Worshiping God in the Desert
              Sticking to faith when things get tough

Preface

Our family has not walked alone.  Through every phase of Karis’s life, many people have given generously to us their love, their prayers, their practical service, their faith, their companionship.  From Wheaton to Port Huron and then to Brazil, from South Bend to Pittsburgh and back, we have been supported, exhorted, and comforted by the precious people who have surrounded us.  Members of our extended family have often, from the earliest days of Karis’s life, laid aside their own concerns in order to care for ours in times of need.

This book is not just “our” story—that is, Dave and Debbie Kornfield and their kids.  It is OUR story.  Each one who has prayed, who has wept or laughed with us, who has with us questioned God’s purposes or exulted in his interventions, is part of this story.

Unfortunately, for the sake of “flow” and readability, most of your names do not appear in the narrative.  But you know where your name should appear.  We owe you a profound debt of gratitude.  We love you and deeply appreciate all that you have given to us, sometimes at great cost to yourselves.

I am sure that only in heaven will we understand the role that your prayers have played in this story.  This morning, as Dave and I walked out of our church here in São Paulo, we were greeted by a man whom I haven’t seen in many years.  The last time I saw him was shortly before he was confined to a psychiatric hospital after beating his wife.  Today he told us that he has diligently prayed for Karis, because the same God who had restored his life and his family is capable of completely restoring her.  He said that he will know God has heard him when he sees Karis back in São Paulo, walking freely into our church to worship God.

How can we understand or explain such a mystery?  How can it be that one little girl’s life has so profoundly touched so many people around the world, prompting such amazing outpouring of prayer?  Truly, God’s ways are mysterious.

That is why this story—OUR story—needs to be told:  God has heard, and he has answered your prayers, sometimes quietly, sometimes secretly, sometimes dramatically.  We are told in Scripture to make note, to remember, to re-tell, to pass on, what God does.  It is tremendously humbling that the God who created the universe should concern himself with us.  Be encouraged!  Take the risk of confiding in him your own story, your own worries and problems and joys.  He cares for us, even when we are totally incapable of even lifting a finger to give anything back.  That is the meaning of grace.

Something else needs to be said, though, about this book.  Even though it is OUR story, it is also, in particular, “my” story, about how being Karis’s mom has impacted me and my relationship to God.  It is not Karis’s story.  She would write the story of her life very differently, and perhaps someday she will.  You will not see a full portrait of Karis in these pages.  You who know her personally will perhaps be disappointed, because you know that there is so much more to her than appears here.  You know that she has never allowed herself to be a “victim” of her physical problems.  You know that she is the first one up and out the door the moment she has the energy to do so, ready to discover and embrace all of the adventures that life has to offer.

You may even think that as a character in a story, Karis seems in this book rather “flat” and passive—exactly the opposite of who she is in real life!  I’ve done that purposely, first and most importantly, to protect her, to give her the freedom to live her life unhampered by an image or profile in a book.  It has not been easy for her to live in a “fishbowl,” with people around the world following her daily medical progress as reported on her website.  Allowing this book to be published is one more invasion of her privacy and autonomy.

All of the experiences of 24 years of life do not fit into one book, of course.  Many of Karis’s adventures are not even touched on in this narrative: her visits to Guatemala, Argentina, and Chile, her travels in Europe, the importance of dance and poetry in her life, her burnt hand and broken arm, her paintings of the birds in the Pantanal, her aquarium, the people she has known, her boat trip down the Rio Solimões, and so much more . . .  She’s had such a rich life, that any book focusing on her physical hardships will automatically be a distortion of who she is.

Secondly, I am only an authority on my own life, so that’s all I can accurately write about.  Anything I say about how Karis felt or about her motivations or goals is second-hand information.  She has generously given her support to this project, but any misrepresentations of her person and personality are my own.  You’ll know things about Karis from this book, but you won’t really know her.  Nor, for that matter, will you know the other members of our family, Dave, Dan, Rachel, and Valerie, for whom also this book is a source of mixed feelings.

Thirdly, my deep desire in writing these pages has been to highlight God’s presence with us, and by carefully thinking about what has happened and what God has done, to know him better.  The aim of this book is to honor and worship God, bearing witness to what he has done for me.  If this story moves you also to trust and worship him within your own story, I will be well satisfied with the investment the telling has required.

Many have commented on how hard it must have been to write this story.  This is true.  I have had to re-live, to walk through again, some very painful and difficult experiences.  But it is true also that, paradoxically, the pathway of pain, if we persist to the end, takes us to joy.  We—each one of us—were created for joy.  You were created for joy.  Take your own pain, all of it, to the foot of the cross.  Offer it, in all of its messiness, to the Man of Sorrows.  He is personally well acquainted with grief, but he didn’t get stuck there.  He has the most amazing way of transforming pain into joy.

The last feature of this book that I want to comment on is the metaphor I have borrowed from Scripture of the people of Israel in the desert.  Familiarity with this story, recorded in the book of Exodus, will deepen your understanding of each chapter.  I have taken my chapter titles directly from the section titles in the New International Version of the Bible.  If you enjoy sleuthing, you can match the Exodus story with mine, and identify why I have labeled the chapters as I have.

You may notice that all of the titles are from Exodus, not from Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy.  There’s a reason for this.  Yes, the story of the Israelites in the desert goes on, past the year that they spent camped at Mt. Sinai.  But in Numbers 14 we’re told about the “definitive” rebellion of Israel that condemns them to 38 more years of wandering in the desert, this time not as testing but as punishment.  Up until then they had their ups and downs, certainly, but they were still basically on track with God’s “Plan A.”  In Numbers 14, that whole generation is told they will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land.

I’d like to think that, due to God’s grace and your prayers, our family is still in Exodus, pre-Numbers 14, basically still on track with God’s purposes for us.  If that’s the case, the biggest challenge may still be ahead of us.  We’re not so naïve as to imagine we’re not capable of rebellion.  The story I begin to tell in this book continues, and we don’t know the end of it yet.  If you think of us, pray that we’ll live out the lessons we’ve learned up until now, that we will trust and obey, and that we’ll be able to avoid the kind of desert experience that comes after Numbers 14.

With deep gratitude to God, to Karis, to my family, and to you,

Debbie