Get To Know Your Sisters : Kaitlyn Stavreff

Many of know Kaitlyn from around church, she’s always ready with a welcoming smile or something witty to say. I appreciate Kaitlyn’s honesty and clear love she has for her community. Kaitlyn will be hosting a new segment on the blog called, “Get To Know Your Sisters”, in which she interviews different women from our church so that we can all get to know each other a little better and be encouraged by what God is doing in other womens lives in our church. I thought it only fitting to switch chairs with her for the first installment and interview myself so we wouldn’t miss out on getting to know the great woman that she is! So here it goes:

Hilly: Hey Kaitlyn, thanks so much for doing this for us! I think we’re going to cover a lot of ground today with the questions I have prepared so.. I’m going to jump right in with the first question. If you could have one talent, what would it be?

Kaitlyn: For me, most of the joy from having a talent comes out of the pursuit, the challenges that you face, and the lessons learned along the way. There are few things I would enjoy if suddenly I was magically altered to be proficient at something I wasn’t a moment before. The exception... music. More specifically, singing and playing guitar. Playing and singing along gives me the same measure of joy everytime as it did the first time. I would not mind excelling in music. 

H: I love that! I definitely agree, there is something about the challenge of honing a skill that makes that skill so much more enjoyable in the long run. Next question, Who in the faith, dead or alive, has shaped your life the most?

K: There have been many people in my life who have sharpened, encouraged, and exhorted me over the years. But there is one woman I think of: my dear friend and discipler, Amber. She mothered me in many ways when I was fresh out of college. She showed me grace, she allowed me to be a mess, and she preached hope to me in that mess. She did this in part by not hiding the not so shiny parts of her life from me. I have seen her children have meltdowns, I have seen her discipline them. I have helped her make dinner when her husband was out of town, and I have also helped clean up when she was exhausted after putting the kids to bed. But most importantly, I know what her struggles were, she didn’t hide her sin and her shame from me. Together each week we would talk about our disbelief and she would remind me of our hope in the gospel. She was also persistent about having a strong relationship to the word. I think it was through her vulnerability that I saw the fierceness of her faith and just how trustworthy God truly is.

H: That is so wonderful, I’m so encouraged by that. I love hearing discipleship happening how Jesus intended it, by entering into someone else’s life and watching how their faith interacts with the world and learning how to do that ourselves.
In a similar vein, how do you connect with God, and in what ways?

K: I feel as though I have felt connected to God through different means in different seasons of life. When I was a new Christian, I felt God most at work when I was in church or listening to sermons. Post college, I felt God most at work in a weekly prayer gathering with some older women in my church. In this season of life, I would say that God has been meeting me in my time in the word and through counseling. I mention counseling, partly to normalize talking about it casually but to also encourage my sisters that it is ok to seek help, there is no shame for being “weak” as that is Christ’s opportunity to work through us and make us stronger by clinging to Him. Counseling has truly been a blessing to me in various seasons of life.

H: I totally agree, and I’m glad you point it out. I have been immensely helped in my own life through counseling. Ok, here’s a fun question: What is your favorite hobby?

K: If you have the pleasure of spending time with me you will quickly learn that I find many things interesting. This has naturally led me to take up many new “hobbies” that I want excel at only to have them eventually get set in the corner to gather dust. I am now starting to learn that you don’t have to do and be good at everything. We only have a certain amount of time in life after all. My main hobbies that I have decided to continue to develop in this season are cooking, playing guitar, woodworking when time allows, and climbing.... when COVID let’s my gym open back up. 

H: Love it! What do you want to be known for?

K: There are a great many things that a person could want to be known for: your trendy lifestyle, your skills and accomplishments, the amount of money you have etc. But at the end of the day what is considered cool changes, money disappears, and stuff breaks. If I were to be known for something I would hope it would reflect the values that God has put on my heart. I would hope that I would be known in my community as a person that is vulnerable and has grace for people, a safe person to be around that truly sees you and loves you. I would hope to be known for being a loving servant, someone that puts their own preferences aside to care for others because Christ loves them in this way and He is our ultimate joy.

H: I love that. That really is something worth being known for. Perhaps I should’ve asked this at the beginning, but when did you first meet Christ?

