Pain has shaped my purpose. It has carved out the mission that fuels SEK Camp—not just a place, but a sanctuary where suffering meets healing, where the weight of trauma is acknowledged, and where brokenness does not have the final word.

 

SEK Camp was created in 2021 after Keath and I lost our daughter, Sara Elizabeth Killebrew, to COVID. In our grief, we realized that suffering has a way of isolating people, making them feel as if they are alone in their pain. But we also knew that healing happens in community, through faith, through the work of our hands, and through the resilience God builds in us. From this loss, SEK Camp was born, a place where young people could find healing, restoration, and purpose through therapy, agriculture, and faith.

 

I never imagined I would have to walk through so much to become a faithful disciple. But God’s fingerprints are all over my life, tracing through moments of devastation yet never leaving me destroyed. The hardships, the losses, the battles—I have learned that they are not proof of my abandonment but of my refinement.

 

I stand because of the strength of those who have carried me, those who have lifted me higher than I could ever climb alone. Family—both given and chosen—has been my foundation. I have not walked this road alone, and neither do the children who come to SEK Camp. They arrive feeling isolated, burdened by wounds too heavy for their young hearts. But here, we teach them that suffering does not mean defeat. Instead, we equip them with the tools to problem-solve, to rebuild, to trust that resilience is possible.

 

Trauma is anything that shatters safety, anything that distorts love into something frightening. The world tells us to avoid suffering at all costs, yet suffering is inevitable. More than that, it is necessary. What if we removed suffering entirely? What a dreadful place the world would be! Without pain, we would never learn, never grow, never love deeply. Malcolm Muggeridge was right—if we never suffered, we would become unbearable, inflated with our own self-importance, blind to the refining fire that suffering brings.

 

At SEK Camp, we do not erase pain—we walk through it together. We teach these children that love and suffering are intertwined, that the gifts of love often come wrapped in the ache of loss. But even in that, there is hope. Love remains, and healing is real.

 

If you never want to suffer, then never love. But what a lonely life that would be. I choose to love. And in that love, I choose to suffer alongside those who need it most.

 

This is the heart of SEK Camp: a place where healing grows, where roots dig deep, and where the broken are never left to stand alone. The Founding Family of SEK—Keath, Sara Elizabeth, and me—planted this seed in sorrow, but from it has grown something far greater than we ever imagined.