interview with karen crook
The Servant’s Heart Giving Hope and Healing Who is Karen Crook?
Karen grew up as the third child of six. She developed a low self-esteem yet desired to feel loved and accepted. Karen was raised a Catholic and at the age of 14 attended an Assembly of God Church with a friend from school. That night Karen was lead to the Lord but with no follow-up and no explanation. She did not understand the transforming experience she had in becoming “born again”.
At the age of 16 she found herself pregnant and getting married. She had to drop out of school at the start her senior year due to the birth of her first child. It took 11 years to realize she was in an abusive marriage and find the strength to leave, taking 3 children with her. Three years later she married again, this time it was even more abusive, 14 months later she ended the marriage.
Believing that something was wrong with her and that somehow, she was attracting the wrong kind of men, she starting working on her issues of abandonment, rejection, lowself-esteem and lack of self-worth. It took over 17 years to even start believing she was a woman of value that could and deserved to be respected.
During this time, she worked for the Department of Social Services, first for Solano County, CA. After 11 years of case management she moved over to Contra Costa County, CA for 14 years as a case manager, the last 11 years as a facilitator, teaching life and employment skills to adults on aid. It was much easier for her to teach these life skills and believe them for others, than for herself.
Karen also led a Single Women's Ministry for the Lighthouse Church in Fairfield, CA and became a Licensed Minister with Grace International Fellowship and Ministries in 1996.
In March of 2009, she met for the second time, William (Bill) Crook. Their meeting was a fulfillment of prophecy and the greatest blessing of her life. She learned a great deal about real love, acceptance, personal value and self-respect. Bill and Karen had a wonderful marriage but far too short for her liking. Bill became very ill just 15 months after they married and together they struggled with multiple doctor visits and hospitalizations.
Bill unexpectedly took a turn for the worse just 8 months after Karen retired and 16 days before they were to move to Paradise, CA. Bill died just 5 years 5 months and 25 days after they married but not before making a huge impact on her life. Working through the profound grief, thoughts of suicide and the sudden life changing events, Karen was able to grab hold of Jesus like never before and is determined to not let go.
Karen is currently living in Paradise, CA, attends church at Jubilee on the Ridge in Paradise and is loving life with family and friends.
Today, Karen reaches out through ministry in a Women's Bible Study to encourage and assist others in overcoming past hurts, abuse, and many other issues that can hold one back from believing that God really does have a purpose and a destination for each and every one of us.
Karen is able to have hope in tomorrow, find the joy in today and a determination to walk through this life with Pride, Conviction and Value.
Interview with Karen Crook
Question 1: Dennis - Please tell me briefly how your faith walk began?
Karen – It began as a teenager. I was about 14 years old in Junior High. There was a girl in my classes that was not befriended by anybody. Even though people thought she was weird, I liked her. One day she asked me to go to church with her on a Wednesday night. So, with my parent’s permission I went. It was an Assembly of God Church in San Pablo, CA. They had a guest speaker that night and after the service he did an alter call. I was pulled forward somehow. No one was pulling on me, but it was just like there was no way that I could not go forward. All I remember was walking to the front of the church, getting on my knees and I started crying. He said, “Repeat after me…”, so I did. No one ever explained to me what had happened.
About 3 years later, in High School, I started dating a young man. He would eventually become my first husband. It was then that I realized what had happened. Nobody followed up, nobody told me anything. I left the Catholic Church after I married my first husband and I joined the Assembly of God. That is when I really had a revelation of what had happened and I started my walk with the Lord.
Dennis - So it was like God started something then and it took a while for you to realize what all that was?
Karen - Yes, absolutely, quite a while.
Question 2: Dennis - In your life you have undoubtedly faced many challenges which have caused you to be stretched in the area of belief about God or the way in which God was moving in your life and the world around you.
Can you recall a specific time that you were challenged like Peter was the day he saw the vision of the sheets and then was directed by God to release the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles?
Karen - Most recently for me was just a year ago last March 2015. Just a month after my husband passed, I went to a women's meeting here in here in Paradise, California. The speaker came to me, pulled me out of the congregation and said, “God wants me to tell you, that He has a plan.” She continued saying that, “I needed to make some lifestyle changes and that the roses would bloom again.”
