Suffering Changes Us

Good morning…

As thirty of us gathered at Mend Coffee last Tuesday morning to meet with author Katherine Wolf, she told us about the massive brain stem stroke that nearly ended her life at age twenty-six. As Katherine was fielding questions about her book Hope Heals, one woman said, “When you were unable to speak for a long time, you eventually used a communication devise. The first thing you typed to your family was, ‘I am the same on the inside.’ I think that’s a beautiful part of your story.”

Katherine explained, “I was unable to speak, but at that time, I wanted my loved ones to know that I had the same personality, the same memory, I was the same person. So I typed, ‘I am the same on the inside.'”

She went on to say, “But now I would say the exact opposite. I would say, ‘I am not the same on the inside.’ Suffering changes us. I would say, ‘I am profoundly changed on the inside.’ There is no way I am the same. Our suffering leads us to a different place. We wake up to God doing things in the darkness. And we emerge as a different person.”

This wisdom is a part of Katherine’s second book, Suffer Strong: How to Survive Anything by Redefining Everything.

The very next morning, Martha Kimbel came back to teach her first fitness class at Northside Church after an eight year break. She had taught diligently for twenty-five years, before staying home to care for her husband with Alzheimers. He went to heaven two years ago. When God nudged me six weeks ago to ask Martha whether she would consider coming back to teach at the church, she said right away, “But, Sue, I am not the same person I used to be.”

Just like Katherine, years of suffering has changed Martha, too. The suffering of both of these gifted women has led them to a different place. Waking up to God doing things in the darkness, they have emerged as changed people.

Both women are living into God’s promise, spoken through Isaiah. I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name (Isaiah 45:3, NIV). Katherine’s third book is based on this enduring promise, Treasures in the Dark: 90 Reflections on Finding Bright Hope Hidden in the Hurting.

“Like a caterpillar must die to emerge as a butterfly,” Katherine concluded, “we die to who we used to be, and we emerge from the darkness as a new creation in Christ. Dependent upon the grace of God, we expand into abundantly more.”