Keep the Torch Burning: Maury and Karen

Update:  Thank you so much, friends, for praying for Maury and Karen.  I would ask that you please continue to keep the torch burning for Maury, as Karen went to be with the Lord on October 4.  She will be missed.

Maury and Karen McCown started life together much like Chad and I did.  They fell in love at our little Baptist college, got married, and have had all kinds of different adventures and experiences along the path that God laid out for them.

Maury and Karen aren’t the types who just talk about ways to show Christ’s love.  In 2008 they founded The Threaded Leaf Project, a non-profit organization that really helps Cambodian women, older students, and children, providing opportunities for education and independence to those who would have little hope for such things otherwise.  Maury and Karen are intimately involved with their ministry, and currently live six months in the US and six months in Cambodia.  They’re passionate about seeing their women and students succeed, and they show them great respect and kindness in the process.

One month ago, they were right in the middle of a half-year stint in Cambodia, and they seemed thrilled to be back with their Cambodian “family.”  On July 29 they were in a moped accident in which Karen sustained a head injury.  She hasn’t regained consciousness.

Maury was also injured, and they have been in a hospital in Thailand ever since, waiting for Karen to wake up.  It has been a daily roller coaster of good news, bad news, and no news at all.  Recently Maury described some of his feelings:

“I’ve had a few good sobs today here in my room. The kind when all you can do is shake your head back and forth in disbelief like you’re living in some kind of alternate reality or ridiculously realistic nightmare. You start to feel the walls closing in. Everyone and everything is just a little too close or too noisy. I just wanted everyone and everything but me and Karen to vanish for a little while. Let us have each other in silence, in absence of anything. No interruptions. Nothing but us, together and alone.

I wanted to walk into the middle of the room and yell at the top of my lungs for everyone to just BE QUIET for FIVE MINUTES.

But that’s not going to happen.

So I tell her goodnight and come to my room and have another good sob behind my closed and locked bathroom door. Irritated. Confused. Exhausted. Defeated. Tired.”

Maury trusts God’s sovereignty and His purposes.  He believes that God hears his prayers, and later in the same post, he went on to talk about what a good day it ended up being because he knows that God is still fully in control.

But, you can imagine what this must be like for him, watching his precious wife lie there, while he feels powerless to do anything.  We all feel powerless.

But, God is not powerless, nor is He oblivious to Maury and Karen’s situation.  Because I know that many of my readers believe in that power, I am asking you to pray for Maury and Karen.

 Would you join me in asking God to heal Karen’s body, to wake her from this sleep and help her to recover so she can continue in the work that she is so passionate about?

You can keep up with the latest in their story and learn about specific prayer needs by following the Pray for Karen & Maury Facebook page here.

You can learn more about the work they do with the Threaded Leaf Project here and here.

Thank you for your prayers.  Maury’s new rallying cry is “keep the torch burning” for Karen.  Together we can constantly keep her name lifted up, praying that God will work miracles in her life.  To Him be the glory for all things.