Heather DeBruhl

Falling in love—it’s a wonderful thing. And falling in love with God is the best thing to happen to me. Actually, falling in love with my husband taught me a lot about what it means to love and serve God. I was already a Christian when I met my husband during graduate school. But I was in the beginning stages of committing my life to God. Falling in love showed me what it meant to long to spend time with someone, to miss someone, and to want to put someone else’s needs before mine. The more I got to know my husband, the more I wanted to be in love with God too. Each week, I spent hours studying the Bible, praying, and memorizing Scripture. I learned to listen to what God wanted me to do and submitted to it even if it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Psalm 34 says “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” Spending daily time with God makes me a better, more joyful person. God has freed me from multiple anxieties, turned a criticizing attitude into gratitude and compassion, and most importantly forgiven a multitude of sins, which empowers me to forgive others as well. Now, it’s my pleasure to show God’s love to others—my husband and children, friends and colleagues, and my students.

My Life

Favorite Quote

“The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory. In one high bound it has overleaped the massive of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law (towards one person) by loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is an image, a foretaste, of what we must become to all if Love Himself rules in us without a rival. It is even (well used) a preparation for that.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Friends describe me

quiet, thoughtful

My hobbies

gardening, ukulele, going to the beach, playing board games

Fantasy dinner guests

Jimmy Carter and Bill Gates or characters from Lord of the Rings, depending on how you interpret the question

Best advice I ever received

Take a Sabbath day.

My undergrad alma mater

University of California, Irvine

My worst subject in school

Humanities

In college I drove

Ford Ranger

If I weren't a professor, I would

do research at a biotech company

Favorite books

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, ; Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card;

Favorite movies

Star Wars

Favorite coffee

I don’t drink coffee but I really love a glass of milk.

Nobody knows I

had a pet hamster while in graduate school. I kept his cage on my desk in the research lab and would take him on walks through the hallways of the research building.