A Testimony by Karen Fosse

A Testimony by Karen Fosse Karen is a wonderful lady that we met at the Officer's Christian Fellowship Center in White Sulfur Springs, Pennsylvania. This is her testimony of salvation, love, death, cancer, and God's faithfulness. Changes in life are common to all of us--from childhood right on through the golden years--and often they are difficult to face. Just as the eaglets would never fly if they weren't pushed out of their nest, Christians would not learn to soar spiritually, if the way were always bright. But we don't have to be afraid, because God has assured us of His love and care, no matter how great the change may be.

God is faithful! I would like to share a poem with you called "The Road of Life" which talks about the progression one takes from being a person that just knows about Jesus intellectually, but has not trusted Him as their savior. Then it moves on to the person who has trusted in Jesus Christ for eternal life, but hasn't made Him Lord of their life. Finally the last part of the poem talks about the person who has allowed Jesus to rule and reign in their life. The Road of Life Poem At first, I saw God as my observer, my judge keeping track of the things I did wrong, so as to know whether I merited Heaven or hell when I died. He was out there sort of like a president.

I recognized His picture when I saw it, but I really didn't know Him. But later on, when I met Christ, It seemed as though life were rather like a bike ride, but it was a tandem bike, and I noticed that Christ was in the back helping me pedal. I don't know just when it was that He suggested we change places, but life has not been the same since. When I had control, I knew the way. It was rather boring, but predictable.

It was the shortest distance between two points. But when He took the lead, He knew delightful long cuts, up mountains and through rocky places at breakneck speeds. It was all I could do to hang on! Even though it looked like madness, He said, "Pedal!" I worried and was anxious and asked, "Where are you taking me?" He laughed and didn't answer, and I started to learn to trust. I forgot my boring life and entered into the adventure. And when I'd say "I'm scared," He'd lean back and touch my hand.

He took me to people with gifts that I needed, gifts of healing, acceptance and joy. They gave me gifts to take on my journey, my Lord's and mine and we were off again. He said, "Give the gifts away. They are extra baggage. Too much weight.

" So, I did, to the people we met and I found that in giving, I received and still our burden was light. I did not trust Him at first, in control of my life. I thought He'd wreck it; but He knows bike secrets, knows how to make it bend to take sharp corners, knows how to jump to clear high rocks, knows how to fly to shorten scary passages. And I am learning to shut up and pedal in the strangest places, and I'm beginning to enjoy the view and the cool breeze on my face with my delightful constant companion, Jesus Christ. And when I'm sure I just can't do anymore, He just smiles and says.

.."Pedal!" I grew up in a family where my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were Christians. I knew about Jesus from little on. I saw Him as my observer, my judge, keeping track of things I did wrong but I had no assurance that I would go to heaven, if I died.

At age 10, while I was at camp, I placed my trust in Jesus Christ for my eternal life. That was the beginning of my tandem bike riding experience with Christ in the back helping me to pedal. I had Bible teaching coming out of my ears through all my growing up years and I knew that if I died I would go to be with Jesus, but I had this feeling that something was missing. I figured out that He was resident in my life, but He was not president. Basically, I didn't trust God.

I had visions of Him sending me to Africa or making me do something else that I didn't want to do. At age 19, I finally realized that I was tired of feeling distant from God and told Him that He could do anything He wanted with my life. Nothing startling happened at that point and I felt that He didn't want me, but that was not true. That was when we changed places and Christ was in the front seat of our bike. God was nice to me in that the changes He made in my life were very slow and subtle.

As time went on, and I had more trust in Him as the lead driver of the bike, He showed me delightful long cuts, up mountains and through rocky places at breakneck speeds. It was all I could do to hang on! Even though it looked like madness, He said, "Pedal!" After I graduated from high school, I went to the University of Washington to study to be a nurse. I had always wanted to be a nurse from when I was a little girl. There were doctors and nurses in my family and it seemed natural for me to pursue that field. After about two years of college, I quit, because nursing was not for me.

One of my instructors was a Christian and gave me the idea to try attending a medical business school. It was one of those six-month crash courses and it turned out to be just what I wanted. About halfway through that course, I took a mini-vacation to fly from Seattle to Annapolis, MD to attend the Naval Academy's graduation festivities. My church had three of its young men attending the Naval Academy. Two of them were graduating and the younger one had two more years.

The younger one invited me to fly 3,000 miles to be his date during graduation week. When I got there, I found out he had changed his mind about liking me but there I was, 3,000 miles from home and he had to put up with me for a week. At the time, I wondered why the Lord had me go through that experience. It didn't take long before He let me know the reason. Roger Fosse was one of the young men from our church who graduated from the Academy.

When he found out I was available, he asked me out. Roger and I had known each other through our youth group at church since I was 8th grade and he was 9th grade, but our dating life didn't start until after his graduation in June of 1972. On Good Friday, 1973, he asked me to marry him and we were married September 22, 1973. That began my life with him and with the Navy. It was exciting and never dull, because we moved to all parts of the United States.

