This past weekend I had the privilege to witness years of work, frustration, and difficulty come to fruition when my wife attended her graduation at Spalding University. As a young woman who has attended school year round since she was 14 in order to graduate high school and college early, she has completed her academic studies finishing with a Doctorate of Psychology.
It was a wonderful time for all of our family to get together and celebrate Karen. Karen's parents, brother Kevin, his 18 month old daughter, Karlie came in from Texas along with my parents and host of family drove from all over Kentucky to recognize Karen's accomplishment. On Friday night we celebrated dinner at Lynn's Paradise Cafe. We entertained the idea of eating at Maido, but didn't think even with this great celebration we could rally the troops for an evening of sushi. Afterwards we indulged ourselves at the new Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen on Bardstown Road. On Saturday, Karen dressed in her regalia walked through the ceremony to receive her completed degree of Doctorate of Psychology. Her dissertation was "Integrating Developmental Theories to Enhance Child and Youth Ministry: A Developmentally Based Approach for Training Individuals to Teach Children and Adolescents Concepts for Christianity."
I am grateful to be on the end of Karen's path through her tumultuous road in the academic world of psychology. It has been a wonderful experience for me as a husband, man, and pastor to see the formation of this woman, my wife, and psychologist through such a roller coaster experience. As a writer, I would do injustice to the battles my wife waged as she stood for the Truth of Jesus Christ in such a dark place. Let me settle to say my wife's faith has only grown as she stood for God in her diligence to share what God has commanded His children to carry out in the Great Commission.
I would like to encourage those in the church to rely on resources such as my wife to be an aid for parents, teacher development, and horrible situations that lay outside the areas of expertise of pastors such as child molestation, rape, difficult cases of behavior that we could label in numerous ways depending on one's perspective of such issues.
Karen has accomplished a tremendous amount of goals and accolades throughout her academic career. I am extremely privileged to be a part of her life to witness the tail end of what see has done. While she is an outstanding thinker, public speaker, psychologist, she is an athlete; she has run marathons and finished a half-Ironman (70.3 miles). Her talents outnumber my vocabulary. She is nonetheless extraordinarily talented and beautiful. I can only speak in a small and finite way to describe how beautiful Karen is. I still find myself repeating that she is great and wonderful which don't speak much in description, but my opinion is that she epitomizes these words. I often tell her she is the most beautiful woman in all of time. Sorry gents, she is the one.
God has blessed me with an amazing woman. May God bless me to love her as Christ loves the church. God bless her as she loves such a sinner.
