trials Archives - Kristin Saatzer

How’s Your Bounce?

December 30, 2019 By Kristin Saatzer 2 Comments

The end of the month.
The end of the year.
The end of the decade.

As I glance back and think about the three “ends”, I find a running refrain in the story of my life – resiliency. I bounce back. I rebound. I get up again. And again. And again… I share not to brag but with awe because this is not who I think I am- the one who bounces back.

Adulting looked glitzy from the stands. Oh, the independence and fun that awaited. But once I took the field, the curveballs came – relationship rejection, job and college struggles, depression, intense physical pain and health trials, and the divorce of my parents. Although my twenties held so much joy (wedding and baby at the top of the list!) the curve balls bruised and sometimes derailed me.

Those years are distant in my rearview mirror. However, each year, each decade, threw in its own array of curveballs to gaze back upon.

“I get knocked down and I get up again…”

You too, huh?

They tried to bury us but they didn’t know we were seeds
~Mexican Proverb

Fight for It!

July 29, 2019 By Kristin Saatzer 10 Comments

What was her name?

This woman who fought for it?

For her to touch anyone was prohibited. She was considered unclean in her culture because of her sickness. She had used all her money visiting healers who offered no cure for the condition that consumed her for twelve years. Even still, she possessed a tenacious faith.

For she said within herself, if I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole.

Matthew 9:21 Webster’s Bible Translation

The garment she wanted to touch belonged to Jesus Christ. Jewish men of His day wore cloaks with a required blue-tassel hem to remind them of the Torah (the law of God) and that they were God’s people. As an animated throng swarmed around the Savior, this woman pushed past her fears and cultural laws and grasped the hem of the healer.

And healed she was.

I see echoes of myself in this woman (how I wish we knew her name). My journey, strewn with one painful, draining condition to the next. And not all physical. There is a slew of emotional afflictions painted on my life’s canvas.
This painting of pain began early. Dark shadows trail in my mind of cruelties delivered to a little-girl-me by one I loved dearly. I recall abuses from my kindergarten teacher, like the day she wrenched my arm and dragged me out of a bathroom stall as she uttered nasty words. As I retrace these moments and many more, my heart feels the feels all over again. Oh, how grateful I am that the paintbrush rendered many cheerful colors along the way, but the blacks and grays are consistent in the mix. At times, I felt downright wrecked, as if my soul was broken.

Wreckage is a repercussion of pain. The damage is incalculable, the fallout overwhelming. It can hit us like a truck and leave us bleeding on the pavement with no oomph to seek help, and without the desire to get well. The wreckage in my life showed in different forms: depression, low self-worth, loneliness, emptiness, fear, nightmares, bad decisions, and the list goes on.

But God

My God has shown me beauty in my broken.

You see when we flip the fall-out and allow ourselves to view our brokenness with a changed lens, our perspective shifts as we discover the fingers of God holding the paintbrush. This requires a tenacious faith, as the woman in Matthew 9 displays. Such a daring move by this long-suffering believer. This fighter.

We too must fight to be whole.Continue Reading

Just a Little Longer?

May 28, 2019 By Kristin Saatzer 4 Comments

I knew he did not want to face his mother falling apart that early September morning (or any day, really). But there I was in the kitchen, in my oh-so-attractive green robe, sporting wild bedhead, willing the tears to stop. I watched as my beloved third son pushed back his chair from the table and carried his cereal bowl to the sink.

Senior Year was already picking up steam. I learned with sons one and two how this final year of high school feels like it’s only two weeks long. During this kitchen-moment, as I observed my boy move through ordinary actions, I was struck anew with pointed awareness that this season of my life with Josiah would soon be finished. Emotions rushed to the surface as I pondered how unready I was to say good-bye to the everyday-ness of mothering this young man.

“Please let me mother you a little longer!”

No, I did not say these words aloud because, you know, psycho momma in the morning and all. Yet, this desire to hold onto him, to care for him, lives in me daily.

In reality, not much “mommying” happens the last year of high school. Senior Year Mom is a secretary, a cook, a cheerleader, and a money dispenser, who cries a lot.

Senior Year Mom takes morbid delight when her kid gets sick or needs her to take him to the dentist or doctor. She relishes the time spent together doing anything because he is gone so darn much and is terribly independent. She delights in his presence and hangs on his every word. Even when he rolls his eyes or gets irritated with her when he loses his own car keys, Senior Year Mom doesn’t mind. As much.

I savor the small moments: hearing him laugh with his little brother, listening to him playing the piano as I cook dinner, and watching him greet the dog as he steps through the door.

If I could measure the hours spent in prayer for this son and his three brothers, it might equal months. If I could hold the tears that fell while on my knees, they might fill a small pond.

I prayed for my sons to be men of character. That they would have hearts for the broken. That God would shape them and refine them. But I did not want them to undergo refinement by fire. My plan was not to fill a pond with my tears. I wanted safe, happy, wholesome lives for my precious ones. Yes, I knew some trials must happen, and I conceded to the Lord there. But God, no biggies, please.

God did not obey.

My Sis, Neil, and the 4th of July

July 4, 2018 By Kristin Saatzer 5 Comments

“Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy…”

Psalm 126:2a NIV

My sister Jeni is sunshine and smiles and one of the best gifts the Lord has given me. She paints levity and joy in every room she enters. God’s good medicine is my little sis.

She and I together have celebrated America’s birthday oodles of times. However, our experience two years ago was the best one out of all for me. A day of God’s sweet grace, hope, and healing.

The week of July 4th, 2016, my sister and her family drove down from Oregon to SoCal for vacation and time with loved ones.

Less than a month earlier, my family of six experienced trauma. The deepest waters of my life. As the awful continued, I believed I would never laugh again. Maybe a chuckle here or there I conceded, but sheer, deep belly- laughter vanished forever.

I was in a pit so deep that I had to push myself out of bed in the mornings. Nights of insomnia and tears were my consistent companions.

But when one has family in town, one must rally. And so I did. We enjoyed beach days, went to a Neil Diamond cover band concert, and ate and ate and ate. A sweet diversion from the ache and reality of our circumstances. God used our dear ones from Oregon as a healing balm over our seeping wounds.

On July 4th, we gathered at my dad’s house for a day of swimming, tennis, food, and then fireworks. A day burned beautiful in my mind and heart. To my surprise, I howled that day; full belly-laughter all day long! God used my sis to shine a light in my tunnel of darkness. We were silly sisters once again: inside jokes, conversing in our own “language”, dancing, and singing. I joined Jeni in her infectious world of joy and delight. The group of us played, sang and danced to Neil Diamond music, and introduced our kids to him in our weirdo way. I felt unfettered, carefree and yes, surprised by my laughter.

As we drove home that evening, tears of gratitude fell. My boys, concerned after witnessing so much sorrow in me in the last weeks, asked me what was wrong with fear in their eyes. The words would not come as I sobbed, the mix of emotions overwhelmed me. Yet, in that moment, my heart understood that we were going to be okay.

We are okay.Continue Reading