Jay Wolf's Blog, page 2

YOUNG SUFFERING CLUB: Melissa (The Interview)

What was something that others did that made you feel less alone as you were going through the season of suffering? 

 They showed up. At every court case, they were there. As soon as I was allowed visitors, they came. Both friends and family flew in from across the country to be present when I needed it the most. They drove for hours to Corona, San Diego, Malibu just to be there. My sister was super woman acting as my “social coordinator” amidst her full time job as mom and a career. The out-pouring of love and support was so endless that there was not a single visiting day that I did not have a line-up of friends and family coming from near and far to see me. They brought feasts from all my favorite places. They brought tacky sweater parties. Cheese fests. Birthday cakes. Thanksgiving feasts. Glimpses of the outside world - of “real” life. They brought encouragement on the darkest days. They brought glimpses of hope. And while He was for not one moment absent, they brought Jesus. 

What is one thing you will never take for granted again?

 The small things. Being stripped of everything forces a new perspective. It is in the mundane that I am most struck by overwhelming gratitude. The ability to freely walk down the street. Going to the grocery store. Starbucks. Morning phone calls with friends. A Tuesday night dinner with my brother. Watching the sunset. Toes in the sand. Riding my bike wherever it takes me. 

There were a number of years - in the months that followed my accident and after I returned home - in which I did not have a license and my bike was my primary mode of transportation. Getting places wasn’t always easy, but I was able. In the time leading up to my sentencing, that bike took me from lawyer meetings to therapy appointments. To yoga and the grocery store. It took me to many beach cliff sunsets. Many days on that bike were spent with tears streaming down my face as wildly as the wind blowing through my hair. 

While it was challenging to get around, that bike afforded me the opportunity to engage in the outside world. It became so much more than just a means of transportation, it became a symbol of my freedom. 

And that is the heart of what my gratitude for all of the “small things” is really about. That they all point to a gratitude tied to something much deeper, something that I will never again take for granted - my freedom. 

What still made (or makes) you laugh, even in the midst of the deepest part of your suffering?

 The moments of levity - when you feel like you can barely breath and suddenly you are laughing while tears are streaming down your face. The God moments where you feel so defeated and consumed and God delivers a moment of the straight up absurd to carry you thru. 

 Case in point: Riding through the streets of Los Angeles on the day of my surrender, handcuffed to a bench. I tried to keep my face to the window to hide the tears falling down my cheeks as I stared through barred windows at the streets and places I’d driven for the past 12 years in freedom. Just as I thought I may not be able to suppress my sobs, the song “I’m in love with a stripper” came blaring through the bus speakers, much to the delight of all my fellow bus mates. It is pretty hard to cry when you have a bus full of soulful sisters jamming out to that one. Thank God for moments of humor. 

Is there a mantra/prayer/scripture/symbol/art/song that has daily helped you make it through each moment?

 "Day at a time."  The day that my accident happened, my world was shattered. Life would never be the same. I was out on bail, facing the possibility of life in prison, dealing with my Dad dying, processing the reality that I had taken a life. For the first time in my life I didn’t know if I could keep on going. The weight of it all felt like it was going to crush me. I didn’t know what my life was going to look like. I didn’t know how to continue on with life when I was responsible for taking the life of another person. Why did I get to live? Why not Will? 

Drowning in a sea of regret, despair, and grief, God gave me a glimpse of hope in the reminder that I didn’t need to have everything figured out - I just needed to trust Him one day at a time. At times when the waves of sorrow would crash over me, it was often one breath at a time. But in each breath, each step, each day, God was faithful. He brought me through a season I never thought I could survive, day at a time. 

Was there a turning point moment when you moved from the tragedy into hope? What helped this shift occur or was it more of a daily rhythm of choosing?

God provided continual moments of grace and glimpses of hope on the darkest of days, in the midst of the most heart-wrenching agony. But the break through moment in shifting from despair to hope took place when I started to accept what it meant to truly surrender. Below is an excerpt from one of my prison “blogs”, written on my 32nd day as inmate WE5363 from cell 46 of LA County Jail, my first stop as I waited for intake to the State Prison system. It is the story of the day in which I surrendered to the court to begin serving my time, but of a much more meaningful surrender that was taking place. 

Sunday, Oct. 21st 2012 (day 32)  

My eyes open to 2 realities this morning:

Diane is yelling at me to get up.  It’s time for breakfast.

I’ve survived a whole month here.  And 2 days to be exact.  But who’s counting?

It’s strange how time passes here.  Days become indistinguishable, one to the next, as they blur together in fast-forward mode.  Yet, minutes will drag on FOREVER, as if Father Time is hitting the almighty pause button in hourly intervals between each tick of the second hand.  And in the lapse of time that exponentially prolongs seconds into eternities, I’m no longer a newbie here, as I’m reminded by the all too familiar morning exchange between my bunkeeand me (and thus reinforced by the fact that I just used the word “bunkee”).  But in the way that days are swallowed into time’s vacuum, it was only yesterday that I was standing in court the day of my surrender.

The details of the day are all so fresh.  I close my eyes and I hear the clink of the bailiff hand-cuffing me and the simultaneous sob that comes from my sister.  I blink and I’m hugging Steve, my lawyer, now friend.  I’m turning around and clinging to the last glimpse of my brother and sister’s tear-stained faces.  I’m walking towards the door which marks the division between myself and freedom.  I’m searching for and connecting with the eyes of Will’s sister, his only family member present, in a final attempt to soothe the incurable pain that is locked in our stare, praying she can read the remorse in my eyes that the words I’m mouthing to her will never be able to communicate.  I’m stepping through the dreaded doorway, over the threshold where I lose it all.  And I’ve surrendered.  

