Unwavering Faith

Unwavering Faith

Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

Death was not the way the Katrina’s story was supposed to end. One of my dearest friends and the sister of Kendra and Kristin, she had a firmly rooted faith like no one I’ve met in person. She conquered cancer repeatedly during a five-year saga before it suddenly came roaring back to overtake her at twenty-eight, and she left behind two babies and a husband.

In the midst of my grief I almost missed seeing how her unwavering faith, her trust in the goodness of God through the hardest things, was somehow magnified by her death, encouraging and strengthening the faith of thousands who had been following her journey via email in a pre-Facebook world. She finished her Hebrews 12 faith race stronger than anyone I’d ever seen, and people were noticing and reexamining their own faith in ways I’d never imagined.

My grief-stricken prayer as I decided to go all in on my own faith race was that I might be allowed to carry a piece of her story of unwavering hope forward with me to women who never had the opportunity to meet her. That exhausted, broken prayer started a new journey. I found myself sharing the story of Katrina the following week and then continually week upon week, month upon month, unending for more than fifteen years.

Katrina is the silent fourth partner in the story of Kristin, Kendra, and me. She introduced the three of us originally, and she is as much a part of our ministry, The Ruth Experience, as any of us. We carry her story with us everywhere we go, and everything we do is a part of her legacy. It was through her that we learned firsthand that God is our strength, even in the hardest of hard circumstances, and we strive to run our individual Hebrews 12 races the way she showed us. Our prayer is that we would finish our races with the same tenacity and strength that Katrina had and that others would always find the hope of Jesus in our lives, no matter the circumstances.

— Julie

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Evaluate your faith race, determining to run with unwavering faith, even when things are hard.