“Karen’s Notes!

Insights from a Glory-Bound Lady”

                                                       Selected Notes

Volume 5 Number 46 “Her Testimony is So True and Powerful”                                                                                      November 16, 2022

I’ve shared this note before; however, there are many folks who have just started reading “Karen’s Notes.” Even to those of us who read this little saying before, it is well worth considering again. Please let me briefly give you just a little background before I share the handwritten note.

Karen had always been a very healthy lady. She seldom had to go to a doctor’s office. One doctor teased her for never needing to come in. Fooling with her as she passed her physical to be a foster mother, he said, “Karen, you are going to live to be 100!”

A tiny cough developed. We made plans for an upcoming event that was several weeks away. I convinced her to get an appointment and an antibiotic to catch the probable bronchitis while it was still early. The sudden curve in our road demonstrated that it was far more than bronchitis. “Our plans” changed suddenly and dramatically.

Her diagnosis came on February 24^th, 2015. It would be several years later that I discovered the note that she had written in the fly leaf of her Bible.

Karen wrote: “February 24th, 2015- Stage 4 lung cancer. Not ‘Why, Lord’ rather, ‘What do You want me to do?’ May Christ be glorified in my life!”

Michael’s observation: Karen was a very private person. She never wanted the spotlight to be on her. She never wanted to be the center of attention. One day as we finished our prayer time together, I was holding her close to myself.  I quietly said, “You’ve never smoked, and you’ve never been around secondhand smoke. Yet obviously the Lord has brought this to us to be used to help others and glorify Him. Will you allow me to write your story?” At first she was rather insistent that no one would want to read about her and the cancer journey on which we were traveling. I didn’t push her. But I shared that allowing me to tell her story might be part of the “What do You want me to do?” She was reluctant but willing. Her statement of “Not Why” but “What do You want me to do?” has literally gone around the world. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been told how Karen’s brief sentence has impacted so many.

I don’t know your situation; however, I can tell you that rather than investing a lot of time and energy in the “Why me, Lord” syndrome, it might be a great blessing to begin asking, “What do You want me to do, Lord? May You be glorified.”

“Whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).