    As I think over the day I just experienced, yet seemingly transpired in another lifetime, I’m reminded of the intense and equally contrasting emotions that the word, even just the thought of, surrender has evoked in me.  It began as just the name of an unknown date on the calendar.  The day when I forfeited all that meant something to me, gave up everything and everyone I love and walked away from my life.  The words “surrender date” rendered me powerless to the crippling paralysis of fear that would overtake my mind.

    I remember sitting on my therapist’s couch—cliché but true—and as the subject of the unknown day came up, everything inside me tensed.  She paused , and in a manner both gentle and matter of fact, pointed out what a freeing and beautiful word “surrender” is in the midst of a very scary and disillusioning legal process.  Obvious though it might be, it hit me like a ton of bricks. How I had let the all-consuming anxiety surrounding that day define the word.  And as I stepped back from the despondency I had allowed to take root, gradually, the truth in the meaning of surrender began to resurface in my mind.

 To let go. To release control.  To give it all up.  ALL of it—the good and the bad.  NO more clinging, NO more grasping.  Palms up, to borrow the words of a wise man named Bob (we’ll call him a friend for practical purposes, I don’t think he’ll mind).

So, as I walked through the court doorway that marked my claiming and watched it close behind me, counter-intuitive as it may be, there was something freeing in the act.  Though it will forever be one of the hardest days I’ve made it through thus far, the fear of all the loss was replaced by a peace that doesn’t logically register.  I was there in physical submission, but the true surrender of heart, that no man can dictate, had already taken place.

Waking each new morning, I’m reminded that surrender is not just a singular action, it is a life-long process.  Daily there are new fears and worries:  When do I go to Chowchilla?  Will I be housed with the same people there?  Will these arms comply with fire camp training and even be able to do ONE pull-up?  What news will be waiting on the other end of the line when I call home TODAY??  Will I ever again see my Poppa in this lifetime???

Conversely, there are new hopes and dreams to release to the heavens as well:  For the appendages I’ve carried with me throughout life, otherwise known as arms, to do the unthinkable and sprout functioning muscles. For the pneumonia to be gone from my Dad’s body so he can continue to fight the brain tumor.  To be able to sit at Malibu fire camp holding my Poppa’s hands as we visit and eat REAL food.  For MIRACLES.  

As I’m reminded by day 32 of the mile-markers that 24 hour intervals serve, I pray for the continued ability to daily let go.  To surrender all, day at a time, because I know how senseless it is to grasp and cling in the illusion of control.  And so I open my hands, palms up, and release all I’ve got that isn’t mine to hold into Greater Hands.  Hands that receive it all and hold everything securely.  My hopes.  My fear.  My Poppa.  Our futures.

All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give, 

I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live.

I surrender all.  I surrender all.  All to thee,

My blessed Savior, I surrender all.

What was one of the greatest miracles that you kept you going in the midst of your deepest suffering? 

It was Christmas day. My first Christmas as an inmate when I got the news. I was sitting on the linoleum floor of my prison dormitory common area having a Christmas party with some new friends. We ate nachos with top ramen on them and “prison cheesecake” made of powdered coffee creamer and sprite (where there is a will, there is a way). I remember being so grateful for the sweet moment with new friends in the midst of such a scary time, but being so crushed to be away from my family - especially my dad, who was so rapidly declining. Shockingly enough, it was not the brain tumor that was the main concern, but the pneumonia that had overtaken his frail body. 

I remember the guard walking up to our small circle and calling my name. I didn’t want to admit it was real, but I knew it was. Shaking and sobbing in the cold office of the kind, empathetic lieutenant, I called home to confirm the news from my brother - he was gone…. My poppa had gone to be with Jesus. 

In this life, I was never going to see him again…. I could not imagine any greater devastation. 

Then I was told I would not be allowed to attend his funeral. I was shattered. 

At first I was resigned to my powerless state. I was an inmate, afterall. Although it went against every fiber of my being as my fighter-of-a-momma’s daughter, I tried my best to accept my reality. Thankfully that did not last for long. 

As part of my “welcome to prison warming package”, they had given me a handbook called the “Title 13”. My counselor assured me that although I was a prisoner, I had rights - my Title 13 outlined them all. So I started reading. 

It was 2 days before my Dad’s funeral that I marched into my counselor’s office with that prison bible and showed her the exact clause that challenged her reason for denying my right to go to my father’s funeral. 

While I fought my hardest from the inside, my amazing brother and sister had the prison warden and everyone on her staff on speed dial. They were relentless in advocating for me. 

On the morning of my Dad’s memorial service at Bible Fellowship Church in Ventura, CA, the church he pastored faithfully for 16 years, I was there. With my hair curled in toilet paper prison curlers, I was able to stand in front of the multitude of people whose lives had been so impacted by the amazing man that was Roland Niednagel.  

I was there to share my love for the man who had given everything he had to be the most amazing father to me that he could possibly be. A man whose wisdom, kindness, love for Jesus and laughter could not be matched. One of my closest friends. I was able to be there to honor the life of the greatest man I’ve ever known. 

Talking to the officer that was my escort, in the 20+ years he had been working at the prison, I was only the second person he had every escorted to a funeral. In that time, he had only seen a handful of people ever be released to go. It had been over a decade since it had happened. For the duration of my time at Chowchilla, I was referred to by the guards as “the celebrity”.

