I have a good friend who I met after moving back to Spokane. We played on the same Hoopfest team, we send our children to the same school, and every Christmas season our families get together to wrap presents.

A couple other things to mention about this person: She is one of the strongest Christians I know and she also happens to be a medical doctor.

I bring this person up and I specifically highlight her faith and occupation because of some rather striking and encouraging statistics I heard over the weekend…

We live in a world that tries to suggest that God and science can’t co-exist. But the fact of the matter is that they can—and they do. When people think that God and science aren’t complementary, they assume that people in science-based fields can’t and don’t embrace a higher power.

But this isn’t accurate.

The people we might stereotype as atheists because of their reliance on science are actually believers in a higher power.

I learned recently that the majority of doctors are believers. Most recent studies indicate that anywhere from 65% to 76% of medical physicians believe in God. Mind you, these are the professionals who help patients face indescribable hardships and confront death much more frequently than the average human. They are also extremely well-educated and possess an extensive STEM-based background. All these factors might lead people to assume that most doctors would be atheists but instead the exact opposite is true.

Furthermore, I also learned that more scientists than not believe in God. The most-recent study indicates that 51% of professionals classified as scientists do believe. Take a moment to fathom that. The people who base their findings on the scientific method, demand proof for everything, and know the theory of evolution like the back of their hand still believe that God exists.

I was exposed to these legitimate and illuminating studies while listening to a radio show that featured Fr. Robert Spitzer. If you have never heard of Fr. Spitzer before, I suggest taking a moment to Google him. He is more than just a priest—besides once serving as a university president, he is also an expert on miracles and near-death experiences. He has built scientific proofs on why God does exist and puts into perspective why people who are stereotyped as not having faith actually do.

But as much as I would like to write more about the incredible Fr. Spitzer—who I have watched lecture in-person—I just want to again emphasize the fact that God and science work together and those who we think don’t believe actually do.

And this mode of thinking is only becoming more prominent. Two-thirds of young scientists believe in God, advocating that you can be both religious and a good scientist.

Make no mistake about it, God and science are harmonious. And the proof goes well beyond just my friend. Don’t Blink.

It is the smell that really still gets me.

I will never forget how mornings started my first couple years of elementary school. Before the school day officially started, our teacher would sit down at an electronic pencil sharpener and we would get in line. When one of us would advance to the front, she would take the writing utensil we held in our hand and shove it into the pencil sharpener.

After about 10 seconds and a cacophony of high pitch noises, she would hand back a freshly sharpened pencil with a long and sharp lead point.

The machine was revolutionary for the time and the result was on-point, but it was that fresh aroma of wood that suggested, Okay, the school day is about to start…get ready, that I can still remember to this day.

But the start-of-morning pencil sharpening ritual ceased around fourth grade when the introduction of mechanical pencils hit our school. I immediately swapped out my traditional pencil with a Bic .7mm mechanical writing mechanism and never looked back.

The introduction of the mechanical pencil didn’t kill the traditional pencil. My kids use the old school writing utensil every night at the homework table.

That was of course until I was able to use pen. Sorry, there is no doubt about what the superior writing utensil is. I just assume avoid something that can be erased, smears the side of my palm, and breaks easily.

Nowadays, I never use a pencil unless I am helping my kids with homework. And based on all the pencils we have in our junk box, you would think my children must be doing homework every waking hour. Thank goodness it is not actually like that.

Unfortunately, it just so happens that about 80% of our million pencils are unsharpened and the ones that are sharpened somehow need to be re-sharpened. Thus, the same routine plays out each night where our kids need to take one of our cheap, handheld sharpeners to sharpen whatever pencil they feel inclined to use that evening while managing to get pencil shavings all over the place.

Yes, we do have a couple mechanical pencils around. In fact, Sidney, who was a teacher, prefers our kids use them because she thinks they allow Sloan and Beau to write more legibly. I just have to get my son to stop clicking the eraser over and over to create a lead point that is over a foot long before he actually uses it to write (and then proceed to break the said lead point).

Even though Sid says mechanical pencils help kids write better, I usually shove a traditional pencil in Beau’s hand because of his tendency to fool around with the mechanical variety.

Did I mention that I prefer pen over pencil?

However, on this National Pencil Day it was kind of nice to wake up and smell the wood. Don’t Blink.