I am a bible-studying, praying Christian of many years. I have an inexplicable assurance that God is real as is the Son He sent and the Spirit He gifts to every human who professes Him and believes. What I feel and know about God is the very definition of faith. I have been a student of science even longer than the bible because my father was a science teacher and, by the time I was four, he had this little girl perched on a stool to dissect a mushroom, recite dinosaur species and identify stratification in cutaway rocks on the… 

Tonight I went to the last event I will ever attend (at least within the scope of imagination) that will end in the Bulldog fight song. I stood in the oppressive heat of a high school auditorium whose air conditioner has never been adequate and invited a headache by fighting tears. I don’t know why I fought them.  Before I started, I knew they would win. It was not my alma mater or my song. I did not even have a blood-related child on the stage, but it is my youngest son’s senior year. I have watched him and his…