Women in the Trenches: Kathy Zimmerman

The new issue of Daughters of Promise is coming soon! Here is a sneak peek of the newest “Women in the Trenches” article, featuring Kathy Zimmerman and her new little one, Jaxson. You can go to the Daughters of Promise home page to view the entire magazine. The September/October issue in which Kathy is featured is not viewable yet, but will be published online within the next several days.

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For as long as she can remember, Kathy Zimmerman has loved babies. She remembers buying a doll at twelve or thirteen, but, embarrassed because she considered herself too old for such things, she got a sister to go through the check-out lane and pay for it. Even before she was married, Kathy prayed that she would someday have a baby, and today she is the proud mother of Jaxson Daniel Zimmerman.

There was a time when she worried that she would never even get married. “Before I ever met Kirby,” she says, “I remember Mom and I were talking while picking raspberries. Maybe I was kinda worried about the future at that time. I was worried that if you wanna get married and there’s no one around, you have to go out looking. Not that I had to get married or anything, but I guess I always wanted to. But that day we were picking raspberries, it was so beautiful outside, with big huge clouds in the sky. Looking at all that beauty, I just knew if God was such a great God, if He could control all that, He could take care of my future.

“I told Mom, ‘If I’m supposed to get married, God will bring someone to me. A person doesn’t have to go looking for someone in order to get married.’

“A while after that, Kirby just appeared and started going to our church. I didn’t notice anything about it at the time, never thought we’d get together. But I kept seeing more of him.”

In the summer of 2012, Kirby took a week off work to teach vacation Bible school–partly because he was interested in the children, but also because he knew Kathy would be teaching. He asked her if they could start dating, and six months later, he asked her to marry him.

“Marriage is something that’s natural in a lot of ways,” Kathy says. “You marry your best friend. But in other ways, it takes getting used to. Some things I was scared about. You really don’t know what to expect until you’re married. As far as household duties, cooking was what I worried most about, but marriage is harder than just learning how to do everything. Back more at the beginning, I would sometimes get really mad and start crying. There were a lot of adjustments for me.

“Seeing how Kirby is–he’s a good example. Seeing the way he takes things makes me want to be a better person. He’s probably had his frustrating times, but I think he has more patience than I do.”

Kathy’s pregnancy with Jaxson came as a surprise–albeit a welcome surprise–to the couple. He was born a couple of days before their first anniversary. “I’m just glad I got through it,” Kathy says. “I was always worried about childbirth pain. I’ve never gone through something so intense. We had a rough third night after he was born. Jaxson kept us awake all night. The next morning, I called Mom and started crying. I told her, ‘I just wish I knew what he wanted.’ That day was our anniversary, and I was so tired, and I didn’t get to spend time just with Kirby.

“Before we had Jaxson, I didn’t fully realize the realness of the responsibility. Your child’s always there, and you’re gonna have to teach him. Having Jaxson is gonna teach me patience, because I never had a lot of that. And it will teach me to let things go the way they go and to be okay with some things not getting done. I’ve learned lately that some days it might be enough just to get dressed and get the dishes done.”

Kathy has come through many learning processes so far in her life. One of the biggest was learning to overcome her deep shyness. “People always teased me to no end about being shy,” she says. “They would ask questions like, ‘The cat got your tongue?’ and that made it worse. When my friends got to know me better, they accepted me for who I am, and that helped.

“I got more confident when I worked as a CNA in the nursing home. I got to meet all kinds of new people. You know, talking with the old people, it felt like I was doing something worthwhile. They get lonely. I guess when you reach out to other people, it helps you. Like the old saying goes, ‘You forget about yourself when you help somebody else.’

“I never want my children to go through what I had to go through when I was a child. But my shyness made me depend more on God. When people made comments about it, I would always feel bad, and I would have to pray and do a lot of crying and stuff. If I would have been just right, had a really nice outgoing personality that other people flocked to, I would probably have gotten kinda proud. Maybe God gave the shyness to me for a reason.”

When she was younger, Kathy prayed that God would bring at least one person into her life whom she could really help. Now that she’s married and occupied with the business of caring for her family, she’s almost forgotten those early prayers. “To tell you the truth, some days it seems hard to even see God working. I guess there was a day when I felt really discouraged, and I texted my sister to tell her to pray for me. She was so comforting and nice and acted like she knew just how it was. She said, ‘God cares and loves you, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.’

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I see God, but when I think about it, there are lots of little ways that I can. I see Him in answered prayers, and I see Him in my little baby when he looks up at me with his bright little eyes. I see Him all over, through having the baby and just in the way He helps me from day to day with the things I need to do and in learning how to be a mom.

“I guess what I try to do for Him now are little things like deciding to be thankful–and you know, all the little things that come from day to day, even if they don’t seem big or significant.”

Kathy may not always feel that her work as a mother to Jaxson is significant, but history proves otherwise. There may be no greater missionary work in the world than the work of parents who bring up their children for God. Not only do they touch their children’s lives, they touch the lives of children for generations to come, and indirectly, the lives of everyone who comes into contact with those children. Kathy’s earliest known ancestor, Andrew Martin, born in 1669, was imprisoned eighteen years in a Palatinate jail for his faith, a faith which he passed on to his children. There is also a possibility that two Martins mentioned in the Martyr’s Mirror, a Martin the Painter and a Martin of Vilgraten, were earlier ancestors of Andrew. These two men were martyred for their faith in the 1530’s. Theirs is a witness that spans five hundred years and many generations of children.

“My prayer now,” Kathy says, “is that I could be a good mom and that I could take care of Jaxson. Even if I’m not a very good vessel, everything he learns about God and about life has to come through his parents and through God helping. Even if we’re not perfect, I guess somehow we still have to try our best.”