Theirs may not have been a love match from the beginning, but their love grew. What began as fondness and gratitude for companionship increased greatly through the years, and Martin and Katherine’s marriage became the pattern for couples in ministry together for hundreds of years hence. Without Katherine’s love and strong support, Luther could not have served God as effectively as he did. And without Luther’s belief in and love for his wife, Katherine’s life would have been a shadow of what it was. “Katie,” he told her, “you have married an honest man who loves you; you are an empress.”
Both of them regarded their marriage as a vocation as serious and glorious and binding as their vows to the church had once been. Luther would change the church forever; but it was Katherine von Bora who made the biggest change in Luther.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
(Proverbs 3:5-6)
4
katlyn mcgee
Learning to Trust God
You have a brain tumor in your right temporal lobe,” the doctor told twenty-two-year-old Katlyn McGee. As the news settled into her heart and the shock permeated her soul, Katlyn recounted God’s faithfulness to her.
Growing up in a Christian home, Katlyn had given her life to Jesus when she was seven years old and was soon baptized alongside her mother. As a child, Katlyn understood she was a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness and grace.
On the day she met Jesus, her parents rejoiced. “They were so happy to know that I would be with them one day in heaven, that I had found my best friend,” she relates.
But something happened when Katlyn hit adolescence. During her sophomore and junior years of high school, she straddled two worlds—her church world, where she played the part of youth-group member and said all the right things, and her friend world, where she delved into secret sin.
“While everyone else thought my life was great, inside I was falling apart,” she remembers. “During this time, because of my rebellion, I felt so distant from the Lord. Instead of feeling His presence in my life, I felt hopeless, depressed, and empty and wondered if I even had a purpose in life. Some days, I wished I wasn’t alive.
“I walked in sin, hoping that the lifestyle would bring me friends, happiness, acceptance, and love. Yet I never did fit in. Instead I ended up by myself a lot, discouraged, ready to give up on life.”
As the doctor’s stark office reeled around her, Katlyn remembered the summer that changed her life. During the summer of 1998, prior to her senior year of high school, she attended Super Summer, a Christian leadership camp. There, God exposed her rebellious heart. She told God she was sorry for all the pain she’d caused Him, her family, her friends. He met her with forgiveness and healing for the wounds from her two years of rebellion.
“As a seventeen-year-old,” she says, “I came to a place of total surrender to Christ in every area of my life. I gave Him my past, my present, and my future. I knew the Lord intimately for the first time. Looking back, I don’t even remember the girl I used to be because He’s changed my life so much.”
During her senior year, Katlyn changed from a public school to Trinity Christian High School. “It was there the Lord began to restore ‘the years the locusts have eaten’ [Joel 2:25]. I found hope through the Lord, deep friendships, and strong mentoring relationships.”
After only a few months at Trinity, her class voted her homecoming queen, something Katlyn attributes to God’s faithfulness to renew her life. “I was not the most popular girl, but I got to know everyone in my school, accepting people for who they were.”
Because Katlyn longed to be a missionary, she took a year off after high school to explore mission work. Her first trip took her to India. “I saw lame, crippled, deformed people everywhere, but I found so much joy serving the Lord in India. When a street kid said good-bye and that he’d see me in heaven someday, I realized going out on a limb, trusting God to do with my life what He wills, was so much better than standing on a comfortable foundation of self-sufficiency and independence.”
Katlyn enrolled in Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, after her year off. While there, she became a student intern at Bacon Heights Baptist Church, leading junior-high, high-school, and college students. It was during that time of college and ministry that she started having bouts of memory loss. Her moods swung violently on an uncontrolled axis. A few times, she blacked out. When she came to, she didn’t know where she was or what she was doing.
Initially, she thought the stress of college life at Texas Tech was taking its toll, but as her symptoms persisted and medication had little effect, she decided to see a specialist.
“Youth is a time of infinite days, hours, and minutes to be spent enjoying carefree life,” she notes. “However, in October of 2003 my ideas about youth and life were radically changed.” When she told her friends about the tumor, it was as if she were talking about someone else, something else. Her shocked family members couldn’t wrap their minds and hearts around the fact that Katlyn had a large tumor pressing on her brain.
Katlyn worried about many things. Would she die? Would she lose her memory for good? Would there be complications?
Ten days after the initial diagnosis, Katlyn was wheeled into the operating room. “I was overwhelmed, scared,” she says. “There, alone on the operating table, it was just the Lord and me. I felt His overwhelming presence right before surgery. He gave me peace. I knew that should I die, it would still be to His glory. In that moment, I was not afraid. Through it all, my family and I trusted the Lord and were able to say, ‘Blessed be Your name no matter what the circumstance.’”
The surgeons successfully removed the atypical tumor. They sent the tissues to several labs across the country while Katlyn and her family awaited the prognosis. One month later, Johns Hopkins called and said the tumor was benign—no further treatment required.
