Kathryn Butler > Quotes

“It was harder to remember me when I wasn’t in front of you, wasn’t it?”
― Kathryn L. Butler, The Prince and the Blight, Book 2

“While the Lord has blessed us with medical advancements to combat death, their efficacy depends on his mercy. He does not need our help, nor does he call us to pursue futile interventions to give him time.”
― Kathryn L. Butler, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care

“However vital our choices seem, and however fervently our ambitions burn, God decides our vocation...

“We are his workmanship,” writes Paul, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The Lord prepares our good works for us ahead of time. He ordains a path, and equips us to traverse it. If God wills for us to serve him through a certain career, he will prepare us. If not, he will steer us elsewhere, even when we fight to barrel blindly and stubbornly down our favored course...

God doesn’t want our degree. He wants our heart. Our goals, however noble, cannot justify deformation of the soul.”
― Kathryn Butler

“When we forfeit focus on God and his Word to chase after machines, we ignore God’s grace. We worship creation rather than its maker. We discount the saving grace of the gospel and the brilliant hope of the resurrection in favor of man-made technology, forged by imperfect hands.”
― Kathryn L. Butler, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care

“Lily yearned for the small carpet of grass in which she’d awoken, and the leaves shimmering in the moonlight above. She gazed upward and found that clouds had again choked out the stars, and green wisps of lightning replaced the glow of the moon.”
― Kathryn L. Butler, The Prince and the Blight, Book 2

“For years I had convinced myself that, as a doctor, I sacrificed moments with friends, family, and my husband for the greater good. The call to heal the sick and tend the injured superseded all else. The Lord heaped blessings upon me, and I hurled them back in the name of “service” to him.

I’m a woman surgeon, I would snap. You made me this way. I have a legacy to carry on...

The prospect of abandoning a secure position with excellent prospects for advancement terrified me. I spent many nights agonizing that, despite the Lord’s call, my decision to leave medicine was reckless or irresponsible. Such fears are normal and expected, but reflect our own limited understanding, rather than an enduring faith in the Lord. God is sovereign over our lives, and whatever doubts we have, we may trust that he knows the path and is in command over all.

Christ has already overcome, and so we have nothing to fear. From Proverbs: “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9), and “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6)...

From 1 Thessalonians 1:3: We remember “before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Christ died and rose victorious over death and sin to free us, so that we may have the hope and fulfillment that comes from living in him.”
― Kathryn Butler

“As Christians, we as a community of believers have a responsibility to aid those among us facing severe illness, through hospice and other support.”
― Kathryn L. Butler, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care

“You're worth was determined before you were ever born my friend”
― Kathryn Butler

