Katherine Elizabeth Clark has a story to tell and it isn’t like any other story I’ve heard. Where I End begins with a freak accident, the kind of thing that could happen to any young mom trying to have fun with her kids at the playground: One second she is playing tag. The next, she is lying paralyzed on the ground after a little boy jumps from a playground set and lands on her head.
Suddenly an active young mother is stuck in a body she can’t use. Clark shares the humiliations and griefs that go along with learning how to live in a body that has been profoundly changed. As she retells these events, she maintains a hopeful honesty and never veers too close to either despair or denial. Instead, she sprinkles in the verses that have given her courage alongside the sweet prayers and sad questions of her children who long for God to heal their mom.
It is one thing to endure the immediate after effects, but quite another to move forward in life. I appreciated the scope of her story, moving long past the immediate recovery into the lingering complications of her current life. Clark is sensitive to the fact that her dramatic story often leaves other people feeling they have nothing worth sharing afterwards. “I hate when the story severs the discussion,” Clark admits. “I hate when the story culminates in a comparison of cross bearing and, as a result, a chasm between us.” Perhaps it is this thoughtful concern for others that best explains what I liked best about this book: she doesn’t sensationalize her story or exploit her suffering. At every moment, her focus is on displaying God’s grace in action.
I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but I can tell you that it is both miraculous and ordinary, full of her testimony of God’s continued faithfulness to her and her family.
Laura Lundgren is a lifelong reader, former English teacher, current homemaker, and aspiring writer. She makes her home in Wisconsin with her husband, who is also her pastor, and her four young kids.
