Katherine

Katherine and I met the first day I started at Trinity. She worked in the Student Development office and was the one to show me to my new office and get me situated. Just a few days after my first day at Trinity, we roomed together at a staff retreat. We totally hit it off.

Katherine is grace. I don’t think her name means grace, but it should. Imagine a beautiful, tall willow tree whose branches gently sway in the breeze and whisper in the wind. This is Katherine.

Because she and I worked in Student Development, we shared in the experience of working with students, especially women, and mentoring/counseling them. When I was at Northwestern, I admired so much some of the women on the SD staff and longed to be like them. I’m not certain that any of the students I worked with at Trinity felt the same way about me, but I know how important it was to me to have women to look up to during those formative years.

I can only pray that if I have a daughter some day and she goes to college, she will have someone like Katherine to be a model for her of what it means to love and serve the Lord, and love and serve others. As her mother, I’ll do my best to show her these things, but in case she was not paying attention when she lived with me, then surely I will rest better knowing that she is learning from someone who is as wonderful as Katherine.

Katherine and her husband Geoff have become good friends to Simple Guy and me. We vacationed in Door County together this summer. We have shared a good number of dinners together over the past four years and played a few games after some of those dinners. Most recently, we shared in the grief of the passing of Geoff’s mother. While we can never know or feel the depth of the loss that Geoff and Katherine and their family are experiencing, our hearts ache for their loss. It’s difficult to see others hurt and know there is nothing you can do to ease that pain.

We are grateful for their friendship and look forward to more dinners, games, and perhaps another vacation together.