Suffering well

I decided to title this blog post “Suffering Well” which yes, indeed sounds very odd as the two words are very much contradictory. But I do think that these two words can go together, and you’ll understand once you hear the story of these two strong believers who went through overwhelming loss to find overcoming love.

This post is not about me. It’s about a story of two ordinary people-Jay and Katherine Wolf, who like us, had plans, hopes, and a vision of what their future would look like. Little did they know their life would be drastically changed by a spontaneous brain stroke Katherine had undergone shortly after giving birth to her first child. Everything changed.

Katherine and Jay Wolf came to speak at my church home in Oregon called Rolling Hills Community Church. My mom sent me the video link and I thought I’d share with you. I could describe their life in several words- inspiring, heart-breaking, hopeful, hard…painful.

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However, if I had to choose one word, their life is real. Pain is a reality of life, and something we all encounter. Their’s may look a little different than ours, but we all share this universal pain, and we should use it as a connector to cling to others and find community in a broken world. 

​Jay says,

Hope is not just a feeling, an emotion, a feel-good thing; hope is a person. Hope is Jesus.”

I cried a little too much and a little too hard during this 45 minute video because I thought that the pain they were encountering was just impossible to overcome. My life was easy compared to theirs. But Jay and Katherine didn’t come up on stage yesterday at Rolling Hills to separate and compare their heavy and intense pain to ours. They came in hope to share their story of how God worked through their lives in the midst of overwhelming loss and tell us: “you are not alone.”

Towards the end, Katherine prays and speaks,

We are hard-pressed, but never crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are struck down, but never destroyed.”

Coming from a woman of intense loss, yet extreme strength, I believe her. We should all live in this mindset because there is so much truth to this and can change the way we choose to live our lives.
All in all, I definitely recommend you to watch this sermon. Overwhelming loss is always defeated by the overcoming love of Jesus Christ, and it is so important to let this sink in because pain is once again, a reality of life. We don’t get to control when life brings about a storm, but we do get to cling to the truth of the powerful healing of hope.

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This week, my word for you is hope. Like Jay said, hope is not just a word, a feeling, an emotion, or a feel-good thing. Hope is a person; hope is Jesus. Whatever you are going through in life right now, whether it is as small as the stress and anxiety associated with finals week to a tragic loss of a loved one, God cares about them all the same because he can. God has the power to take every one of our unexpected life hard-comings, and embrace us with intense and overcoming love.

​God tells us (in Liv’s words),

You are not alone. I’m here, let me walk with you in this time of suffering, and show you how hope in me can lead to suffering well. Let me use you and your suffering to speak through others. I’m with you.” -God

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Click here to the video and I “hope” you have an amazing week!