Chorus of Underdogs

and the power of story

There is a young woman named Katie J. Davis who after a high school mission trip to Uganda, decided to move back and adopt thirteen children.

Yes, you read that right. Thirteen!

Now, Katie travels oversees to care for and oversee the education of hundreds of children with her organization Amazima. Today, Katie has a large, God-breathed family.

Katie’s story is inspirational (you might have heard of it: Kisses from Katie). Katie’s story resonates because everyone loves a hero story (especially a hero who is humble); everyone cheers for a modern-day Wonder Woman who is compassionate with incredible hair.

Katie’s story should be celebrated and I am so glad it is—the world needs to know that incredible things can happen. God can and does work in the lives of His people. He rocks the sleepy-privileged awake to absurd love and sacrifice. It’s not just reserved for Paul and Peter and the rest of the gang in the Book of Acts.

There are other stories begging to be told, too. Stories about resilience and underdogs winning in the end.

Everyone loves a good comeback story.

I first learned of Joni Eareckson Tada when I lived in a small town in Western Michigan. On solitary afternoons, I’d peruse the library’s spirituality section with gusto (I was a newish convert). I discovered authors like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Phillip Yancy, Max Lucado and Joni. What drew me into her story was what I didn’t even have to name after reading her bio on the back cover. This woman knew suffering.

There was a heroic element to be sure, but God had redeemed her through the intensity of her experience of being paralyzed. And what is more, Joni did not keep her doubts to herself—and this made me love her all the more.

Joni knew suffering.

And she knew doubt.

Yet she painted all of it—the pain and wondering and excruciating stillness of the desert—with such beauty and resolve.

She knew, through only the reality of having lived it, that there can be a season (and sometimes a long one) of trial and struggle and ache.

Along with this, there can be shades of doubt, questioning of faith, and sometimes pessimism at the very existence of God.

What Joni shared, I heard around the tables of addiction recovery meetings and in the whispers of my own heart.

When We Connect Through the Struggle

Several years ago, I met a woman at a recovery meeting.

She pulled out the seat next to mine from the long, gray table and sat down.

I had just lost someone I knew to addiction and talked about it at the meeting in tears.

The woman next to me was quiet.

I talked about my grief, how I was struggling with the addiction loss, and why it happens. As I shared, there were nods. There was an enveloping silence.

After the meeting, the woman turned to me and took my hands in hers.

I looked down and noticed that they were rough like a farmer’s hands. Veins reached up her wrists like roots and tangled around the bone. As she pressed my hand with increasing firmness, they jutted out even more and reminded me of a maze of rivers on an old map. She had silver rings with faux gems and bracelets with tiny trinkets that jangled.

She searched me with wise eyes and began repeating the same phrase:

“I don’t know…I don’t know why this happens. I lost both of my sons to opiate overdose last year.”

Both sons.

I started to cry and then she pulled me into her soft chest that smelled like drugstore perfume. I inhaled everything that she was so selflessly giving me. Compassion. Suffering with.

Together we stood there, sharing a moment of the pain of addiction loss together. I forgot about my own pain as I tried to imagine, but could not even come close, to what she was feeling.

Even then, before I was a mother, I could not even fathom the loss of a child—let alone both children.

The woman and I, we both walked to our cars after some time. She lit a cigarette and I wish I had one right then. I waited as she got into her car, waved gently, and drove away.

I’ve never seen this woman again, but she comes to mind when I think about women like Katie and Joni who have experienced their own trials and traumas. I wonder why God brings light to some stories of suffering and redemption and some happen quietly in church basements.

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I write about addiction and trauma because this is what I know. Some women know the pain of leaving everything behind like Katie and walking in faith to do something selfless and brilliant. Some women know the pain of losing layers of the self and its abilities like Joni only to find new, shining ones. Some women like the mom whose children were stolen by addiction know the ache of loss and the connection in sharing this emptiness with others.

If you are living and breathing on this wild, confusing, unmistakably beautiful planet, then you have gone through or will go through something that makes your heart melt and your feet tired and your soul drenched with weary. If you haven’t yet—I don’t want to freak you out—it’s coming.

How can we allow our experience to be transformed by God?

Or perhaps a better question is this: How can we recognize that our experience has already been transformed? We are walking in the transformation right now.

That’s the thing about being an underdog. Even though it seems like all is lost, like there is no way out of the grief and no way to make sense of this life of any of it, at the end of the game, there can be a win. There can be truth that the tears we've shed are, one fine day, wiped dry for eternity. There can be meaning in the tough stuff of life. And then, that feeling you get (like after running a race) will light your soul on fire and give you strength to keep going day by day.

Keep going today.

Let's connect! I’d love to hear your comeback story.

[i] Retrieved from: https://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/coping-with-emotional-and-psychological-trauma.htm#.

Have you checked out my latest book Downstairs Church: Finding Hope in the Grit of Addiction and Trauma Recovery?