Suffer Strong
“I’d be happy to pray, but let me first say…”
After meeting in college, Jay and Katherine married and moved to Los Angeles to pursue careers in law and entertainment. At that time, they were living on campus at Pepperdine, where they were the young parents of little James.
Just three weeks before Jay was set to graduate, Katherine suffered a rupture in her brain from a mass known as an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). Many of you know Jay and Katherine and their ministry and books and their powerful voices. I think in this day and age, amid the cultural, political and health crisis, theirs could be some of the most needed voices for the believing world to hear.
Well, anyway, watching a video of theirs at Passion Church a few months ago, Katherine was asked at the end of the service to pray for the viewers. She said, “I’d be happy to pray, but let me just say….”
Katherine had a promising career in entertainment, modeling, maybe acting; living in Malibu, married to a soon-to-be lawyer and with a newborn filling the house with joy and life.
If you’ve ever been to Malibu and specifically to Pepperdine, the sunrise and sunsets dancing off the Pacific ocean have eden-like features and characters. Every morning seagulls sing, whales wale, and deer graze the steep, vast, manicured lawn of the campus as the mist begins to lift from the shoreline across Highway 1.
I picture Katherine squinting and grinning as she opens up her blinds to let the light in. Life was good.
As written in Hope Heals, following her stroke, Katherine was rushed to UCLA Medical Center and one of the world’s best neurosurgeons, Dr. Nestor Gonzalez, “just happened” to be on call. It was the largest AVM he has ever seen, in the worst location. She was not expected to live, but despite the grim prognosis and the lawyer husband, he decided to take the case.
Today half of her body is paralyzed among other physical battles as she and Jay continue to speak truth about suffering well - if not strong - to millions around the world. So when Louie Giglio asked her to pray at Passion, she said,
“I’d be happy to pray, but let me just say, “God gives hidden treasure in the secret places so that we may know him and live differently because of the treasure we get to take hold of and cherish and champion for the rest of our lives. That treasure - (and this is a deep comfort) - is only available when we are in the deep darkness. We get to hold it and let it inform how we live moving forward. That is special stuff. Don’t miss it in the darkness. Get that treasure and let it change you.”
God could have used Katherine Wolf to impact millions through movie roles and modeling gigs, but God chose her for the vocation of suffering. He sent her to the deep, dark places beneath layers of health and wealth to the deepest recesses of pain and desperation and hollowness and pitch blackness. It was there that Katherine realized the treasure has nothing to do with the physical; be it in the world or of the body, the treasure is the promise of Jesus and His sacrifice and the knowledge that we will be with Him for all eternity.
I’ve said it before, but you may not come out of times of suffering healed or better or progressing at all, but you do come out different. In some cases both weaker and stronger. But that doesn’t happen unless, as Katherine implores, unless we get the treasure and hold it and cherish and champion it so that it informs how we live. I think that’s what she means when she says for us to suffer strong.
- Jimmy Peña
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