Roger was the type of person you wanted to be with a lot. He was very caring, unselfish, energetic, enthusiastic, very reliable, competent, always smiling and had a wonderful sense of humor. He should have been born in the 1400's because he loved to explore. When we moved to a new area, he had this insatiable desire to check out every nook and cranny. After our first child was born in 1977, we decided that Navy life was too demanding as far as the hours he would have had to put in plus the time out to sea for months at a time.

He got out of the Navy and began working for Bechtel Power Corporation in San Francisco. Little did we know that civilian life wasn't any different as far as the demanding hours. We moved from Virginia to the San Francisco area where he worked for 12 years. In those 12 years, we had four more children. Then on June 8th, 1989, Roger came home and asked me how I felt about moving to Pottstown, PA because Bechtel wanted to transfer him there.

I had a day or so to tell him my decision. Then a mad scramble began with getting the house ready for sale, finding people to take care of our five children so we could fly to Pottstown to look for a home, and fly back to get ready for the movers to come. The Lord was so faithful to help me through that ordeal. There was no way I could have done everything by myself. Fifty days from the time we first heard about Pottstown to when we began our drive across country, we had sold our house, bought one in Pottstown, and were packed up and off to a new adventure.

We fell in love with Pennsylvania. It was beautiful and quaint but after two years, Bechtel had another job in mind for Roger. In November, 1991, Roger was sent to Alabama on a temporary assignment and flew home on weekends. It was really hard having him gone all week and only being home for Saturday and part of Sunday. That lasted for two months.

The next phase was harder yet with him coming home every other weekend. But just as the Lord helped us with the first phase, He helped us in each additional phase. God is so faithful! Those long separations were all preparation for what was to come. Roger wanted to come home a day early for Easter weekend so I was waiting for him at the Pottstown airport at 11:15 p.m.

like I always did. At midnight he called from the Philadelphia airport to the Pottstown airport to tell me that the pilot was going to take them to Reading airport due to the fog. I went home to go to bed because the Pottstown airport people were going to bring him home from Reading and drop him off at the house. I was so thankful for that phone call, because that was the last phone call I was to receive from him. The next phone call I received was at 4:00 a.

m. from the owner of the Pottstown airport, telling me that the airplane Roger was a passenger on had crashed into Blue Mountain and they found four bodies and no survivors. We began our life together on Good Friday and it ended 19 years later on Good Friday. The walls of my life seemed to crumble around me. My life with Roger was over.

Nineteen years of loving and being loved were finished. Alongside that searing pain of loss came a sense of love, comfort and security. Jesus held me in His loving arms and gave me a peace, which surpassed all my understanding. He let me know He would never leave me, He would take care of me and He would love me. God is faithful! Luke 24:13 talks about two of the disciples who were walking along the road to Emmaus, no doubt feeling the pain, hurt and loss over a friend, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was just killed.

The next verse is very important. It says that Jesus Himself came and walked with them. He walked with them as they experienced their pain, sorrow and loss and He provided comfort that only He could bring. Jesus walked with those disciples, He is walking with me and He will walk with you as you go through your valley of struggles and trials. "The road of life may take us where we do not care to go; up rocky paths, down darkened trails, our steps unsure and slow.

But our dear Lord extends His hand to hold, to help, to guide us; we never have to feel alone for He walks close beside us." My sister wrote a poem and gave it to me just after Roger died. It talks about when our walls crumble, then what do we do? It is called "A Sure Foundation." A Sure Foundation By Barbie Butler I had a perfect house, Too perfect some would say, Until God sent an earthquake And shook those walls one day. The storm came unexpectedly And whipped 'round those walls of stone, My walls around me crumbled And I was left alone.

My heart cried out in anguish, As if it too would break. "My God," I cried, "oh why, oh why?!" Twas more than I could take! He'd taken away everything. All that I'd held dear. "I wish I'd died too," I cried, Until there were no more tears. Then one day I discovered The walls were not ALL gone.

The foundations that held up those walls Had been there all along. I dropped down on my knees And clung to that dear rubble. That sure foundation had held fast Through all my times of trouble. It was that sure foundation, Not those walls of stone, That would support me now And 'till I too went home. I am so grateful for that "sure foundation," Jesus Christ.

He has kept me going and given me a peace and joy that nobody else can give me. During those early days, it was hard to comprehend or absorb that I would never see or talk to Roger here on earth again. Death is so final, which is hard for the human mind to accept. It wasn't until I realized that I wasn't saying goodbye forever that the healing began to take place. I have said goodbye here, but someday there will be a wonderful hello once again.

Experiencing the loss of someone close hurts deeply and recovery is very slow and painful, but as I ask the Lord for help, learn to give thanks in everything, learn and grow from experiences and draw upon God's grace, I will become whole again and emerge a stronger person. A friend of my father-in-law's sent me a poem that he wrote. It is called "The Perfect Weaver." It is about God weaving the pattern of our lives using different colors of threads--some are bright strands that we like and others are dark strands that we don't want in our lives. But every strand God chooses must be there to make the picture He wants.