While all logic and precedent said I should not be at my Dad’s funeral, God made a way. In a place and at a time when there appeared to be no hope, God’s goodness and mercy proved uncontainable. He gave me my miracle. 

I got to be there. 

{READ MELISSA'S STORY}

YOUNG SUFFERING CLUB: Melissa {THE ANSWERS}

What was something that others did that made you feel less alone as you were going through the season of suffering? 

 They showed up. At every court case, they were there. As soon as I was allowed visitors, they came. Both friends and family flew in from across the country to be present when I needed it the most. They drove for hours to Corona, San Diego, Malibu just to be there. My sister was super woman acting as my “social coordinator” amidst her full time job as mom and a career. The out-pouring of love and support was so endless that there was not a single visiting day that I did not have a line-up of friends and family coming from near and far to see me. They brought feasts from all my favorite places. They brought tacky sweater parties. Cheese fests. Birthday cakes. Thanksgiving feasts. Glimpses of the outside world - of “real” life. They brought encouragement on the darkest days. They brought glimpses of hope. And while He was for not one moment absent, they brought Jesus. 

 

What is one thing you will never take for granted again?

 The small things. Being stripped of everything forces a new perspective. It is in the mundane that I am most struck by overwhelming gratitude. The ability to freely walk down the street. Going to the grocery store. Starbucks. Morning phone calls with friends. A Tuesday night dinner with my brother. Watching the sunset. Toes in the sand. Riding my bike wherever it takes me. 

There were a number of years - in the months that followed my accident and after I returned home - in which I did not have a license and my bike was my primary mode of transportation. Getting places wasn’t always easy, but I was able. In the time leading up to my sentencing, that bike took me from lawyer meetings to therapy appointments. To yoga and the grocery store. It took me to many beach cliff sunsets. Many days on that bike were spent with tears streaming down my face as wildly as the wind blowing through my hair. 

While it was challenging to get around, that bike afforded me the opportunity to engage in the outside world. It became so much more than just a means of transportation, it became a symbol of my freedom. 

And that is the heart of what my gratitude for all of the “small things” is really about. That they all point to a gratitude tied to something much deeper, something that I will never again take for granted - my freedom. 

What still made (or makes) you laugh, even in the midst of the deepest part of your suffering?

 The moments of levity - when you feel like you can barely breath and suddenly you are laughing while tears are streaming down your face. The God moments where you feel so defeated and consumed and God delivers a moment of the straight up absurd to carry you thru. 

 Case in point: Riding through the streets of Los Angeles on the day of my surrender, handcuffed to a bench. I tried to keep my face to the window to hide the tears falling down my cheeks as I stared through barred windows at the streets and places I’d driven for the past 12 years in freedom. Just as I thought I may not be able to suppress my sobs, the song “I’m in love with a stripper” came blaring through the bus speakers, much to the delight of all my fellow bus mates. It is pretty hard to cry when you have a bus full of soulful sisters jamming out to that one. Thank God for moments of humor. 

Is there a mantra/prayer/scripture/symbol/art/song that has daily helped you make it through each moment?

 "Day at a time."  The day that my accident happened, my world was shattered. Life would never be the same. I was out on bail, facing the possibility of life in prison, dealing with my Dad dying, processing the reality that I had taken a life. For the first time in my life I didn’t know if I could keep on going. The weight of it all felt like it was going to crush me. I didn’t know what my life was going to look like. I didn’t know how to continue on with life when I was responsible for taking the life of another person. Why did I get to live? Why not Will? 

Drowning in a sea of regret, despair, and grief, God gave me a glimpse of hope in the reminder that I didn’t need to have everything figured out - I just needed to trust Him one day at a time. At times when the waves of sorrow would crash over me, it was often one breath at a time. But in each breath, each step, each day, God was faithful. He brought me through a season I never thought I could survive, day at a time. 

Was there a turning point moment when you moved from the tragedy into hope? What helped this shift occur or was it more of a daily rhythm of choosing?

God provided continual moments of grace and glimpses of hope on the darkest of days, in the midst of the most heart-wrenching agony. But the break through moment in shifting from despair to hope took place when I started to accept what it meant to truly surrender. Below is an excerpt from one of my prison “blogs”, written on my 32nd day as inmate WE5363 from cell 46 of LA County Jail, my first stop as I waited for intake to the State Prison system. It is the story of the day in which I surrendered to the court to begin serving my time, but of a much more meaningful surrender that was taking place. 

Sunday, Oct. 21st 2012 (day 32)  

My eyes open to 2 realities this morning:

Diane is yelling at me to get up.  It’s time for breakfast.

I’ve survived a whole month here.  And 2 days to be exact.  But who’s counting?

It’s strange how time passes here.  Days become indistinguishable, one to the next, as they blur together in fast-forward mode.  Yet, minutes will drag on FOREVER, as if Father Time is hitting the almighty pause button in hourly intervals between each tick of the second hand.  And in the lapse of time that exponentially prolongs seconds into eternities, I’m no longer a newbie here, as I’m reminded by the all too familiar morning exchange between my bunkeeand me (and thus reinforced by the fact that I just used the word “bunkee”).  But in the way that days are swallowed into time’s vacuum, it was only yesterday that I was standing in court the day of my surrender.

The details of the day are all so fresh.  I close my eyes and I hear the clink of the bailiff hand-cuffing me and the simultaneous sob that comes from my sister.  I blink and I’m hugging Steve, my lawyer, now friend.  I’m turning around and clinging to the last glimpse of my brother and sister’s tear-stained faces.  I’m walking towards the door which marks the division between myself and freedom.  I’m searching for and connecting with the eyes of Will’s sister, his only family member present, in a final attempt to soothe the incurable pain that is locked in our stare, praying she can read the remorse in my eyes that the words I’m mouthing to her will never be able to communicate.  I’m stepping through the dreaded doorway, over the threshold where I lose it all.  And I’ve surrendered.  

