I Know

Currently, Katherine’s favorite expression is “I know.” We’re not sure why this is. It could be because it doesn’t contain any hard consonants, which are killing her right now. ‘P’ comes out as an ‘M’ for instance. Mama and Papa sound exactly the same. But the “I know” just glides off her tongue like olive oil over a tomato.

We’ll be rattling on, trying to fill the room with funny, cheerful words, when that forceful “I know” beats us to the punch line. The emphasis is on the second syllable. Coming out of the mouth of that Georgia girl, it’s delivered in a vaguely Wisconsin or Minnesota accent. Although it sounds almost parrot-like at times, it also reminds you of a wise old medicine woman who’s seen it all, done it all, and could write a book about it if she could still hold a pen. The wisdom of the ages is contained within that confident, emphatic “I know.”

Perhaps it is that Katherine is trying to let us know that it’s all still in there. She may not be able to speak it yet, she may have suffered some short-term memory loss, but it’s still there. Everything that makes her Katherine. Twenty six years of loving, learning, leaping, losing, leaning on God...a young life’s cumulative experiences....have not been wiped out by this devastation.

Maybe one day she’ll tell us of the “treasures in the darkness” she’s received during her time in the cave. I am praying that God will restore her true voice and that eventually she’ll be shouting out to the mountaintops the revelatory wisdom she’s received in the crucible of suffering.

In the meantime, the reiterated “I know’s” challenge me to define what I truly know. When I was on a study abroad program in Russia during the Cold War, our group was smuggled into a (relatively) luxurious ‘writer’s colony’ close to where Pasternak wrote Dr. Zhivago. We were the guests of Yuri Nagibin, a writer who is as equally esteemed in Russia, although he has not been as widely translated in the West. It was a great honor to be in his home. After a lavish meal, we gathered for an intense discussion conducted in slaughtered Russian and awkward English. He posed a question to the group of young, spoiled Americans: “What do you know?” Think about it for a moment. There was a pregnant pause as each of us tried to figure out the right answer. “What do you really know?”

Nagibin’s questioning helped us to see the dangers inherent in our self-indulgent, affluent society of becoming a nation of dilettantes. Our culture has created an environment where it is easy to have a surface knowledge of a lot of things, but an in-depth knowledge of few. “Don’t know much about history...”as the song boasts. This discussion has haunted me for 28 years.

It challenges me now.

I search through the barrage of thoughts, feelings, inclinations, emotions, and habitual patterns for what I really know. What causes a swelling chorus of “YES!” to resonate through my entire being?

There are many things I don’t know. There are many things I think I know that I don’t. There are many feelings which I erroneously accept as facts.

But.....

I know that God is good, even when circumstances are not.
I know that He loves me beyond comprehension.
I know that he will never leave me or forsake me.
I know that He is for me, not against me.
I know that he loves my children even more than I do.

And I know that there’s a happy ending, when He will wipe away every single tear.

Yet I’ve also come to know that it is only in the crucible of suffering that Sunday school platitudes are transformed into certainties.


Jesus loves me, this I know...

Be still and KNOW

...beyond a shadow of a doubt.