He sees the final picture, but we only see the underside. It is only through knowing that He loves us and trusting that He knows what He is doing that we can say, "He doeth all things well!" The Perfect Weaver By Cornelius Vavderbreggen Jr. God weaves the pattern of our lives with loving hands. The threads He uses, oft we cannot understand. A bright, gay strand we welcome, but the one That brings a vein of darkness we are prone to shun.

Yet every strand He chooses must be there, for He In all His ways is perfect, and He weaveth perfectly. Because we see the underside and He weaves from above, By sight we never can discern the pattern of His love. Yet if we take Him at His word, then surely we can tell By faith, His pattern is the best! He doeth all things well! Another poem that is like the "Perfect Weaver" is called "My Life Is But A Weaving". My Life Is But A Weaving By Grant Tuller My life is but a weaving, between my God and me. I do not choose the colors, He worketh steadily.

Oftimes He weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride, forget He sees the upper, and I the underside. Not till the loom is silent and the shuttle ceases to fly, will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needful in the skillful Weaver's hand as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned." If God would just tell us what the pattern for our life was, then we wouldn't have to trust Him. If we could figure out how any given event fits into God's pattern for good, we wouldn't need faith.

Faith operates in the dark. Faith operates when there are no explanations, where there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. But God is in charge and God is in the tunnel with us even though it is dark. We are to be like a little child who is holding on to her father's hand in the dark. We don't need to know where we are going or figure out how we are going to get through the dark.

All we have to know is that His warm, strong hand is holding onto ours and is leading us wherever we are to go. Almost two years after Roger's death, just when I was starting to get our lives together again, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Talk about faith operating in the dark! But I knew God was in charge and He was in the dark tunnel with me. You can bet I was holding on to His hand tightly as I went through seven surgeries and chemo-therapy, lost all of my hair and was always sick. I remember one night, while I was throwing up, a song went through my head.

It was called "Through it All" and it went like this: "Through it all, through it all, I have learned to trust in Jesus, I have learned to trust in God. Through it all, through it all, I have come to depend upon His word." Jesus never said that He would take our pain or sorrow away, but He did say that He would go through it with us. Martin Luther said, "Faith does not ask 'why' but 'what' when tragedy strikes." I am trying to ask "What is it Lord that you want to teach me? What is it that you want me to do with these experiences?" The word 'what' gives me something to look forward to and an answer.

The word 'why' doesn't. It is in a sense a dead-end street, because until I go to heaven I won't know why. This new "job" of widowhood is overwhelming at times. Sometimes I find myself crying out to God and all I can say is "help." He comes very quickly to my rescue and each time I can say thank you to Him for being there.

One night I was having a very rough time and was crying over one of the kids, who was causing me grief. I was so glad to know that even though I didn't have an earthly husband, I had a "heavenly husband" who cared deeply about me and about the kids. I could hand over the whole mess to Him and ask Him to work in the child's heart and to give me wisdom to know what I was supposed to do as the mother. In Philippians 4:4, 6-8, Paul says to "rejoice in the Lord always and not to be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, to present your requests to God. He will give you peace which is beyond your understanding and will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

" To rejoice in the Lord, not be anxious, and pray about everything is where the will comes in. I will choose to do what the Lord asks instead of dwelling on the awful event that happened to change my family forever. I will not let Satan defeat me, so that I am no good for God's service. Speaking in military lingo, Roger had a change of orders, but my orders are to stay here and do whatever God has for me. I am not sure what that is, but I am carrying on the way I always have and praying that maybe I can have an affect on someone's life for God.

I must admit that for many months after Roger died, I wanted to be in heaven with him and I still have that desire. But I also know that I must spend some more time bound to this earth trying to help others find salvation and the joy of knowing Jesus and walking with Him. All that has happened in my life in the last five years reminds me of a cathedral in Europe that was famous for its large, magnificent, stained glass window that was located behind the altar and high above the sanctuary. One day, a violent windstorm shattered that beautiful window into a thousand pieces. The church custodian was hesitant to discard the fragments, so he put them in a box and stored them.

Shortly after the storm, a man who heard about the damage asked for and received the broken pieces of glass. Two years later he invited the custodian to his village to show him what he had done with the glass. He unveiled a lovely window made from the broken fragments. It was even more beautiful than the original! Often our plans or accomplishments go the way of the stained glass window. They are destroyed by the storms of unexpected circumstances.

When this happens, we cannot understand why. We wonder what good it is for us to face suffering, disappointment or struggles. But let me assure you there is a reason. God has something better planned for us. In His infinite wisdom, He sometimes allows our plans and dreams to be broken and cast aside.

Then out of the shattered pieces He brings about the fulfillment of His will, which is far better than anything we could have devised. Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." The Gaithers wrote a song called "Something Beautiful" that goes like this: Something beautiful, something good; all my confusion He understood; all I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife, but He made something beautiful of my life." I don't know what is next to happen and nobody else knows what lies ahead for them, but I do know that whatever it is, Jesus promised never to leave me alone. Karen Fosse Use by permission