Cuz Kool Aid tastes better and showers are overrated...

A former coworker once told me she was pretty sure my organs were stuck to my insides. I had just proudly announced that it was nooooo problem for me to go the entire day without peeing because I really didn’t need to  drink water. Man, how invincible I felt at 25 years old and how naive I was. “Me, drink water – that’s for middle aged people who walk with their 64 ounce bottles everywhere” 

Fast forward about 16 years and though I still hate to drink water, I have become sorely reminded of my dependence on it…and my fascination of it.

Growing up, there really was no reason for me to love water – it didn’t taste as good as Kool-Aid (gotta love sugar), I didn’t swim (cuz virtually no one who grows up in Jamaica can), I couldn’t ice skate (I value my bones in one piece) and showers were over-rated (there was no water pressure in Jamaica so a shower was essentially standing under a trickle). I had good reason to hold it in disdain. 

However, water became one of the main reasons I, as a young agnostic, needed to take a closer look at God. That – and belly buttons, but that is another blog in itself.

I had told a friend in college that the Bible was a bunch of Jewish fairy tales and that the human body was a masterpiece of evolution. I had never really researched it and couldn’t tell you why I believed it but I held very tightly to that belief because acknowledging God meant I needed to suddenly look at life and eternity in a way I really didn’t want to.

Yet, it was my very studies in Biology and Chemistry that made me start to ask questions – a lot of them.

I didn’t know that when my Chemistry professor started going on in his monotonous voice about the “anomalous expansion of water” that it would begin to lead me closer to God.

 Let me back up in case I left you sputtering “ anama-what? anomo – who?”.

The anomalous expansion of water.

Science 101 – solids, liquids and gases. In general, the molecules in gases are far apart and it is the least dense of the three. Liquids are in the middle and solids are the most dense. A solid is more dense than when it is in its liquid state and will sink to the bottom of that liquid.

Pretty standard information. except when you come to water. It’s an anomaly. (see I didn’t make up that phrase – it makes sense because water does something  no other non-metallic liquid does when it is turning into a solid). 

It’s an anomaly – its behavior is just plain strange and abnormal. The only other substances that behave strangely like this are bismuth and antimony and no one really cares where in the periodic table they are!

See, when water gets colder it becomes more and more dense until it gets to 4°C. Unlike other liquids, instead of continuing to contract, it then starts to expand so that ice is actually less dense than liquid water! Scientists can’t completely explain why the hydrogen bonding in water causes it to behave that way.

“ Woop di doo”, you may think. Why is this interesting?

It’s interesting and absolutely vital because it would profoundly affect the survival of  organisms living anywhere water freezes. Simply put, aquatic life would not survive the winter anywhere ice forms if water did not act in this…anomalous way!

Anomalous expansion of water – causes ice to float on top of water. It doesn’t sink to the bottom and kill the fish, and everything that survives under the ice in the winter.

 As one writer puts it:  If water did not have this strange property, the entire pond or lake would freeze solid and fish and other living creatures would be killed, since most animals would have their cells disrupted by the needlelike ice crystals that form in the water within their cells.

Anomalous expansion of water – ensures that the water below the ice is insulated from the colder temperatures above, providing a more livable temperature at the bottom of the body of water.

Anomalous expansion of water- pushes down  oxygen in the water’s surface for use at lower depths for use by the aquatic animals and plants.

It’s a curious fact, this anomalous expansion of water. Taken for granted yet, quite significant. It’s like a whisper in the wind, a little wink from God to remind us of little things He has done for us.

 It beckons us to come and look closer at the delightful things he has left in this world for us to discover Him.

And for one young woman to whom water had little significance, it certainly did.

Romans 1:20  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse

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My grandmother's gnarly toes...are on MY foot!

My toes could try out for a horror movie. They are long, gnarly and probably have an extra digit. They can pick up objects  well and can give a pretty good pinch. My husband claims he is not afraid of them but I have seen the way he shudders and scoots away when my toes touch him in bed! I can laugh now, but growing up I was horribly embarrassed by my toes and the only thing I loved about them was that they were the same exact toes as someone I loved more than I can begin to explain – my grandmother!

