At age 26, with a six-month-old baby, Katherine Wolf’s life dramatically changed forever. A near fatal hemorrhagic stroke—a bleed in her brain—instantly dropped her to the living room floor. Her husband, Jay, miraculously was home that morning and called for immediate medical help. The micro brain surgery to save her life was almost not performed, because it was so high risk. But because the doctor knew she was a new mom, and would die without the surgery, he took the risk and operated. Her son, James, who was part of God’s plan, ended up saving his mother’s life and became the reason she fought to live.
Surviving the initial stroke and surgery was a miracle. But Katherine and Jay, who were college sweethearts and had only been married for three years, were now faced with living in a completely different reality then they had ever imagined. Katherine would now have to learn how to walk, talk, and eat again spending months in ICU and a year and a half in a center for physical rehabilitation. Despite the devastating outlook, Katherine bravely fought to regain a new normal. And Jay stayed lovingly at her side.
While Katherine’s body had been changed forever that day, her heart, her dreams, and her faith had not. Relationally, she was still the same vibrant, loving, big personality she’d always been. Her faith had been rocked in the wake of this tragedy, but now it was being inwardly changed, strengthened, and renewed by God’s faithfulness as He upheld her and assured her of His new plan for her life.
At one point, God spoke to her in one of her darkest hours. She began questioning if God had made a mistake, wondering if she should have just died since she felt like she was caught between life and death unable to walk, eat, or even feed her own child. In a very powerful moment, God inaudibly spoke directly to her heart and assured her that He did not make a mistake. He was God and she was not. He invited her to trust Him because He was working everything out for her good. She has so beautifully written about it in her new book, Hope Heals: A True Story of Overwhelming Loss and Overcoming Love co-written with her husband Jay (Zondervan, 2016).
That turning-point encouraged Katherine to press on and let God use this devastating event and loss for His purposes. Over time, she moved out of the physical therapy center and back home with Jay to begin learning to do life again. It was hard.
In the summer of 2015, Katherine and Jay welcomed a new miracle, their second son John Nestor Wolf. John means “the Lord has been gracious.” His middle name, “Nestor,” honors the doctor who saved Katherine’s life and bears witness to the miracles God has done.
Over time, God began to open doors for the Wolfs to share their powerful love story through speaking engagements, blogging, a book, and a film featured on their website (hopeheals.com). They have also given a voice to other families on their website to tell their stories of struggle and faith called The Young Suffering Club. God is now using their pain and story as an encouragement to others.
JBU had the privilege of interviewing Katherine and we are excited to share her story of finding deep joy and hope in the midst of overwhelming loss.
Katherine Wolf
JBU:
How did you and Jay’s love story begin?
Katherine: To this day, I can't put my finger on exactly what drew me to Jay. He was completely unlike any other guy I had ever dated. Perhaps that was what interested me all along. We became best friends during our first year in college. Jay embodied many of the Christ-like characteristics I was looking for. There was a quality about him that I had never seen in a man before. From the start, we were drawn to each other. We had so much fun together, and we respected each other.
JBU:
What happened to you that instantly changed your life forever?
Katherine: In 2004, we moved to Malibu, California, where Jay attended Pepperdine Law School and I began pursuing a career in the entertainment industry as a model. In April of 2008, I suffered a massive brain stem stroke that nearly took my life, a rupture of an Arterial Venous Malformation (AVM). In 2016, the state of California deemed me permanently disabled. I was 28.
Since the stroke, I’ve had eleven surgeries and, likely have to have many more in the future. I still don’t walk well or use my right hand well, and I don’t eat, speak, see, or hear normally either. This thirty-three-year-old body feels more like that of an eighty-three-year-old. This has been a difficult assignment to say the least.
JBU:
Were there moments of hopelessness as you struggled to recover?
Katherine: I found myself wondering, has God made a mistake? Should I have died? I'm caught between life and death. I can’t even walk or eat or play with my children. I’ve gone from making lasagna in my little kitchen to being fed all meals through a tube in my stomach. I’ve gone from going on playdates with girlfriends to attending courses on disability adjustment. I used to power walk the hills of Pepperdine, now I have two physical therapists and a walker while I agonize to walk one step. I’ve gone from wearing a cute outfit every day to wearing adult diapers and hospital gowns. I want my old life back! But every day, that old life seems further and further away. If I weren’t here anymore, things would be better for everyone. Jay could marry a normal, able-bodied woman, and James could have a normal mommy. Everyone could stop putting life on hold to help me get well. It isn’t working. I kept thinking Jay and James and our sweet families don’t deserve this suffering. I should be in heaven.
JBU:
How did you move from that overwhelming feeling of despair and hopelessness to a place of hope and inner healing?
Katherine: One day at a time, Jay and I are learning not to hang out in the place of fear and of questioning what might happen. I knew deep inside that my “earth suit” was only temporary. I could never lose heart in this situation because my soul was not what was wasting away. My body didn’t work. That was all.