Katlyn learned much through her health crisis, particularly about God’s goodness during difficult situations. “I would go through the bad times again to know the Lord the way I do now and to be able to look back in awe and amazement at where He’s brought me, what He’s done in my life, and how He’s allowed me to be used by Him for His glory.”
She has a desire to honor God regardless of what life hands her. “I want to be like Job when trials come,” she says. “Instead of complaining, cursing God, and giving up on faith, I want to fall to the ground, worship, and love Him—no matter what comes my way.”
Katlyn McGee still remembers her life in snapshots of God’s faithfulness. “I daily feel my scar to remind me of the Lord’s faithfulness,” she says. “I touch it to remember one of the best days of my life, lying on the operating table, feeling the Lord so near.”
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8)
5
megan
God Is Sovereign
Megan had done short-term missions before and loved each one, and the next trip promised to be even bigger and better than the rest. Her group’s destination was exotic, and the needs of the people were immeasurable. Megan expected to come home stronger, triumphant, and more energized in her faith. But God had other things in mind. . . .
On the flight back to the United States, while others slept to the steady hum of the engines, Megan tried to catch up on some journaling. The mission itself had been even more amazing than she’d expected. The street ministry, the leper colony, the cultural exposure, the tight relationships on the team—she couldn’t have asked for more.
But as she wrote, something began to stir inside her. Images began to flash in her mind. Megan couldn’t shake them from her thoughts. Shoving aside all the other memories, she kept seeing the loving but pain-filled eyes of a woman named Shanta.
In Shanta’s country, it’s not uncommon fo
r fathers or husbands to sell their daughters or wives for brutal lives of prostitution in a neighboring country. Since HIV is common in that region, it doesn’t take long for the virus to infiltrate the girls’ bodies. As soon as the symptoms of AIDS begin to show, the girls are thrown out on the streets, where the horrors of forced prostitution are replaced by the reality of total abandonment. The alleys and the garbage dumps become their homes and kitchens while they await long, drawn-out deaths.
Day after day, Shanta goes out to find these starving and sick young women. She takes them to her home, where she loves them as her own daughters and shares with them the love and message of Jesus. Some she is able to nurse back to health. But most she comforts as best she can while AIDS takes what remains of their lives. In the midst of all the pain and poverty, Shanta’s home is a safe haven to the few girls fortunate enough to live there.
Megan had been in Shanta’s home for only a couple of hours. But as the memories of her and the girls replayed in her mind, the framework of her life as she knew it began to crumble.
Back home in the U.S., everything was the same as Megan had left it, yet everything seemed different. At school she tried to be normal—pretending that she was listening in class, that she cared about her grades, that it mattered about who was dating whom—but she couldn’t get her emotions under control. Megan found her heart riddled with anger, guilt, depression, and judgment. She tried to get back into a comfortable groove, but she just couldn’t make her pre-mission life work anymore. Nothing seemed to fit.
Worse, she couldn’t get God to fit anymore. Megan couldn’t find Him in her new view of a cruel and uncertain world. Something had to change. Megan had to do something. Restless and anxious, she decided to take action. Surrounded by the darkness of the night, she turned on her computer and began typing.
Dear Friends and Family in Christ,
This summer God blessed me with the opportunity to serve Him in a small Hindu country at the foot of Mt. Everest. . . . Here women and girls, many around the ages of six or seven, are sold into prostitution where they are used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, until their bodies are worn out. . . . It is 4:30 in the morning here as I write this letter. I sleep warm and safe in my bed and down the hall I have two parents who love me. But it is 4:30 in the afternoon there, and girls are living lives that would only appear in my very worst nightmares.
She then explained about the refuge and healing Shanta provides.
Please pray for Shanta, that she will be filled with encouragement. Pray for her finances. Pray for the thousands of girls who don’t make it to Shanta’s home. Would you pray too that they will find out about Jesus, so they won’t have to die alone? . . . If you feel God calling you to give financially to support Shanta’s work, please let me know.
Megan sent the letter to fifteen close friends and family members, and several sent money. Encouraged, she sent out a few more letters and more money began to arrive. A short while later, Megan was asked to speak at her church and then other churches, and then at business clubs. People continued to give. The newspaper featured a story, and donations started coming through the mail.
After Megan had gathered about twenty-two thousand dollars, she quit counting! With the money, Shanta bought a little bit of land and began to build a “rescue station” on the border where she and her staff could intercept young girls on their way to the prostitution trade. Shanta used some of the money to buy back freedom. Some paid for the comfort of the dying, and other dollars made it possible to train women to be self-supporting.
This should have been enough to quiet Megan’s soul, but inside, she raged against the evil that continued in Shanta’s country. Dozens were being rescued, but thousands of girls were still being lost. How could God look into the eyes of one little girl and save her while ignoring the pleading eyes of another taken prisoner?
