Sister Freaks (7 page)

Although the move to India was well under way when Brett learned she was expecting, the pregnancy did not change the Trapolinos’ plans. “We did pray about it,” Brett says, “but Kirby and I both believed we were still to go, even though in the world’s eyes, it seemed foolish. We knew that God had opened the door and that there was no other way for us but to go through it.”

As a result of the pregnancy, Brett couldn’t get any of the immunizations recommended for the family before they left the country. And the physician who delivered her first three children issued strong warnings about the prenatal care (or lack of it) she could expect to receive in India.

On her final visit to that physician, Brett prayed that God would speak a blessing over her through her unbelieving doctor, and He did. “She made it clear she was against my going,” says Brett. “And she told me all the things that might go wrong. I didn’t argue with her. I thanked her. But I also told her as gently as I could that I knew God had given us this baby at this time, and that He could care for it even in such difficult circumstances.”

Then, Brett told her very professional, capable, and matter- of-fact physician that she loved and respected her and strongly desired to have her blessing on both her pregnancy and her plans to have the baby in India. And the same doctor who had never demonstrated any overt affection to her patient stood, embraced Brett warmly, and gave her that blessing.

For Brett, it was a very physical reminder of what God continues to do in the lives of those He loves: “God doesn’t run out of blessings. He has a dream for each and every man and woman. Our job is to delight in who He has made us to be—to walk with Him and to rejoice in that. My prayer each day is that God would let us know more and more what it is to fall in love with Jesus—and give us the courage and desire to follow Him anywhere.”

I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

(Philippians
4:13
)

3

katherine von bora

Called to Be Different

T
iny Katherine von Bora was only five years old when her father left her at the gates of the Benedictine convent school near Brehna, Germany. Katherine’s mother had died that same year, and her father soon remarried. A small daughter was too much of a burden, and her father felt that in the convent she would at least receive a good education. Once there, her options were few. So, although Katherine never aspired to the secluded life of a nun, five years later she was transferred to a convent in nearby Nimbschen and made her vows when she was only sixteen years old.

Even though she hadn’t planned for a life of seclusion, poverty, and chastity, Katherine submitted herself to the rigorous routine of sixteenth-century life in the convent. She received the education of a teacher, learning some Latin at a time when many women could not even read in their native tongue. She learned to cook and garden and sew. She said her prayers and attended church services each day.

When Katherine was in her early twenties, the preaching of a man named Martin Luther began to penetrate the convent walls. Luther was a former monk himself and had left the monastery when he came to believe through his personal study of God’s Word that men were saved by faith through grace alone, and not by works of penance or good deeds or service to the church. His preaching in sixteenth-century Germany was causing quite a stir. The German church was still under the authority of the Roman Catholic pope, and Luther’s words stirred not only those within the church, but the common men and women of Germany as well.

When Katherine and her friends began to consider his words, they appealed to Luther for help in leaving the convent. Many had not come to the service of the church under their own free will and felt it was holding them prisoner. Luther even wrote a letter to several nuns about their plight: “Dear sisters . . . You are correct that there are two reasons for which life at the convent and vows may be forsaken: The one is where men’s laws and life within the order are being forced, where there is no free choice, where it is put upon the conscience as a burden. In such cases it is time to run away, leaving the convent and all it entails behind.”
¹

So, on Easter eve in 1523, Katherine and eleven other nuns escaped from the convent at Nimbschen, hidden in the wagon of a merchant named Leonard Koppe. Three of the nuns were returned to the homes of their families. The other nine were taken to Wittenburg, where Luther himself hoped to find them all homes, husbands, or positions of some sort. In the end, all were provided for but one. Her name was Katherine von Bora.

Two years after her escape, Katherine was living still with a family in Wittenburg as a domestic servant. She had fallen in love with a young man who promised to marry her, but his parents objected to her status as a former nun. She was brokenhearted. Luther proposed another arranged marriage for her, but she refused the man he suggested. She wasn’t trying to be difficult, although Luther may have thought so. He found her somewhat arrogant when in fact she was embarrassed by her awkward position.

Still, when a friend of Luther’s came to visit, she hinted to him that Luther might be an acceptable husband to her—partly because it seemed so unlikely, and Luther’s age (almost sixteen years her senior) suggested he might never marry.

When Luther heard her words, he did not take Katherine’s suggestion seriously but spoke of it to his parents when he went home to visit. Instead of laughing about it, his father seized upon the idea. His son was not getting any younger, and the elder Luther hinted that he might like to have some grandchildren!

What started as a kind of jest became more and more attractive to Luther. By marrying Katherine, he could give her the status she needed, give testimony to his own faith, spite the pope, and give his father comfort in his old age.

So the former monk, Luther, took as his wife the former nun, Katherine, on the thirteenth of June 1525. To Leonard Koppe, the man who smuggled his wife-to-be out of the convent, Luther wrote this letter of invitation: “I am going to get married. God likes to work miracles and to make a fool of the world. You must come to the wedding.” He did.

Some serve God by remaining single for life. Others serve God by marrying. Martin and Katherine made a life together that impacted many lives for God. They moved into a rundown Augustinian cloister in Wittenburg, which Katherine made into a home. Luther never cared for money and did not manage it well. Katherine did, and she kept their household supplied and her husband fortified. They had six children and took in several nieces and nephews. Students at the nearby university boarded with them, and there were often thirty or more people living together under their roof.

Katherine ably ran their home, and Luther preached, wrote, and taught the Bible at the university and in the church. Luther spoke of his wife often and with great affection; he called her “my rib” and just as often “my lord Katie.” With Katherine, Luther saw marriage as a school for character, saying that he learned more about grace from it than from all his studies, books, and sermons. He paid her perhaps the highest tribute when he called Paul’s letter to the Galatians about freedom “my Katherine von Bora.”

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 L
ORD
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

Y
ou 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.”