My name is Catherine, but you can call me Cath! By day I'm a Lead Staff Writer and professional storyteller (how cool is that!). By night - at least for the past four years - I've been an author in progress, pouring my heart into my first book, "Sacred Wounds" which was inspired by some pretty intense suffering I went through. 

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When I was a senior in high school, I became severely chronically ill with Lyme Disease, and it wrecked me. I was 95% bed ridden and sometimes used a wheelchair. Empty bank accounts, IVs, out-of-state treatments, and more doctors than I could count on two hands, none of whom could help me. That was my story. 

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This illness was constant for over 7 years, and with no end in sight. I become hopeless and prayed for death to come.

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And yet, the Lord had more in mind for me.

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In my eighth year of illness, a series of circumstances Providentially unfolded, and a miraculous healing began. Within 5 months I no longer considered myself chronically ill. That process, and the processing of it all that followed, were the very soil of "Sacred Wounds." The book became a wrestling with my Maker about how He could possibly permit such bitter suffering in my life. And through it all, a deeper intimacy with God developed than I ever could have imagined. 

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I was feeling well for about four years following that healing and the launching of "Sacred Wounds" in April 2023. Then, four months later, severe pain began again. 

 

​As devastating as it has been, I've seen what the Lord can do with suffering, and I know He'll do it again.

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This experience of deep suffering has formed the lens through which I write: ever pondering, grappling, and writing honestly about the rawness and the poverty of the human experience. All along seeking the ever present Savior, who Himself hid behind the veil of flesh to bring glory to every crevice of its existence.

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I guess you could say I still feel wrecked by suffering during many moments of most days — but even more so by His grace.

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