EFSD. At this point I was still feeling like this was all a bit much and not one hundred percent sure I wanted this to happen. In January I was invited to a Fulbright interview, then I found out I had been awarded the EFSD training money (six weeks in Seattle guaranteed). Before attending my Fulbright interview I made a conscious decision; I was going to hope for this, I was going to want this, I was going to pray for this to happen as oppose to those ‘your will be done prayers’ I had been indulging in before. This project was a step out of my comfort zone, the science was a step across, the subject area was unfamiliar, and this was going to take hard work, going to require more learning of a subject area I have often found overwhelming (even at A-level). I went to my Fulbright interview in London in February. During the end of my PhD and through my interviews I was inspired by the words of Psalm 139 which says ‘before a word is on my lips you know it completely, Oh Lord’ and ‘all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to pass’. My last minute prep for the Fulbright interview was to recite this psalm as I sat in the waiting room. In preparing for the interviews I had to hold firm to my faith that if God said I could do it I could do it and not give in to the fear that ‘someone else could do it better’.

 

After what I was sure was a shocking interview I found out in late February that I was a Fulbright finalist but shortly afterwards I also found out I had an interview for the Diabetes UK four year project. I had a weekend to decide whether to accept the Fulbright funding or go for the DUK funding which I might not get. At that point I could have pulled out of having horrible scary interviews and congratulated myself on a job well done but that Sunday I really felt that I should continue with the DUK interview process, that a yearlong Fulbright wasn’t enough. The next week I got an e-mail explaining that they were aware of the Fulbright (both awards were funded but DUK) and they offered me the opportunity to attend the second interview too ‘so I knew all my options’ before making a decision about what to do. My mind already made up to pursue the longer DUK funding I could easily write back and say I would be coming. After all you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and being given a shot at both of these awards without having to choose between them was a large gift horse and not of the Trojan variety. I had another London based Fulbright day on the Monday, my Birthday on the Tuesday, and my Diabetes UK interview on the Friday. After some busy waiting I found out Maundy Thursday that I had been offered the Diabetes UK award but that they would like to combine it with the Fulbright award. So by the grace of God (and the help of a lot of hard work preparing for interviews on science I previously knew very little about, including a lot of help with practise interviews from people at work) I was awarded three separate grants. I get to be a Fulbrighter and also get to do the four year project we had designed and thanks to the EFSD I have had six weeks of training in Seattle which would have been an amazing opportunity all by itself.

 

You listen for the call of that still small voice of God, you take a deep breath, you hear the first few steps of the plan and you go for it. I am curious to see what God has planned for me in this place (Seattle), I’m intrigued and excited. I have Christian curiosity. I find it humbling that so many people have put their faith in me as a scientist, yes it’s based on the ‘facts’ of a successful scientific start to date with a good number of published papers, but it’s still a type of faith. As for my project, science is always a step into the unknown, it requires a certain faith that there is an answer out there that I can make some sense of. It requires a sense of faith in oneself because it is an often unrewarding and certainly unforgiving pursuit of what in any other sphere of life would be called daydreams (plans loosely based on our current incomplete understanding of the problem). So that is how I got to the place where I would be writing this blog; a blog about Christian Faith and Scientific Curiosity and some of the fun I things I get to do in Seattle but also the blog of a Curious Christian and a Faithful Scientist. The two states are not mutually exclusive!