My grandmother was a beautiful woman and I don’t just mean on the outside. She was quite possibly the most generous person I have ever known. She fed the children in her district, she raised more than twice as many children as the 7 she had. In fact for a couple years, she and my grandfather raised me during the week. She was feisty (I felt that she could stand up to anyone). She was smart (she was the village midwife and alternative medicine healer), and she was sweet (she loved my grandfather, her children and the dozens of grand and great grand children she had with a strength I so admire).

But back to her toes. My grandmother had those long, gnarly toes too. I bet my grandfather shied away from them in bed too. My mom however, has stubby little toes on a foot that looks nothing like mine. Those gnarly genes certainly did skip a generation and I am waiting in anticipation to see them one day on a grandchild’s foot since both my sons have taken their short, non descript toes from their father.

So as I admire my toes, I think about DNA and how things like that get transferred from one generation to another. Every cell in my body (except my mature red blood cells) carry the gene for those gnarly toes. The DNA in the cells of my skin, my brain, my bones and yes, the DNA in the cells of those toes all carry that gene as well as all the other genes that program how my body works. But how does that gene get passed down to my kids? 

Well, the DNA in the eggs in my ovaries that with the equal help of the DNA in my husband’s sperm became the blueprint for those delightful little boys we have now. While I’m sure I passed on the gene for the gnarly toes, it appears the genes for my husband’s normal (read: boring!) toes must have won out in what was allowed to show up. My gnarly toe genes must have gone the way of recessive blonde hair genes, only allowed to show up if they can gang up in numbers and there is no other gene to challenge them for the right of showing up on the outside of a person. Yes, I am ashamed to admit, my gnarly toes are from weak genes…sigh.

Evolutionary scientists say that evolution takes place as a result of a random beneficial mutations giving an organism an advantage in surviving and reproducing  more than other less well adapted living things. In fact mutations, random ones, are believed to have caused our grand evolution from “simple” single celled organisms to awesome living things like plants that perform photosynthesis for us all to have food, or amazing creatures like the cheetah, or the bombardier beetle that makes toxic chemicals to scare off predators, or humans like me, albeit with gnarly toes.

Without going into the details of the fact that most random mutations cause deadly or debilitating conditions the vast majority of the time (can you say cancer,cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia etc etc), let’s think about how that mutation would make it to another generation.

Let’s say tomorrow, I undergo a mutation in my DNA. This mutation will change the DNA coding for my gnarly toes. If I am lucky it will code for a change in my bones and make my toes petite and beautiful. More importantly the mutation will not have caused any harm to me so that I survive to have children. Now we have to assume that this mutation took place also in my eggs in my ovaries, because this the ONLY DNA that will have the ability to pass this trait on to a future generation. OK, so my ovaries have eggs with viable mutation. Now, we have to make sure that one of these eggs of the 400,000 or so eggs that a female produces will actually be part of producing another human being. If it isn’t one of these, this mutation doesn’t do diddly as the next generation will not have this new petite toe DNA. Then there are the whole compatibility issues that the changes in the DNA from the female, is compatible with the DNA in the male. (Think of the fact that if you breed a horse and a donkey – though very similar in DNA will result in a mule that is 100% of the time sterile and unable to produce offspring).

So with this new petite toe mutation, I would now need to have another child to pass on this gene. This gene would have to "survive" all the conditions mentioned above to make it to the next generation. Happily, and with a somewhat warped sense of humor I realize the odds of this tiny thing happening is probably as close to zero as you can get, so again I look forward to forming my family club of the future: Girls of the gnarly toed sisterhood!!

Friends, I believe God put plenty of variation in our genes to allow us to be a myriad of beauty for Him and to allow us to adapt and survive under many different situations. My toes may be gnarly but it’s because the Lord God made me that way!




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