When Life Breaks You — And God Meets You There

Pastor Karen Carson preached this Mother’s Day message as “the mama here,” calling it “Ouch.” Things hurt every day, and small things can wound us, yet the Lord asks us to be the light. Her passage is Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” She tells of a girl whose prize chickens were all killed by a mink the week before the county fair. She still won the blue ribbon, for the best fried chicken recipe. God is bigger than our circumstances.

After showing photos of her family, she names the biggest ouch: rejection. About 30 years ago at New Hope Oahu, she was invited into the staff Christmas picture, bought a red shirt, lined up, and then heard it was for paid staff only. Driving home in tears, she heard the Lord ask, “Want to be in my picture?” From then on, his was the only picture she cared about. No one can keep you from what God has for you.

She shares how she met Jesus. As a young mother, alone and lost, she let in an insurance salesman who told her, “Your face smiles, but your eyes don’t.” He told her about his God and prayed with her, and she never saw him again. Her life didn’t become easy, but like Pig Pen in Peanuts, the mess around her was replaced by the Holy Spirit, who “walks in before I do.” We invest in the physical and forget that we are spirit. God forgives, and he taught her character, integrity and truth.

The world’s fruit makes us feel unwanted, offended and afraid. The Spirit’s fruit is love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control, because now it is “God in us.” She walks through ten years of injuries and illness, including weeks in the ICU with pneumonia, and says she focuses on what is and lives in gratitude, one five minutes at a time. Those difficult people you think you can fix? It’s not your job.

Her last story is about caring for her mother in her final five years. For a long time she refused her mother’s daily 5:00 martini. When she finally gave in, her mother saw how much she was loved, and those daily times let Pastor Karen get to know her. She realized she was the one who needed healing. Jesus meets people where they are. She closes in prayer, and the church prays over her before her move to Napa.