    As I think over the day I just experienced, yet seemingly transpired in another lifetime, I’m reminded of the intense and equally contrasting emotions that the word, even just the thought of, surrender has evoked in me.  It began as just the name of an unknown date on the calendar.  The day when I forfeited all that meant something to me, gave up everything and everyone I love and walked away from my life.  The words “surrender date” rendered me powerless to the crippling paralysis of fear that would overtake my mind.

    I remember sitting on my therapist’s couch—cliché but true—and as the subject of the unknown day came up, everything inside me tensed.  She paused , and in a manner both gentle and matter of fact, pointed out what a freeing and beautiful word “surrender” is in the midst of a very scary and disillusioning legal process.  Obvious though it might be, it hit me like a ton of bricks. How I had let the all-consuming anxiety surrounding that day define the word.  And as I stepped back from the despondency I had allowed to take root, gradually, the truth in the meaning of surrender began to resurface in my mind.

 To let go. To release control.  To give it all up.  ALL of it—the good and the bad.  NO more clinging, NO more grasping.  Palms up, to borrow the words of a wise man named Bob (we’ll call him a friend for practical purposes, I don’t think he’ll mind).

So, as I walked through the court doorway that marked my claiming and watched it close behind me, counter-intuitive as it may be, there was something freeing in the act.  Though it will forever be one of the hardest days I’ve made it through thus far, the fear of all the loss was replaced by a peace that doesn’t logically register.  I was there in physical submission, but the true surrender of heart, that no man can dictate, had already taken place.

Waking each new morning, I’m reminded that surrender is not just a singular action, it is a life-long process.  Daily there are new fears and worries:  When do I go to Chowchilla?  Will I be housed with the same people there?  Will these arms comply with fire camp training and even be able to do ONE pull-up?  What news will be waiting on the other end of the line when I call home TODAY??  Will I ever again see my Poppa in this lifetime???

Conversely, there are new hopes and dreams to release to the heavens as well:  For the appendages I’ve carried with me throughout life, otherwise known as arms, to do the unthinkable and sprout functioning muscles. For the pneumonia to be gone from my Dad’s body so he can continue to fight the brain tumor.  To be able to sit at Malibu fire camp holding my Poppa’s hands as we visit and eat REAL food.  For MIRACLES.  

As I’m reminded by day 32 of the mile-markers that 24 hour intervals serve, I pray for the continued ability to daily let go.  To surrender all, day at a time, because I know how senseless it is to grasp and cling in the illusion of control.  And so I open my hands, palms up, and release all I’ve got that isn’t mine to hold into Greater Hands.  Hands that receive it all and hold everything securely.  My hopes.  My fear.  My Poppa.  Our futures.

All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give, 

I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live.

I surrender all.  I surrender all.  All to thee,

My blessed Savior, I surrender all.

What was one of the greatest miracles that you kept you going in the midst of your deepest suffering? 

It was Christmas day. My first Christmas as an inmate when I got the news. I was sitting on the linoleum floor of my prison dormitory common area having a Christmas party with some new friends. We ate nachos with top ramen on them and “prison cheesecake” made of powdered coffee creamer and sprite (where there is a will, there is a way). I remember being so grateful for the sweet moment with new friends in the midst of such a scary time, but being so crushed to be away from my family - especially my dad, who was so rapidly declining. Shockingly enough, it was not the brain tumor that was the main concern, but the pneumonia that had overtaken his frail body. 

I remember the guard walking up to our small circle and calling my name. I didn’t want to admit it was real, but I knew it was. Shaking and sobbing in the cold office of the kind, empathetic lieutenant, I called home to confirm the news from my brother - he was gone…. My poppa had gone to be with Jesus. 

In this life, I was never going to see him again…. I could not imagine any greater devastation. 

Then I was told I would not be allowed to attend his funeral. I was shattered. 

At first I was resigned to my powerless state. I was an inmate, afterall. Although it went against every fiber of my being as my fighter-of-a-momma’s daughter, I tried my best to accept my reality. Thankfully that did not last for long. 

As part of my “welcome to prison warming package”, they had given me a handbook called the “Title 13”. My counselor assured me that although I was a prisoner, I had rights - my Title 13 outlined them all. So I started reading. 

It was 2 days before my Dad’s funeral that I marched into my counselor’s office with that prison bible and showed her the exact clause that challenged her reason for denying my right to go to my father’s funeral. 

While I fought my hardest from the inside, my amazing brother and sister had the prison warden and everyone on her staff on speed dial. They were relentless in advocating for me. 

On the morning of my Dad’s memorial service at Bible Fellowship Church in Ventura, CA, the church he pastored faithfully for 16 years, I was there. With my hair curled in toilet paper prison curlers, I was able to stand in front of the multitude of people whose lives had been so impacted by the amazing man that was Roland Niednagel.  

I was there to share my love for the man who had given everything he had to be the most amazing father to me that he could possibly be. A man whose wisdom, kindness, love for Jesus and laughter could not be matched. One of my closest friends. I was able to be there to honor the life of the greatest man I’ve ever known. 

Talking to the officer that was my escort, in the 20+ years he had been working at the prison, I was only the second person he had every escorted to a funeral. In that time, he had only seen a handful of people ever be released to go. It had been over a decade since it had happened. For the duration of my time at Chowchilla, I was referred to by the guards as “the celebrity”.

