Kim's Core Values

In preparation for launching this upcoming fundraising campaign, along with it being five years since Kim passed, my wife, Carrie, and I re-watched Kim’s memorial. I remember vividly, back in September 2021, walking out of the sanctuary after the memorial and thinking about how proud I was of Kim and to have been her husband for 13 years. That feeling remains true today whenever I think of her.
 
In watching her memorial again, I was struck at how consistently everyone spoke about Kim and who she was to them. They spoke of her strong personality, her sense of humour, her wisdom, her servant and generous heart, and her down-to-earth practicality. They also spoke about her faith and the strength and peace she had in facing her own mortality.
 
In preparation for recognizing the five years that Kim has no longer been with us, I have been reflecting on the values that Kim lived out in her life. As I boiled these down to three core things that really helped define her, I was amazed at how those things were also spoken about repeatedly at her memorial.
In addition to her faith, which served as the backdrop and motivating factor behind all of what Kim sought to be and do, the three values that played a huge part in making Kim who she was were People, Practicality, and Generosity.    
 
Despite being an introvert, Kim loved being with people. She loved organizing family get-togethers, spending time with her parents, siblings, and in-laws, and seeing her friends, many of whom she had known for over 25 years, if not longer.  For most of her adult life, Kim was the social hub of her family and friends. In our post-high-school years, each Friday afternoon would involve a call or text to Kim to see what was cooking that weekend. Her phone would light up as people would check in, and often the Reitkerk house would be abuzz with friends popping by to hang out, or being used as a meeting place before going out.
Her love of people continued on in her workplace at Elim Village. Kim was never in love with her work, though she was amazing at it, but what got her excited to go to work were the people in her office and the friends she made there. People made everything better for Kim. Kim loved having fun, hearing good stories, and being with those she loved.
 
Kim not only loved the people in her life, but she also loved efficiency and practicality. If there was a better way to do something, she was all over it. At first glance, some of her shortcuts or efficiencies didn’t make total sense, but once you saw the whole picture and how it all fit together in her amazing mind, you could quickly see how she had trimmed the fat, got to the heart of the matter, and made everything easier. For Kim, it was all about practicality. Things needed to make sense, needed to balance out, and needed to make life easier for someone or some organization.
Kim had both her feet firmly planted on the ground, and in my own academia and pastoring, if I started getting too high into the clouds or heavens in my thinking or preaching, she quickly knew how to reach up and pull me back down, to remind me why I was doing what I was doing.  Kim worked with numbers for most of her career. Number made sense to her–they were logical, fair, and they provided practical answers. You could see them, prove them, and balance them–they stood for something real and concrete. At home, she loved to puzzle; the larger and more complex the puzzle, the better. Somehow, she could just see it, and attacked each puzzle not simply with the golden rule of borders first, but in what she saw to be the most efficient and practical way possible. In Kim’s life, just like in puzzling and math, everything had its practical role and practical place.
 
Kim was also a very generous person. People could sometimes get a first impression of Kim as someone who was hard or unfriendly, but this was just Kim being Kim. Once you got to know Kim, you realized just how deep her heart went and how much she cared for people. Often when it came to donations, Kim and I would come up with numbers in our heads on what we should give–her number was often at least 50% more than what I thought. She loved giving to practical causes, especially when people were truly in need. If she saw or heard of a friend or family member in need of help, Kim thought hard and seriously about how she could lend assistance, and she never thought twice about actually doing something. In combining her love of friends and family, her strong Christian faith, and her instinct for practicality and efficiency, she desired to meet the needs of people with an open and giving heart. Kim knew how much she had been blessed, and she desired to share that blessing with others.
 
It is out of these values that meant so much to Kim, along with the context of her personal cancer journey, that we are launching our fundraising initiative later this week. We are getting more and more excited to share this with you. It is just taking a final couple of days to dot some i’s and cross some t’s. But please stay tuned!

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