Over the past seven years of this saga, I have learned to do many things well—to wait well, suffer well, cope well, persevere well, and even to lose well. Our culture tells us to succeed, be beautiful, avoid pain, and be happy. What if everything important in our lives is actually the opposite?
Maybe it takes life being undeniably terrible before we can truly recognize its undeniable splendor.
JBU:
How did you decide on your book title, Hope Heals?
Katherine: My experience has caused me to redefine healing and to discover a hope that heals the most broken places: our souls. God often brought to my thoughts the hymn, “It Is Well with My Soul,” written by Horatio Gates Spafford after four of his daughters drowned while crossing the Atlantic: “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well, with my soul.” Truth be told, it was well with my soul. No matter my situation, no matter what was gone or missing, my soul could be well. Cultivating the simplicity of a childlike faith is often the most challenging task to take on, but when I really tried it, I found myself feeling more and more secure and at peace in my Father’s arms. There is something profound about hope, something so meaningful when you cling to what is beyond anything you know and understand. When that happens deep in your head and heart, something shifts. Hope heals.
JBU:
How have you been able to encourage others with disabilities?
Katherine: We have been so grateful to share our story and hope through many different forums: online, in person, in print through our book, and through our blog. We’ve been given a platform that we cannot deny. Though we don’t exactly know how the future will unfold, we are leaping forward in faith in the full-time ministry of Hope Heals. We like to think of ourselves as missionaries of hope, messengers who have come a long way to bring the good news that hope in Christ heals our souls.
JBU:
How has marriage been both a joy and a challenge as you've walked these past few years together?
Katherine: Jay puts it well when he says, “If suffering is like going through fire, I want to choose what this inescapable process purifies in me and not what is melted away. I find my faith and my hope solidifying into something more constant than my emotions or my circumstances, creating an altogether separate organism—and that is so freeing. Similarly, the commitment I have made to marriage is growing deeper, more enduring, and less dependent on whether a given day is good or bad.”
The humbling process of serving and being served, has caused our hearts to be softened. We are finding that acting out of love inevitably provokes true feelings of love. In the daily melting away of frustration and bitterness, we can embrace and celebrate the gift of this new life together, and in the midst of the mundane we can remember the miracle.
JBU:
How do you live hopefully with a disability?
Katherine: Amid the swirling fears of the unknown and the losses stacked higher than the victories, a question keeps bubbling to the surface of my mind: “Will you trust Me still?” And I have decided that no matter what lies ahead of us, we cannot let anything obscure our view of the God who inexplicably gives us everything, even in the taking away. He is the God who gave us our deepest desires, not like a genie would, but like a loving Father who offers what we would want if we knew everything He knew. He is the God who ultimately gave us the one thing we needed more than anything else in the world...Himself.
JBU:
Is there a passage of Scripture God gave to you that was meaningful?
Katherine: Hebrews 6:19: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” Anchoring in Jesus is the thing that heals our souls, and our souls are where we need the most healing anyway! When all seems lost there is always hope in the tender arms of Jesus and in His magnificent story for your life.
JBU:
What would you say to encourage those walking in tough circumstances today?
Katherine: 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 the 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.
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. One day, we will see. One day, the arc of our stories will all make perfect sense. One day, we will trace the lines of our scars and find them to have fallen in the most pleasant of places, to see in them our great inheritance. One day, we won’t need to hope, nor will we need to be healed because we will be face-to-face with the source of both, the source of everything…Jesus. And in the glory of His face, the darkest suffering and loss we have endured will fade like shadows at daybreak. Until then, the moments of releasing our lives into the hands of a God we cannot see are the closet to wholeness we will come on this side of eternity. This is our truest healing—the healing of our souls—and it sustains us when we wake up tomorrow to an unknown but hopeful new day.
~ By Aubrey Adams
Hope Heals: A True Story of Overwhelming Loss and Overcoming Love by Katherine and Jay Wolf
This book will move you to tears and leave you deeply challenged in your own heart. It will make you laugh and cheer in their moments of triumph and humor. But most of all it will leave you changed in the way you look at tragedy and loss. Katherine says it best when she says “One day, we will see. One day, the arc of our stories will all make perfect sense. One day, we will trace the lines of our scars and find them to have fallen in the most pleasant of places, to see in them our great in- heritance. One day, we won't need to hope, nor will we need to be healed because we will be face-to-face with the source of both, the source of everything.... Jesus. And in the glory of His face, the darkest suffering and loss we have endured will fade like shadows at daybreak. Until then, the moments of releasing our lives into the hands of a God we cannot see are the closest to wholeness we will come on this side of eternity. This is our truest healing--the healing of our souls—and it sustains us when we wake up tomorrow to an unknown but hopeful new day.”