K: I came to know the Lord in college. I grew up attending a Christian church; I had a moral family. Despite this, I had seen enough hypocrisy and known enough hurt that I didn’t want anything to do with a god that said my best wasn’t good enough, didn’t he see how hard I was trying? My freshman year I was determined to run away from god. I didn’t get too far though. 

My first week on campus I remember everyone getting black out drunk. I still considered myself a good person so I avoided the parties and didn’t do anything crazy. Still, my life was lonely so I decided to take an acquaintance up on her offer to hang out. I knew she was a Christian and that she would try to save me, but at least I knew what to expect. That friend eventually started inviting me to a campus ministry. I still wasn’t completely convinced that church was my thing or that I wanted to be in a relationship with God but I started attending as I wanted friends. 

The summer after my freshman year one of our adult leaders got married. She did something I will never forget. She budgeted her wedding and cut costs so she could invite every single student from our campus ministry. I didn’t think much of this act at the time, I was ready to have fun with my friends. It is only now after seeing how God worked that I see how sacrificial my friend was and how she catered her wedding to be a tool for evangelism. It was at her church, during her ceremony, that I heard the gospel for the first time. It was during her marriage vows that I heard a hope that I hadn’t before. I wasn’t ready to commit, but I was ready to get back to church. After that I started attending that very same local church, Rock Hill. I can’t tell you exactly when I made my decision to follow Christ, but it was sometime after my friend’s wedding.

H: That is so amazing, I love that the gospel can be preached and received in those unusual circumstances and for it to stick. Here’s a fun question: what fruit of the Spirit do you struggle with the most?

K: Probably discipline or self control. Even into being 10 years a Christian I still find reading my Bible to be somewhat of a hard discipline. Or controlling myself and saying no to watching another episode of TV or another 5 min on my phone. While God has certainly grown me in these areas, I have realized that it is not by my strength that I have made progress, but rather by his mercy and his power. 

H: What is your favorite thing in the world to do?

K: Oh gosh. I don’t know that there is one thing in my life deserving such an accolade. Hmm I guess the one thing that does come to mind is having meaningful conversation. I am an extrovert that God has wired to love community and building relationships. I love learning about my friends, I love hearing about the quirky things that happened in their week, but more so I love hearing about what’s going on in their hearts. This is not a conversation that is easily had. It takes time to build trust, it takes vulnerability, it takes time to learn how your friends communicate. But it is in these pursuits that I see God at work in the lives of the people around me. There is nothing quite so encouraging to me as a moment of raw vulnerability and weakness that we get to see Christ making a friend strong through their hope in Him. I hope that made sense. I wish I had a simpler answer for you like “baking for my family” or “reading the Bible” like a really holy person, but alas, this is what came to mind.

H: Haha! That totally makes sense and I love that that is what comes to mind! Well, like a really “holy” person, what is your favorite verse or book of the Bible?

K: I have a few verses that I regularly meditate on or come back to. I like Psalm 139, “Oh Lord you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my paths and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.” Or another one is Isaiah 26:3 “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts you”.

Other than that, I don’t really have a favorite book. I did really like reading through Mark when our Pastors were preaching through it. I have read through Psalms a couple of times. I do enjoy reading through the OT and trying to see where the hope of Jesus comes into play.

H: I love that verse in Isaiah, I’m going to have to spend some time with it. I’m going to end our interview with this last queston because I love hearing the answers to it. What is God teaching you right now?

K: I would say that God has been teaching me a lot about hidden expectations. Like expectations on how my career should look and feel like, or how friendship should work, etc. You can have good desires but cling to them too tightly so that they become an idol or you can be too rigid with how they “should” look in your life. Despite all this, I have been learning to trust God with those desires and seeming disappointments. Psalm 23 is something I have been meditating on. “The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not want.” I used to read that Psalm and think that David was saying something to the effect that “Because God is so good and holy, I am going to white knuckle it, or try my hardest to not want anything else”. I am now starting to realize that it is a promise that God is enough for us. When we surrender our desires, regardless of what happens next, in Christ, will shall not want because the joy of pursuing Christ and His holiness is all we need. When I cling to my expectations I am essentially saying, “No, Jesus, you aren’t enough. I need this thing to happen this way in order to feel fulfilled and happy”. Naturally, this Psalm was not something I just initially believed and now I’m fixed, but rather something God is continuing to have me wrestle through in this season.