While all logic and precedent said I should not be at my Dad’s funeral, God made a way. In a place and at a time when there appeared to be no hope, God’s goodness and mercy proved uncontainable. He gave me my miracle. 

I got to be there. 

{READ MELISSA'S STORY}

#HopeHealsBook Release Party + a very SPECIAL GUEST

YOU'RE INVITED TO THIS DIGITAL VERSION OF OUR BOOK RELEASE PARTY! Watch the video to hear us read two HOPE HEALS book excerpts and see an interview with a VERY SPECIAL GUEST! 

Thanks to Matt McCartie (for the video) and Katie Gibbs (for the event photography below). {FUN FACT: our book cover was shot at the same venue where we threw this party...Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook}

 

"Jay and Katherine Wolf have had our respect for years, but they have our hearts too. They’ll soon have yours. Hope Heals isn’t just a beautifully written book, it’s a duet by two people who love Jesus and love each other. It’s a book filled with a score of authentic high notes and painful low ones.This book isn’t just a moving story, it’s a song sung by two humble people and what they have learned about love when the cadence of their lives unexpectedly changed." 

BOB & MARIA GOFF, Balloon inflaters and author of New York Times bestseller Love Does

 

#HopeHealsBook EXCERPT: the DAY that changed EVERYTHING

ER scans of AVM on April 21, 2008

(photo taken by RYAN DOBSON)

APRIL 21, 2008 (from "HOPE HEALS" BOOK) KATHERINE:

I lay in bed at 4:00 a.m., unable to shake the sickening feeling. I had been up with James for a feeding an hour earlier and noticed then that something was off. I felt nauseous and spacy, and my head was pounding. My upper neck and shoulders were throbbing. Some of these feelings had been commonplace during my pregnancy, so I concluded that I needed to get my hands on a pregnancy test sometime the next day.

I tried to fall back to sleep despite the terrible nausea and an intense headache, knowing I had only a few hours until James would be awake and hungry again. The lack of sleep had deeply affected Jay and me in those first six months. Our marriage was in a tense season as we navigated life with a newborn. We still felt we were living in a bit of a dollhouse and should be able to turn off the crying switch on the baby doll’s back. Instead, we lived in a sleepless haze and wondered when we’d ever feel “normal” again.

I finally drifted off, only to wake up a couple hours later, feeling like I could have slept for at least another eight. Still, I looked forward to a rare “free” morning of doing my son’s endless laundry and cleaning up the apartment before heading out to the post office so I could get a bunch of thank-you notes in the mail. My grandmother and mother had instilled in me a thank-you-note-writing mentality, and as a true Southern belle, I could not enjoy the gift until the thank-you had been sent. At the three-week mark since Jay’s and my annual joint birthday party, it was beyond time to mail the notes. I knew the consum- mate, etiquette-following lady never went to bed after receiving a gift until the note was written and ready for mailing the fol- lowing morning. Yeah, right! Was this true once she had her babies? Did she somehow squeeze in note writing before 3:00 a.m. newborn feedings?!

After hitting the post office, we stopped at the grocery store, where I grabbed the ingredients for the meals I was plan- ning to make for two families who had new babies. Back at home, with my baby boy settled in for his morning nap, I took the pregnancy test and was relieved to see the negative sign. So what’s wrong with me? I wondered. Food poisoning? Some weird virus? Lack of rest?

I opened the First Baptist Montgomery cookbook to a lasa- gna recipe that was always a huge hit back home. For the next twenty minutes, I would be doubling ingredient quantities in my head and preparing sauce and browning ground beef. My nausea and headache were still there, but I had to push through those funky feelings and get the meals made. We had been the recipients of countless meals after James arrived, and I had seen how much it meant to us to not even have to think about prepar- ing dinner. But now all I could think about was getting off my feet and closing my (now stinging) eyes. The room began spin- ning and suddenly felt way too bright. I needed soothing, low-lit surroundings. I made my way to the couch a few feet away, sure that if I just got off my feet for a moment I’d feel better. But as I sat down, it was as if all the blood in my body rushed into my head. I felt like I was choking and couldn’t breathe.

“JAAAYY! COME IN HERE NOW! SOMETHING’S WRONG!”

I tried to stand, only to realize that my legs were numb. Everything in the room was now moving in a circle, but also coming in and out of focus and jumping from one place to another in my line of sight. Jay flew into the room and, frantic, screamed right in my face. All this noise is going to wake up James, I thought. Jay’s voice is so loud, and I need quiet.

I tried to dismiss the thought that what was happening to me was anything serious. What a drama queen I am, I thought. Why do I always make a scene? What will the neighbors think? This is so embarrassing.

Then I heard Jay yelling into the phone...

JAY:

As the hours passed, the crowd in vigil for Katherine grew and grew until nearly a hundred souls gathered in that hospi- tal waiting room. There were tears and hushed whispers, but there were also bursts of laughter and aromas of pizza and quiet singing. That underwhelming space, with its chipped paint and stained rug and cracked armrests, began to metamorphose into something altogether different. In the gathering and in the praying and in the breaking of bread (or crust, as it were), the common elements were transubstantiated into a holy experience, as holy as any ancient cathedral or Communion because they were offered, not in the absence of suffering, but right in the midst of it.