Dennis - That was in March of last year?
Karen - One month after my husband passed. She asked me if I understood what that meant and told me to pray about it and God will tell me.
Dennis -You had a promise from the Lord!
Karen – Yes, so I immediately started praying, “Lord what are lifestyles, what are the lifestyles I need to change?” For a long time, it seemed as though I was getting nothing. Suddenly I realized this was how I felt about myself. I began to realize that I need to stop thinking of myself as a disabled person. You see, I have very severe, almost crippling arthritis. It’s in both of my feet. Walking and being on my feet for long periods of time is extremely painful. But then the Lord spoke to me telling me, “Stop thinking of yourself as disabled.” For me this was going to be a real lifestyle change. A new way of thinking about myself and what I was believing I could or could not do in my life.
Then it was taking off my wedding ring. I finally took it off just 10 months after my husband passed. Although it was difficult to do, I knew this too was a lifestyle change that needed to happen.
Dennis - It had to do with how you were seeing your life internally?
Karen – Yes.
Dennis - So, it was your identity, both seeing yourself and portraying yourself as married instead of widowed and single?
Karen - Yes, and so I finally took it off. It took the Lord awhile to get me to take it off. When I finally took it off, there was a definite weight difference.
Dennis - When did the Lord tell you to take them off?
Karen - It was in the month of December. He started to tell me to “Take off your wedding rings, take off your wedding rings.” At first I thought, Ok, I will take them off in February at the one year anniversary of my husband’s death. That would have been February 3rd.
Then, I kept hearing the Lord saying to me, “Take off your wedding rings! Take off your wedding rings.” So then, I said I would take them off January 1st, I would start the New Year off fresh. Then, again I heard, “Take of your wedding ring, take of your wedding ring.” So, I finally took them off on December 26th, 2015. There was an actual weight difference in my body.
It was noticeable. There was also a difference of how I felt about myself.
Dennis - You look different now here in May, than when we saw you in, what, August of last year, just four months before you took the rings off.
Karen – Yes, from last August, I feel very different. My joy for living is back. My being able to be excited about tomorrow and working with people and for people, is back. All of February, since my husband died on the 3rd, of 2015, life was all about pain. It was nothing but hurt.
Dennis - When you came to the conference at Glory of Zion, you were receiving a lot of ministry. A lot of healing ministry happened then. And it was like a lot of salve was being applied. But still, a lot of healing needed to be done. There was a shifting that began to happen. Now you are talking about feeling lighter and things are changing, God is telling you to do some more things?
Karen - Yes in February, at the one year mark of my husband’s death, I was in prayer and seeking the Lord. I remember my Pastor's wife being here at my home as we were leading a support group for women. This is for women who have gone through traumatic experiences and are needing healing and strength to overcome their different situations.
This particular day, it was an unusual thing. After the meeting she and I were the only two still here. Everyone had to leave quickly for different reasons and I just started pouring out my heart. I would cry and she would pray, and I cried and she prayed for 2 1/2 hours. I felt a difference and even she said that, “The Lord has broken it off of you, this day. There's a new beginning, a new start.”
That February, I heard for the first time a song on KLOVE by Danny Gokey. The song was, 'Tell your Heart to Beat Again'. When I heard that song, it was the Lord telling me, “You have mourned well, you have grieved well, and it is time to live again.” It really broke me. The grief, the mourning, the feeling that life was just existing, it ended. It broke at that point. Now there is a true excitement. Something is bubbling up inside of me. I don't understand it all.
Dennis - Which is crazy because of all that you went through. You weren’t just broken over a loved one dying. You had waited for him for many years. You felt God had spoken to you to wait for him, and you waited. Then everything in your relationship with Bill came about just as the Lord had said. Tell me about that, how your relationship began with Bill. How many years did you wait? You said 17 years?
Karen - He was a long-time friend of Paul and Sherryl Dixon's. And after he got out of prison he just kind of disappeared from the world because he was totally ashamed of himself. But, he started a church down in the Riverside area at a truck stop. There was a point that Paul had invited him to speak to the congregation at our church in Fairfield. That is the night I met him. Instantly, I was attracted to him. I just knew that there was something incredibly special about him. After that night, he went back to Riverside and was gone for a few months, and then moved to Fairfield. For about four months we did a lot of ministry work together. He preached out at the Oakland Homeless Mission, we went up to Loaves and Fishes in Sacramento. I had a prayer ministry at Channel 42 in Concord and I was able to get him an interview on the television program. We did a lot of things together and I felt things were developing in our relationship.
