Blessed Assurance
“She just kept not dying.” That’s what the doctors said to Katherine Wolf’s family after a sixteen-hour surgery in which they replaced her full blood volume five times. She was a twenty-six--year-old brand new mom living her best life when a birth defect she didn’t know she had caused a rupture in the base of her brain. It doesn’t make sense that she lived through it. “Nothing on paper does,” make sense that is, she says. Yet, when you hear her tell her story a lot of wavy things start to straighten out.
Katherine is the author of three books and the host of a podcast called “GoodHard.” (I love people who make up words for things we immediately understand.) She and her husband, Jay, own a coffee shop in Atlanta, Georgia named aptly for its mission, “Mend.” The Wolfs run “Hope Heals,” a free summer camp in Nauvoo, Alabama for families impacted by disability.
And in her spare time, Katherine speaks on stages all across the country from a wheelchair the world can see. It's the prop she wishes she didn’t have. But everybody has one, she reminds us quickly, even though most of ours are covert.
The forty-three-year-old wife and mother with a half-paralyzed face and a right arm that won’t do exactly what she tells it to, is supremely present. And raw, though she makes it clear from the get-go that she will be royally pissed if anybody feels sorry for her. The message she carries and shares, charismatically, is for the masses. It’s a story of love and hope and promise. I took notes. She said important things.
But it was what Katherine let us watch her do, not just what she said, that stuck in me.
Right there on a stage in front of hundreds, Katherine Wolf had a fist fight. She aggressively threw the first punch, nailing the event that changed her life with an upper cut to the jaw. Then, the chair she sits in retaliated, landing a metaphorical blow to the side of her head. She bounced back, dodging the jab of a vicious tickle in her throat (one that can easily become an issue with only one viable vocal cord.) What followed was a sucker punch to the gut in the form of a photo on the screen of her baby boy beside her as she lay unconscious and intubated in the ICU on Mother’s Day. She went woozy for a sec.
Obviously, recovery is her ace. And so she rose, valiantly, back to her feet using the assurance of scripture to pummel sadness into the corner where she did not let up. “No good thing does He withhold …”
She dances, then, for a bit, gloves poised, ever on the ready to go another round.
She is stewarding her story. This is how it goes. A scuffle up and down the tension line Katherine Wolf lives on. The melee never ends.
Those of us in our invisible wheelchairs recognize ourselves.
This beautiful blonde with the anti-fairytale life is modeling for us the way. Our respective battles-- in all sorts of forms and fashions up and down the spectrum of degree-- are never really won or lost, just continually waged. She stands and assumes the Superman position, a fist upon each hip.
“Get bossy with your soul!” she says. “The way you feel about your story is a decision you get to make.”
Every one of us within earshot vowed to be a better, tougher, brighter, wiser version of ourselves.
Katherine talked about acceptance. She talked about dispelling the myth that joy only resides in a pain-free life. She talked about the healing power of pouring into others. And she showed us what it looks like to never be out of the woods.
A line from the song “Grateful” recorded by Art Garfunkel for his Across America album: “For I believe that whatever the terrain/ Our feet can learn to dance/ Whatever stone life may sling/ We can moan or we can sing...”
Our job as holders of our stories is to wake up every day—every moment of the hours we’re given– and choose.
P.S. Blessed Assurance