The sun set, and the crowd flowed outside to the attached courtyard for some fresh air and prayer together. I lingered inside for a moment, gripping a battered crimson Gideon’s Bible as if my life depended on it. Having grown up in a large church, I was accustomed to engaging a crowd for an extended period of time, but it was taking a toll on my natural introvert tendencies. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful distraction from the clock, which seemed to move so slowly that I actually thought it might have been broken. The surgery was scheduled to last eight hours, and the time could not pass quickly enough. If I stopped talking or moving too long, my mind instantly tortured me with a horrifying slideshow of the bloody scene unfolding in the operating room a few floors below. As our thoughts tend to do, mine refused to be tamed unless I distracted myself or until I finally remembered to pray those thoughts away.

I unconsciously flipped through the pages of that dog-eared Bible, wondering whose tears had fallen on its pages, whose hands had held it looking for comfort and answers. My eyes landed on the book of Romans, and I turned to the eighth chapter, Katherine’s favorite. According to family lore, when Amie was young, she was required to memorize some verses from Romans 8. Not to be outdone by her little sister, Katherine, the perpetual firstborn, took it upon herself to memorize the whole chapter.

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

As I read the words, a strange conflict torqued my insides. I had never read this passage in a context like my present experience—one of real suffering, one that seemed devoid of anything good.

“And we know in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

The brokenness of that moment, of all the broken moments of creation, tremored down my spine, opening my eyes, as if for the first time, to the reality of this world. How, God, could this be true? How could there be any good in this thing?

Looking up from the pages, I glanced through the waiting room window to the patio filled with my people, circled up, hands linked, praying. Earlier that day, word of Katherine’s stroke spread like wildfire on social media and through emails and telephone chains. We would later learn that people all over the world were praying for Katherine, some unexplainably roused from sleep in the middle of the night, prompted to pray again while her surgery continued. Could there be a more comforting thought than knowing you are being prayed for when your own prayers have been stretched to their breaking point?

I joined the group outside, the California night pleasantly cool, the tall evergreens silhouetted against the bright moon and stars. We were all praying—pleading with God, comforted by the sureness of His grace, and wincing at the thought of Katherine’s pain. As that time came to a close, I stood in front of the group and thanked them for their presence, assuring them that I felt anything but alone. I opened that well-used Bible and began reading the whole chapter of Romans 8. As the passage climaxed at the thirty-eighth verse, my voice faltered. My throat seized up so hard that I could barely even swallow. Hot tears filled my eyes and splashed down on the page below. I knew I could either obligatorily just read these words, or I could actually try to believe them, believe them so fervently as to stake everything on them—my life and Katherine’s too. My voice returned, and I read these words with a new sense of peace.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all crea- tion, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In that moment, I released Katherine from my feeble grip and into God’s.

I knew that,though Katherine may well lose her life, she would never lose the indomitable goodness and inexplicable love of God. And neither would I. 

 

" Jesus himself said, 'In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.'  This overcoming spirit Jesus offers is personified beautifully, honestly and powerfully by Katherine and Jay Wolf in their book, Hope Heals. It's altogether gritty, gutsy and glorious, and it will breathe the wind of hope into your darkest days."

Pastor of Passion City Church,  founder of Passion Conferences, and author of The Comeback

 

READ FULL PASSAGE HERE

Building a Marriage that Weathers Storms with Grace

"Before even moving to LA, the question posed at our wedding echoed in our heads: “What will be your foundation?” We were drawn to the adventure of a new place, the opportunity to engage new people and a new culture, and the possibility of realizing some long-held dreams, but we knew no one who lived in LA. We were each other’s sole support system. We knew we would need something besides just one another to build a strong faith in our adult life."

- Katherine Wolf, from HOPE HEALS

When Katherine and Jay got married, Jay’s dad officiated at their ceremony and encouraged them to lay a foundation on a rock that would endure—because the storms of life come to everyone. “We think the Lord knew we needed to have that truth planted deep in our souls. At twenty-two, we were both bright-eyed in love and perhaps a little naïve…,” writes Jay from Hope Heals.

Almost ten years ago, my college roommate went home for the weekend and encountered quite a surprise. His family lived perched atop an exclusive neighborhood in what can only be described as the pinnacle of Southern California living. Their magnificent home boasted every amenity human creativity can concoct, but there was a deep problem. Very deep.

In 1997, Southern California experienced one of the most severe series of downpours in recorded history. Foot after foot of rain saturated the ground. Unbeknownst to the family, their home had been built on two different types of soil- bonafide, been-here-forever mountainside and also scraped-together, packed-down, ‘at’ll do’ imitation mountainside. For years no one knew a difference existed. But several months of torrential rains made it more than clear. Their home broke and split apart with an eighteen-inch gap down the middle.

Homes, like families, friendships, and marriages, face extreme challenges. Weather sometimes changes dramatically. Sunny days turn into soggy seasons. Foundations that work perfectly well when life is warm and breezes are gentle show their frailty when clouds roll in. People rarely examine the foundations of their relationships, but perhaps we would be wiser if we did.

When everything else is stripped away, what are you standing on?

As a kid, I never saw the foundation of my home because it was hidden underneath carpets, flooring, wood, and dirt. And I had no interest in it because it worked. Had my house broken in half, I suddenly would’ve become very interested!

Our lives often build up layers upon various foundations. Life may be peaceful because of a nice boss, trustworthy car, pleasant home, or handy escapes like media or travel. When we feel a jolt in life, we look to the things that brought us pleasure or security and hope life’s shaking calms down. But we quickly see that these things, even when good, are not enduring.