Then he got mad at somebody and said “I’m out of here.” He soon left and went to Oregon. We did not see or speak to each other for 17 years. Then Sherryl Dixon passed away and it was at her funeral that I saw him again. I knew instantly who he was and the fulfillment of a prophetic word that started coming together right then and there. I had been given a prophecy seven years before that I would marry again, that I would know him when I saw him. The word said that I would not “zig or zag, not turn to the right or left and he would be to me, loving, kind, supportive, encouraging, and nurturing.” Just an incredible list of things that this husband would be to me.
I had prayed that, when whoever this man was, when he came into my life, that I would be with friends and that someone would say, “That's him.” At the start of Sherryl's funeral service I had just exited the kitchen, as I was helping prepare the meal following the services.
I looked across the room of about 300-400 hundred people and I saw the back of Bill. I walked straight to him. I did not step to the right or the left. I did not have to zig or zag around anybody. I walked a beeline straight to him.
After the service he asked me to walk him out to his car and I did. We exchanged phone numbers and he went on his way. As I went back into the building a friend call me to his table and asked me, “That guy, is he married?”, I said 'Bill Crook? No, he's not married'. He said 'ok' with a big ol'-grin on his face.
I said, “James, what are you thinking?” He said, “You know, what I am thinking.” I said, “James Housler, you better start talking and start talking fast.” He said, “That's him.” There is no way on this earth that he could have known that I had prayed that. I had never told anyone.
Dennis - After everything that everybody said to you that day, that one person made a point to say, “That's him.”
Karen - There is no way on this earth that James could have known that I prayed that. Because no one knew I prayed that, no one. I had 5 confirmations in the next 2 weeks that Bill was the one that God was talking about. I even called James and said “Why did you say that? What made you say that?” He said “I don't know, I just did.” And I told him of the other 4 confirmations that I had just gotten and he said, “God wants you to stop questioning Him and, by the way, congratulations.” Bill and I married 4 1/2 months later.
Dennis - Wow, that’s so perfectly beautiful. How long where you guys together? 5-7 years?
Karen – Five and a half years. Bill got seriously sick just 15 months after we got married. He had a Heaven experience. He got to walk the streets of gold with Jesus. He saw his parents. Jesus showed him different things. At the end of their time together, Jesus turned to Bill and said, “Do you want to stay or do you want to go back to Karen?” And Bill said, “We've only been married a short time. I want to go back to Karen because it wouldn't be fair.” He came back and lived another 4 years and 4 days. He was to me everything the Lord said my husband would be.
Dennis – How long were you married?
Karen - We were married just 5 years, 5 months and 25 days.
Question 3: Dennis – So, we are talking about major shifts that have happened in your life. That's what you’re describing. In your life, you have to have made some major shifts. Can you recall any one such shifting in which you were challenged to change your whole way of thinking and some area of prejudice? Peter had a prejudice toward Gentiles, Paul toward Christians and a belief in God as judgmental and not forgiving, and Jonah hated the Ninevites. At times, we are even challenged about our preconceived ideas about God Himself and He challenges on those at times too. Has He ever done so with you?
Karen - I think my biggest challenge was a people group. I was raised to believe that people who don't work have little value. I was blessed with a job working for our county in the Welfare
Department. I got to know people on public assistance. I have such a profound respect for them now. Yes, there were some that would tell me I don't want to work. “I'm being supported by the government. I'm good with that.”
But there are others I met, nurses, lawyers, doctors, teachers, people that had a position of great respect in the community. For various reasons, they had lost their jobs, and ended up on public assistance. Many people were educated and experienced. My last 11 years working in Contra Costa County, I taught Life Skills and Employment Readiness Skills to hundreds of people. I often sat there thinking, this was an educated person. What do I have to teach them? After all I am only a high school graduate. But I made an effective difference in hundreds of lives. They also made a difference in me.