One day Megan took a hike alone, walking without direction or destination, stumbling in the snow. She felt small and alone. Girls were being saved as a result of her taking action, but what about those who were still being swept away? Why didn’t God do something?
Megan wept and shouted. She told God everything. Then she curled up in the snow, exhausted, and in the quiet she began to heal. Slowly, with certainty, a peace in the midst of not understanding began to seep into her heart: Do I see better than He does? she questioned. Do I think I could do better than God? He is ultimately good. He knows, and He cares. Who am I to question the way He moves or doesn’t? He is God, I am not. If I will trust Him, I will find rest.
That day Megan retraced her steps in the snow, and eventually she retraced her steps all the way back to Shanta’s home, spending a month in her country with her girls, her pain, and her spark of hope in such dark places.
When she left, she knew that what God wanted to accomplish in and through her was complete. She could move on. During the flight back, there was again much to think about, much Megan had learned from Shanta and her country:
~Someday she would see things clearly and understand, but not fully on this side of the grave.
~She needed to be a woman of action, regardless of whether or not she understood God’s work in the situation.
~Her walk with God was based on faith in His goodness, not her feelings or her perceptions of evil around her.
~Someday, it wouldn’t be like this. God has promised a better world.
Someday this will be true, and Megan chooses by faith to believe it. Someday there will be peace and warmth, even for little girls living in the cold shadows of Mount Everest.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
(Revelation 21:4)
WEEK THREE JOURNAL
• What are some of your greatest fears?
• If you could be certain God is with you no matter what, how would it affect your worries?
• If you were free from your fears, in what new ways would you be able to love and serve others?
• How would being free from fear affect your worship and your prayers?
• What Bible verse or passage of Scripture has been most meaningful to you this week? Why?
week four
1
mulahn
Follower of Christ
Like a crudely fashioned bracelet, Mulahn’s wrist is encircled in marred flesh—a result of torture at the hands of Muslim kidnappers. Captors singed her skin with sulfuric acid, erasing the carefully tattooed cross there. The cross had been Mulahn’s quiet proclamation that she was a Christian amid a culture of Islam. Somehow, Egyptian captors determined to sear Christ from her heart by burning her skin.
Mulahn grew up in Egypt in a Christian home. Her family represented a small religious minority in Egypt—the Coptic Christians numbering six million. Islamic fundamentalists began targeting Coptics in the 1990s, believing them to be a real threat to Islam.
These Islamic zealots roamed the streets, looking for Coptics to harass and abduct. Mulahn’s closely woven community lived against that constant backdrop of worry, wondering if that day would bring yet another abduction. They were very cautious about whom they trusted and where they traveled.
On one ordinary day, a group called the Gamat Islamiya abducted eighteen-year-old Mulahn while she was visiting friends. They spirited her away, and her abductors raped her repeatedly. They knew that if they did so, they’d essentially ruin Mulahn’s life—if they stole her innocence, they stole her ability in her culture ever to marry.
Everything they did was deliberate. Every torture they invented had a purpose: to dissuade her from Christianity and her culture.
During the ordeal, her captors moved her in stealth, blindfolded and brutalized, to dingy hideouts. They worked day and night to convert her heart and mind to Islam and undermine her connection to Jesus Christ. “Pray to Allah!” they demanded. To survive, Mulahn had to do as they said, bowing low to the ground, facing Mecca.
Mulahn’s traumatized father sought help from the Cairo police. “You must find her,” he told them. “They will torture her.” Hot tears erupted from his dark eyes. “You must find her.”
“Forget Mulahn,” a police officer told him. “She’s now safe in the hands of Islam.”
“You don’t understand. They have taken my daughter.”
“You don’t understand!” the officer shot back. “You must sign this now.” He shoved a document toward Mulahn’s father, handing him a pen. The piece of paper declared that he would not search for his daughter. “Sign it!”
“I cannot sign this.”
“If you don’t, you will be responsible for any harm that comes her way. If your family searches for her, she will be hurt. Mulahn is safe. She is being retrained in the ways of Islam. If you love her, you will leave her alone. Allah will take care of her.”
With shaking hand, Mulahn’s father signed the document, his tears blurring his signature. Still, he searched for her in secret, relentless in his pursuit.
During her “retraining,” Mulahn’s kidnappers required her to wear a veil, the traditional hijab Islamic women wear for the sake of modesty. Initially, she refused. “They warned me that if I removed it, they would throw acid on my face,” she later recounted. After days upon days of brainwashing torture, she acquiesced to her captors and signed papers saying she was a convert to Islam. She quit fighting the veil.
And then, one day, she escaped.
A clandestine group called Servants of the Cross arranged for her rescue. This group sheltered her, nourished her. It protected her from harm and kept her safe from her captors.
Sister Freaks Page 6