Almost 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ revealed that our lives not only undergo storms but also God's evaluation of what endures - all that is solid, loving and righteous. As we are reassured that God's word endures forever, Jesus explains the sobering difference between a life that endures and a life that won’t.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practiceis like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” MATTHEW 7:24-27

In light of this reality, ask some diagnostic questions to see what you really trust for support in life - what you believe is solid and eternal.

1) Do you trust your education, appearance, humor, or experience when life gets tumultuous?

2) Do you expect that friends, family, coworkers, or colleagues will carry you through when a rainy season erupts?

3) Do you find it possible to entrust your life to God, knowing that despite what you can see, he has a plan?

4) Does your life reveal that you not only hear God's word but do it?

Have you seen foundations tested in the lives of others?

It’s great if your foundation appears to be working for you now, but you can only personally test it as far as your life has been tested. A smarter course is to build upon a foundation that has been tested in the lives of many others. As you take that route, you can believe that your foundation will hold when it comes up against trials you haven’t yet seen.

The Wolfs invite you into their story so you can examine the foundations they laid their tragedy upon. Walking with them through the pain, you discover how the soil of faith in God, trusting the Bible as his truth, and committing to the church as their ‘family’ gave them strength each day.

They grounded their life on a commitment to Jesus Christ and doing what He says - trusting, loving, laying down their self-centeredness. But this commitment was woven into a web with others who shared their faith. It was this faith community that became the support and scaffolding that allowed them to rebuild in the midst of the storm. They all shared a commitment to sacrificial love that ensured a unified, unspoken understanding of what could be expected in this ‘family’.

When you’re able to see how well faith in Jesus as the foundation holds people up through their storms, it makes “faith” much less of a “blind leap.” Instead, it begins to appear like a “safe bet”and an ongoing practice.

In your deepest relationships, Do you share the same foundation?

My roommate’s family experienced its catastrophe because the home was built on conflicting foundations. One was old, tried and true, secure. The other was new, inexperienced, and assumed. Sometimes spouses discover a deep rift in their relationship because they’re basing their lives on different perspectives that take on greater significance over time. Friends drift apart when competing visions of “what’s best” get the upper hand. Entire communities can dissolve when different factions envision their future in conflicting ways.

If you’re in a close relationship, spend time talking about your “foundations”. Discern whether you appear to be standing upon the same things. Many people think that the externals and the facades of a relationship matter most. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The hidden foundation provides the primary strength enabling a relationship to endure life’s storms and God's assessment.

What same things do you stand on? How does your relationship follow Christ’s pattern of love and righteousness? 

 

“As I read this book, tears streamed from my eyes even as joy flooded my heart. Jay and Katherine are a raw yet refreshing testimony to the unshakable trustworthiness of God amidst the unimaginable trials of life. This book reminds all of us where hope can be found in a world where none of us knows what the next day holds.” DAVID PLATT, Author of NYT bestseller Radical and president of the International Mission Board

 

#HopeHealsBook EXCERPT: the HOLY WEEK that changed everything for us...

{FROM JAY} I turned 30 on Palm Sunday during a trip to Rome--the first big trip we had taken after Katherine's stroke. And on that day, we experienced a picture of heaven that forever changed how we view this life God has given us...

In celebration of our joint thirtieth birthdays, we decided to go to Italy (oh, and because we had a free place to stay). There was great excitement in the planning, and we cobbled together credit card points for the flights—one benefit of having a large amount of medical bills—and researched rental cars that could fit a wheelchair in the back. I wasn’t about to try to drive a stick shift on the one-way cobblestone alleys of the ancient Umbrian city of Amelia where we would be staying, but the only available automatic transmission car was so small it looked like a team of clowns might come honking out at any moment. I planned to pack ten days’ worth of clothes for both of us in one carry-on bag, as it was all that would fit in the back of our Lilliputian car if we brought a wheelchair. Clearly, this wasn’t going to be travel as we had always known it, but we were compelled to see new places and people, history embodied in stone, and culture manifest in music and markets, and we couldn’t wait to engage it all through new eyes.

We took the trip in the spring of 2012, and I had a moment of panic on the flight that—unlike every previous trip with my “pack it all in” family—Katherine and I had not really planned anything to do while in Italy. It had taken all of our attention just to plan the travel logistics. Yet there was a releasing of expectation in that moment and a relishing of precious margin and much-needed rest that we rarely gave ourselves.

Our arrival felt like we were living in Roman Holiday, except in a wheelchair and clown car. Nonetheless, we soaked in the sights of the gorgeous ancient hills and the quaint but terrifying alleys that I was supposed to drive through in the nearly thousand-year-old city. Thankfully, the only casualties were a few broken wheelchair spokes from pushing along the uneven stone streets of Rome, but even getting on the subway required me to help Katherine down the steep stairs with one hand while holding her folded wheelchair in my other hand. I guess accessibility for those with disabilities was not at the forefront of the Italians’ consciousness—too much “la dolce vita” going on, I guess—but we made it work.

We got lost in the rolling countryside visiting local agriturismos—inns where the most amazing meals, farmed on the land, were matter-of-factly laid out on tables under pergolas covered in ancient, twisting vines, teeming with flowers over-looking lush green valleys. It was heaven. And without guilt, we spent a good amount of time in the apartment friends had offered to us, a seven-hundred-year-old structure that was once part of the church next door. Katherine sat by the wood-burning stone fireplace while I cooked food from the local market, and we talked for hours, threw log after log on the fire, napped, and cooked some more.