Dennis - God not only had it as a way for you to do something, but also as a way to transform you from the inside out. He did it by bringing you face to face with your inner prejudice and having you work with those same people daily.
Karen – Absolutely!
Dennis – Like a springboard to how to open up and care for people?
Karen - Yes!
Question 4: Dennis - Wow, thank you for sharing. Next question is a little bit of a shift. If you consider the greatest desires of your innermost heart for your life both personally and in ministry, can you describe how God has revealed to you that He is now and has been “for you” to bring all those desires to fulfillment with you?
Karen - Every bit of my life crumbled when Bill passed away. He was sick but his pulmonologist said that we would know when the time was getting near because he would be in the hospital a lot.
He hadn't been in the hospital for a while. In fact, we were moving, I had retired, and we had sold our home. We were closing on the house we were buying in Paradise. We were excited about getting up here and starting a whole new life together. And suddenly he became very ill.
Dennis – You were finally moving into your new home in this town of Paradise, with a husband you waited 17 years for?
Karen – Yes in Paradise.
Dennis – Then you've waited another 5 years. Struggled through many health issues with him, and you’re just ready to close on your new home, retirement and all of this, and actually be living in Paradise. What a story.
Karen – He became sick the evening of January 25th, 2015. We had run all our errands, and we were packing the bulk of the day. That night, 2 hours after he had gone to bed, he had a hard time breathing. He was really struggling.
Dennis - Wow it just came on suddenly?
Karen – Yes it came on so quickly. I said, “Go sleep on the recliner, sitting up and we will see how you feel in the morning.'
We went to the hospital in the morning at 7. By 7:30 the doctor came into the room and said, “You're dying and there is nothing we can do to stop it.” He had developed a sepsis infection, and pneumonia in the right lung, fully involved. They told us he had hours to live, but he lived 6 days.
Dennis - I thought you told me that he had struggled for the last few years, and that he was in and out of the hospital.
Karen – Yes but not for the last 5 months. Fifteen months after we were married, he had gotten the flu from one of our grandchildren. We went to the doctors who said if you’re not better by the end of the week, go to the hospital.
On Sunday, January 30th, 2011, he was diagnosed with the flu. Three large blood clots in his lungs, congestive heart failure, kidneys and liver were in distress, and emphysema. So the last 4 years of our marriage, he had multiple problems with multiple hospital visits. But the last 5 months he was alive were much better. We were hopeful.
Dennis - This all began a year and a half into your marriage? Then four years of hospitals, then six months of peace and hope for a future. Then suddenly within a week he died and you moved into your new home that was to be this special place for the both of you. That's pretty severe.
Karen – Yes, the kidney and liver recovered, the congestive heart failure of course doesn't go away, the lung problems, the blood clots, and the emphysema. That never goes away. But he maintained a fair semblance of health, especially during the last five months.
He had had bronchitis once and pneumonia several times, but it was a day or two in the hospital, then home again. In May of 2014, he broke his hip. He was hospitalized with reconstructive surgery. In June had a partial hip replacement. And that's when I retired, so I could stay home and take care of him. Eight months later he's gone.
Dennis – So, you've retired, you got your home, everything you could possibly do, and now you’re alone.
Karen – Yes, He died February 3rd, we closed escrow in Fairfield on the 6th, closed escrow in Paradise on the 9th and I had to move on the 14th. So, everything, the home I had lived in for 29 years, my job of 26 years, moving to a brand-new community, and losing my husband.
I wanted to die. Literally, there were many times when I refused to leave the home and drive my car. You see, in Paradise we’re in the Sierra Foothills. There are mountain ranges, there are cliffs, and there are big rigs. I was very tempted a few times to take my own life. But I just couldn't you know. Instead, I grew closer to the Lord. I cried out to God to take away the pain, to help me get through this. And he did.
Question 5: Dennis - How has God used your weakness in your life to empower His work or presence in your life or ministry?
Karen - Oh, my goodness, oh my goodness, yes! A month before Bill passed away, we were at his sister’s church. While there I was given a prophetic word, that my new home would be used as a refuge, a place of ministry and a place of restoration. He was also told that his daughters, who he was estranged from, would be restored to him. His oldest daughter came to the hospital before he passed and his youngest daughter came to his services. So, that prophecy was fulfilled.
