Sometimes you read a book and the only acceptable response is, “Wow! You go, God!” Hope Heals by Katherine and Jay Wolf demanded such a response.

Full of Hope

Full of hope and promise for the future, Jay and Katherine were married in 2004. Three years later, they were overjoyed to welcome their son James to their family.

No one would have expected their lives would drastically change just six months later when Katherine had a hemorrhagic stroke (brain bleed) because of an Arterial Venous Malformation (AVM) rupture.

Her brain stem was completely engulfed in blood, and the massive pressure was literally squeezing her brain down into her spine. Surgery helped stopped the brain bleed, but paralysis of her face and swallowing reflex and impairment to her hearing, eyesight, and speech were likely to be residual deficits.

Katherine was twenty-six years old.

A Voice Born Through Dust and Ashes

A sixteen-hour surgery to stop the brain bleed followed by 40 days in the ICU on life support stopped the crisis. But that was just the beginning of a long road ahead.

The stroke took her words. But not forever. Katherine fought to speak again. “This was not the voice I’d known or the voice I expected to hear that day. But it was a voice born through dust and ashes – the voice of a soul straining for new life – and it was breathtakingly beautiful to me,” Jay wrote.

She fought to walk again by enduring hundreds of hours of physical therapy. Katherine wrote, “Many nurses would choke up on the spot. I felt deeply comforted in knowing that my learning to walk again had that effect on them. I knew they had seen it all, and it would take something very inspirational to move them. I was struck by the surprising thought, I could inspire people.”

Hope Heals

Since then, Katherine has inspired tens of thousands of people across the country.

In 2015, Katherine and Jay welcomed another son to their family. They named him John, because John means “the Lord has been gracious.”

Because Katherine wanted to share her story of overcoming with as many people as possible, she and Jay co-authored Hope Heals. It doesn’t end there. Their hopeheals.com website is full of inspiration and resources for those who are going through struggles.

In addition to their Hope Heals ministry, they launched a summer camp called Hope Heals Camp in the summer of 2017. It’s for families with disabilities. To get an understanding of the purpose of this incredible camp, please watch the short video below.

 

Undeniably Terrible

The best part of any overcomer’s story is seeing who they’ve become years after the struggle. I’ve taken excerpts from the last chapter of Katherine and Jay’s book to show her mindset all these years later.

Please read them slowly and hear the powerful message of hope amidst all the suffering she’s endured.

“Maybe it takes life being undeniably terrible before we can truly recognize its undeniable splendor,” Katherine writes.

“Suffering powerfully informs who I am now. While awful and painful, affliction has led to a heartbreaking but beautiful deepening in me. I have learned to embrace the suffering. I have learned to not push back, but to lean in hard when it hurts most and press on. Pain has been an instructor, teaching me deeper truths about myself and God and bringing me closer to Christ in a way I never was before this happened. The pain has weighed heavily on our shoulders and hearts, threatening to crush us, but we have not been crushed. The hope in our hearts has always been greater than despair because it anchors us.”

Purposes Beyond Ourselves

“Our hope is Jesus. We trust Him and all He is doing – in all that we understand and, more importantly, in all that we do not.”

“I believe we are all here for purposes beyond ourselves and beyond our comprehension. We were born to know and to manifest the God who heals our souls and calls us into the kind of life that doesn’t end with death.”

I’ll end this book review the same way I started it. “Wow! You go, God!”

Leave a reply (below): Hope Heals is a POWERFUL must-read. I was completely undone by Katherine’s grit and fight and determination. May we all see our suffering in life as an opportunity to experience a beautiful deepening into God.