Karen Smith: Faith through Unexpected Challenges


Karen Smith knows what endurance through hardship looks like. Her life has been marked with difficult decisions, heartaches, and loss. Through it all, she has remained steadfast in daily living out the decrees of her faith, no matter how large a boulder seemed to block her path or how many pebbles caused her to stumble along her journey. 

Raised in a loving Christian home in Michigan, Karen grew up surrounded by faith and family. She had an older brother, a twin brother, and a younger sister. She shared an especially close relationship with her father, whose humor and steady presence shaped much of her childhood.

As a young woman, she found herself in a particularly difficult conversation with her parents; she was pregnant, and the young man she’d been dating for two years made it very clear that he had no interest in either marriage or family. Devastated by this news, Karen decided to give her son up for adoption. She truly believed it was the most loving and selfless choice she could make for him — to allow him to grow up in a home with both a mother and a father, something she had treasured herself.

Karen was unprepared for the grief that followed, both for the loss of her child and the loss of the relationship. For years afterward, she battled with depression, an eating disorder, shame, grief, and emotional exhaustion. There were many days when she did not know how to take one more step forward. 

Despite feeling wounded and even somewhat brittle of heart, Karen went to and stayed in counseling; she tenaciously clung to principles of her Christian faith, sought help, and God remained ever present and always faithful. He brought women to her who would become godly mentors to walk beside her, pray with her, and always point her back to Christ Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross.

Karen desperately needed those women who would not give up on her. They discipled her, fortified her, and gave her God’s own wisdom, which resulted in the strength to make those next steps she’d once thought she couldn’t take. “Sometimes,” she said, “women simply need someone willing to stand beside them long enough for hope to return.”

In 1994, she moved to Texas for a new job and lived with her sister’s family in Frisco. A co-worker encouraged her to go on a date with a man named Jeff Smith, someone she’d known through work but only superficially. She reluctantly agreed to the date on August 12, 1995. Almost exactly one year later, Jeff and Karen were married.

The newlyweds discovered that a fairy tale ending was in direct opposition to reality, especially when in a fallen, sinful world. Their marriage was hard; it took a lot of work to learn to live with each other. And life itself was still hard because the same sin issues that existed before marriage didn’t suddenly disappear —the couple now struggled through them together. Karen and Jeff continued to seek counseling, to do the hard work that was required, and as they biblically fought for their marriage, they learned to fight for each other and find abiding joy in their relationship.

Four years after the wedding, their Madison Grace was born. And though life became sweeter, it was still just as challenging. Around the same time as Madison’s birth, Karen’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. Karen’s father became her primary caregiver.

In 2011, Karen’s siblings suggested she come home to Michigan to visit her parents because her mother’s disease was progressing, and her father had not been feeling well. One Sunday afternoon, while staying with them, Karen walked into a moment that would forever divide her life into before and after; her father had taken his own life.

Forty-eight hours later, Karen and her siblings were forced to put her mother into a nursing home against her wishes. That day was nearly as painful as losing her father. It became another time of soul-suffocating grief and some of the darkest days she would encounter.

Once again, though, God remained faithful through her circumstances. Karen’s church surrounded her, people prayed with her, and friends sat with her, cried with her, and brought her through days she did not think she could survive.

Exactly 18 months after her father died, her twin brother, Kevin, suffered a massive stroke and passed away within three days. Karen felt like her nuclear family had been halved in less than two years. And the days stretched bleakly during this new anguish.

In 2013, shortly before the first birthday she would celebrate without her twin, God brought about a moment that would revive Karen’s soul. She was contacted by the adoption agency from which she had placed her infant son so many years before. Her caseworker told Karen that her son was interested in finding her. That same evening, she received the first email from him but did not know quite what to expect. She had prayed for this child for 30 years, but who had he become?

His email began: “Dear Karen, my name is Josh Porter, and I would like to say thank you. I have a wonderful life. I am married to my beautiful wife, and our son Luke is two years old. I accepted Christ at age 12, and I am a youth pastor.”

Karen’s heart overflowed. She felt relief, joy, and gratitude. And, in those precious moments, she also felt healing, for she understood the overwhelming evidence set before her of what God’s faithfulness truly looked like in her journey. This son she had borne had lived the kind of life she had so greatly desired to give him.

Karen has now celebrated 13 years of having a relationship with Josh and his family and counts a recent family picture, taken from daughter Madison’s wedding, as one of her most treasured possessions. The picture features Karen and Jeff, Madison and her husband, as well as Josh, his wife, two sons, and daughter. It is a picture she never thought she’d see.

She is reminded, every time she looks at that photograph, that God writes our stories far better than we could ever do ourselves. He simply asks for our love and fidelity to Himself above all others. He does not promise that we will be released from the pain and suffering of this mortal life, but He promises to let us see glimpses of His glory as He holds our hands over the boulders, as He sends His people to strengthen us, and as He stays right by us, having indwelled us through the power of His very own Holy Spirit, a permanent and never-ending Presence.

Karen’s life, though marked with many painful circumstances, has proven fruitful as she has been refined through her suffering and stayed the course. She has taken what she’s learned and invested herself in her family and in others, proof that her faith in triune God is real. She is continuing to work out her faith so that she will “become blameless and pure, [a] child of God without fault…[to] shine among them like stars in the sky.” (Phillippians 2:15)

May we see Karen’s shining example and think of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we see His example and look to our Father God and thank Him for making a way for us to be reconciled to Him, for the knowledge of how to live abundantly despite the effects of sin, and for the ability to let His light reflect outwardly from each of us, a microcosm of His glory.

‍