I tucked it away in my heart. One day my husband says “We're going to have some bible studies at the house,” He was all excited about doing stuff.
I moved to Paradise in February. In October, my Pastor's wife calls me and said she wants to start an Overcomer's Support Group for women that have gone through traumatic experiences. And the Lord told her that I was to be one of the women in the group. I said, “Ok, I'll join. No problem.” A week later she calls and says she’s been praying about where to have it and “God told me to ask you.” And I said, “Absolutely.” She said, “I want you to pray about it.” I said, “I don't have to. The Lord has already told me I would have a place of refuge, a place of recovery and restoration.”
Dennis – A group that’s called Overcomer's?
Karen - She calls it the Overcomers Support Group. We call it 'The Girls, getting together'. We get together twice a month. We started going through a Beth Moore study about overcoming called ‘Sacred Secrets.’ It’s about rebuilding faith in ourselves and in God. So, that is happening in my home. Currently we are working through Joyce Myers’ 'Battlefield of the Mind'. Within our group of these eight women, they have gone through; children on drugs, divorce, abuse, sexual abuse, and loss of loved ones. Every single one of these issues these eight women are going through, I have already lived through.
Dennis – These are the women that call you now?
Karen - Yes, at first it was like, I was overwhelmed with, “Man, I've had a messed up life.” Then, all the sudden, I have eight women going through these same things that I have gone through, each one of their issues. But then it was like, something shifted inside me and I realized, “But Karen, you've gone through.” And how much better for me to be able to speak into the lives of these women.
Dennis – As an overcomer, as only you could.
Karen – Yes. The Lord told me years ago, that he would use the things that I had gone through to help others. And I so clearly see that. It's exciting to help somebody else overcome. It’s empowering. I am not ashamed of my past. I could be, but it's exciting to help somebody else overcome.
Question 6: Dennis - I think you're right where God wants you to be. So, tell me, what does the phrase, The Kingdom of God mean to you today?
Karen - Oh my goodness. Before Bill's death, I would not have been able to answer that. Today the Kingdom of God is, love, support, encouragement, refuge, safety. It’s home.
Dennis - So to you, in your thinking, the Kingdom of God is an internal thing?
Karen - Because of everything that I have gone through in life. Those feelings like I belong, feeling loved and accepted, feeling a part of something, it just wasn't there. But after being loved by Bill the way I was, and his showing me a greater love with God, and his sharing his heaven experience with me, it has made a profound difference in my life.
Dennis - Now when was the near death experience he had?
Karen - It was on January 30, 2011, the first hospitalization after we were married.
Dennis - Did he actually die?
Karen - He did not die. It was an out of body experience. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning. The nurse had come in to check on him and I believe to give him some medication. He was in ICU and she could not rouse him. She was shaking him, “Mr. Crook, Mr. Crook, Bill wake up.” She could not get a response out of him.
Dennis - So she calls a code?
Karen - She did not call a code, but for about 20 minutes she just kept trying to wake him. And it was after Jesus asked Bill if he wanted to stay or come back to me, and he said, “I want to go back to Karen” that he responded to her and woke up.
Dennis – It was about 20 minutes then?
Karen - He was finally able to respond.
Dennis – Incredible. Do you see God's hand in all of this?
Karen – Yes.
Dennis - What is God going to do with you next?
Karen - I'm excited!
Dennis - I think I would be too.
Question 7: Dennis - How do you see it differently than when you first started walking with the Lord?
Karen - Like I said earlier, before Bill's death, I would not even have been able to answer that.
Now, it's the people. With all of the recovery I've done, it's the people. It's reaching up to the Lord. I used to teach my classes that a balanced life is not as you would walk on a balance beam, or a tightrope, putting your arms straight across from you. It's one reaching up. For me it's reaching to A balanced life is… Reaching to God, to learn more and get more, and get closer to him. But, it’s also reaching down to pull somebody up with me.
That's the Kingdom of God, to learn more and get more, and get closer to Him. But, it’s also reaching down to pull somebody up with me. That's the Kingdom. It is one getting others into liking themselves, loving themselves, accepting themselves, but not wanting to stay stuck in their muck. It’s moving forward.