“In the fringes of our yard, daffodils await their triumphant chorus. The golden bells have just opened on our forsythia, and clusters of hyacinth flowers await flourish in purple blooms. By aesthetic standards, any of these blossoms would have outshone the fistful of yellow spikes my little boy offered. In the coming months, dozens of its cousins, cast away as weeds, will meet an untimely end beneath the blades of a lawnmower. Their brazen head will be lopped off, their awkward petals demolished and scattered. They will be declared a nuisance, expendable. Yet when gripped within Pip's fingers, how perfect, how precious became this paltry bloom. He had put aside the torrent of irritability and overwhelm that trouble him hourly, and found grace in a spiral of petals. Through a humble weed, love had broken through. God works this way. He does great things with the meager, and beautiful things with the misshapen. He chooses the smallest, the humblest, the most broken as his servants. (1 Sam 16:10-12, Numbers 12:3, 1 Tim 1:15) He works for good through the greatest calamity. (Gen 50:20) With his most beloved broken and crushed, he reaches through the firmament, and in love makes things new. (Rev 21:5) Where we see weakness, he offers grace. (2 Cor 12:9) He shatters pride, so new blossoms can burst forth. I've spent the past few months wrestling with God. After Pip's evaluation, as we clumsily felt out life with special needs, the questions of why wrapped around my heart, infusing me with daily bitterness. Resentment broiled to the surface. I'd left medicine to follow God's call, but a large part of me, in shocking arrogance, wanted to comply on my terms. Over the past two years, God has compelled me to confront my idols. I thrived on productivity. But now I inevitably find grime in corners I have just cleaned. I prized efficiency. But it now takes 30 minutes of wrangling over potty... I'm an introvert, who needs alone time to rejuvenate. But is anyone less alone than a mom with young kids? A "save the world" mentality drives me. But my daily life fodder is now the mundane. I relish instant gratification. But this business of shepherding hearts is long, with few immediate rewards. I relished accolades... I consider God's graciousness to us, and in the stillness of a springtime morning, I struggle for breath. His mercy toward us in this season -- in the face of my arrogance, despite the brokenness to which I've so stalwartly clung -- is stunning. During all the years of my training and career, homeschooling was never the plan. God inexplicably placed the idea in my heart, like a shadow that deepened daily. But now, I see how perfect were his methods. I shudder to think of how our family would struggle if I was still barreling ahead at the hospital, subsumed with my own self importance, while Pip fought daily to deal with every crowd... Homeschooling was never the plan. . . but oh, what a plan! That he called us this way, was mercy manifest. That he has equipped us to continue, is the greatest gift. Even on the hard days, I count it all joy. On the days when Pip, after a week of handling things so well, has a meltdown in the grocery store, complete with screaming and a blow to my chin -- there is joy there. God can work even with our ugliness. Through Christ, God redeems even the most corrupt. He assembles the stray petals, the unseemly stems, and makes things new. He strips away the idolatry of a surgeon desperate to prove her own worth, and points her toward the fount of all worth -- Christ Jesus. There is a deep well of peace in serving God where he has placed you. There is a refining grace, in realizing his work even in the hard moments. There is a profound beauty in redemption -- in the love that breaks forth through brokenness -- if we can only put away our preoccupations, and embrace his will. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." -- 2 Cor 12:9”
― Kathryn L. Butler

“As Christians we cling to the hope that death is not the end. Our faith in Christ assures us of a restoration of our bodies and a new order where no sickness, infirmity, or death blots the glory of God’s creation.”
― Kathryn L. Butler, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care

“I've felt completely ineffective. Like I'm spinning my tires in mud, my efforts splattering in all directions without design.

Like nothing I do matters.

In the maelstrom of it all, and without a moment to reflect, I find myself pining for the instant gratification of the OR. The satisfaction of removing an appendix. The finality of stitches taut and gleaming within a pulsing heart. The rise of oxygen levels with the turn of a dial. Breath, life, progress, all finely-tuned and quantifiable.

Most of all, I yearn for the accolades. The respect. The sense that I'm accomplishing something.

After all, I wondered this afternoon, what am I really achieving? Why should I continue down this route, and cast aside such carefully-honed skills, when Pip's just going to scream at me? Maybe the kids would be better off if I went back. I turned the words in my mind, and I detected glimmers of an identity I discarded long ago, one that thrived upon white corridors, adrenaline, and a tally of successes. An identity that lingers like an old, duplicitous friend, the betrayals of which time has obscured.

Is my purpose in this new direction -- and in life -- really to "accomplish something"? To build myself up, and convince myself that I matter? To fashion my own identity?

Or am I on this path so that He may accomplish His purpose through me? To submit wholly and lovingly to my identity in Christ?

"I pursue this to serve God.”
― Kathryn L. Butler

“But with the books read, the hymns sung, the prayers recited, and the warm, fleece-thick hugs lingered over, there is peace. A peace that comes when after months of struggle, and darkness, and chill, the sun breaks through the clouds, and reveals a glittering beneath the shadows. A peace that infuses the air when you realize, with the clarity of crystal, the depth to which God loves you (John 3:16), and blesses you richly, even while you're perseverating over your own myopic view of the world.
The sky closed up again within twenty-four hours. But for a day, a seldom sun lifted mist from puddles and coaxed jackets from limbs. It brushed back winter's dreary countenance. Across dappled earth it revealed the great mercy God has shown us in guiding us down this path, a path we had never planned, a world of glimmers we would otherwise never have known.

Not what if, but even if.”
― Kathryn L. Butler

“Lost in the Desert”
― Kathryn L. Butler, The Dragon and the Stone