@@In the kingdom of God, the last are first, the weak are empowered, the invisible are seen.@@

I turned thirty on Palm Sunday, and we attended the service at the Vatican. We had naturally arrived a bit late—on “wheel-chair time,” as we’d come to know it. We were strangely but warmly engaged by a series of pantalooned Vatican guards and then nun after nun, who pointed us to a path through the crowd of the thousands who had arrived earlier. As we wound our way to some unknown destination, quite certain we’d be arrested for accidentally stumbling into the pope’s private quarters, we turned a final corner and saw that the path on which we had been directed led to the very front row, with only steps between us and the podium from which the pope would give the morning’s message. It was jaw-dropping to be so close, but even more so to see that the entire front row was comprised of wheelchairs. We took our place in the line with “our people,” and we both began to weep at the beauty of this picture. The trip had been so life-giving, but it had also been stressful and challenging to navigate, especially with the wheelchair. Yet now we were reminded that in the kingdom of God, there was a paradoxical experience of the last being first, the weak being empowered, the invisible being seen. And it was one of the most stunning pictures we had ever witnessed, like a curtain being pulled back for a moment to offer a glimpse of a different world—a world that awaited us—and it was glorious.

~ Jay Wolf, from HOPE HEALS

READ FULL PASSAGE HERE


































 

"Hope Heals is a beautiful true story that illustrates the love and protection God has for us even in the darkest times of our life. Katherine and Jay’s dedication to each other and the Lord through their most devastating season is inspiring. This book will help your heart believe that He sees, He knows, He cares, and He is still working miracles today!" 

LYSA TERKEURST, New York Times bestselling author and president of Proverbs 31 Ministries

 

3 WAYS TO HOPE WHILE YOU COPE

"I imagine most of us have fairly straightforward pictures in our heads about what our lives will look like and who we will become. These pictures are mostly of wonderful things that happen at exactly the right time and make oh-so-much sense. When something happens that is not inside the four corners of that picture, we view it as a detour and hope to get back on track as quickly as possible." 

- Katherine Wolf, from "Hope Heals" PROLOGUE

 

We all want to know the future. But none of us ever imagines that the future might hold unexpected tragedy or a complete redirection into an unknown world.

We leave our jobs, move to new cities, and invest in new relationships assuming that the next stage will be a step forward in realizing the quiet dreams that fill our subconscious.  

Last night over dinner our extended family shared their prayer requests for the year. The newly married couple offered, “We’re hoping to discover some direction for where to live and how to educate our children.” The couple with growing children said, “We’re asking God ‘what’s next’ for us? We would like some direction.” The grandparents chimed in with their version of the same, “We feel like we’re heading into a new season of life and would like some insight into where God is leading us.” It wasn’t surprising that three couples at various stages of life were all asking the same basic question about their future. 

“God, will you lead us into something good?”

Yet, countless lives tell stories of wandering. Stories of ending up in places you never dreamt of visiting. Giving benefit to the doubt, we consider these redirections as stories of the mysterious hand of God. But when doubt wins the day, we feel like we’re all on our own, treading water in a dark ocean.  

So, how do you swim confidently when it seems you’ve been thrown out to sea?

PRE-ORDER "HOPE HEALS"

"Hope Heals" weaves our story of coping with great loss while finding unexpected hope in the midst. Here's how...

1) Realize that the detour is actually the journey God has chosen for you…for good reason.

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), a leader in the English Reformation, is quoted as saying, “God’s love takes us on journeys where we do not wish to go, makes us travel by roads we do not wish to use, to take us to places we never wish to leave.”

His words don’t come from a well-fed, blissfully rested holiday retreat. Cranmer was imprisoned and ultimately killed for his beliefs. He never expected to leave the church of his childhood and forge a new road for his nation’s faithful. He didn’t want to lose friends, family, and influence for his convictions. And yet, he saw in this detour and these immeasurable losses evidence not only of God’s directing his life but also of God’s love for him. 

2) Allow yourself to feel the loss, pain, discouragement, disappointment, or confusion. 

Even if this is a detour of God’s love, your soul will express things that you mustn’t numb. One unfortunate result of Katherine's stroke was the complete loss of feeling on the right side of her face. She would playfully slap her right cheek to make the point that it was completely numb, but I reminded her just because you can't feel the pain doesn't mean you aren't doing damage--so stop slapping yourself!

A lot of people approach their emotions in the same way. They pretend they can’t feel or prevent themselves from feeling with the hope that this will protect them from pain. But it won’t. Sooner or later, something will come into your life that forces you to deal with the damage. Holding emotions inside or ignoring their existence only multiplies their negative effects.

The writers of the Psalms frequently wail in desperation, anger, or confusion. The prophet Jeremiah’s heart was so broken he describes as if he was having a heart attack. Jesus pleaded with his Father three times for relief from his suffering. 

God’s people instinctively knew that loss, pain, discouragement, disappointment, confusion, anger, and despair can be healed once they’ve been released through your voice. It’s not holier to hide your feelings. It’s not healthier to put on a happy face. 

@@It’s not holier to hide your feelings. It’s not healthier to put on a happy face.@@3) Worship God because he doesn’t make mistakes.

Once the Psalmists, Jeremiah, and Jesus vent their worst feelings and agonize over the situations they’d rather not be in, they seem to exhale worship. It’s as if they’ve released all that stood in the way of clear thinking. Then, with sobriety and humility, they remember that God is God. He knows the future. He knows what you should be doing in life. He has picked better goals for you than you’d pick for yourself. He knows how to get you there. And he hasn’t made a mistake in sending you on this detour even though you’re visiting places that never appealed to you before. As Cranmer declared, those places God is taking you are places you’ll never want to leave. And you won’t find fault in that.