remembering kim newlen

Little could she imagine.

Mark and Kim met in Charlottesville back in 1982. He was state director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She served on the staff of the Campus Crusade for Christ.

A Gaffney, SC, native, Kim shared quarters on Old Lynchburg Road with three roommates, all friends of Mark.

“It was a fun, lively house, a great place to hang out,” Mark recalled. “I’d conveniently drop by around 5 or 5:30 hoping to get invited to dinner, which I did many times.”

One thing led to another.

“Kim and I became friends,” Mark continued. “We started dating. Dated for about two years. There was just a comfortableness from the very beginning.”

They married on May 4, 1985.

Four years later, they arrived at Collegiate.

Mark was the boys’ varsity basketball coach and a Middle School physical education teacher. Kim taught language arts to 6th grade girls until June1994 when she left to be full time mom to their young daughter Kali.

Very soon, life began to move quickly as she found myriad opportunities to pursue.

Her community outreach became legendary.

Among her many endeavors, she founded Sweet Monday and, to celebrate the non-profit’s tenth anniversary, organized the World’s Greatest Tea Party.

She was a motivational speaker, ministry leader, inventor, and published author.

She had a ready smile, emotional and spiritual strength, and unwavering faith, all of which served her well when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, when it returned with virulence during the summer of 2013, and when her doctors told her last fall that they had expended all their options.

Kim died on February 8, 2014. 

She left Mark, Kali (who graduated from James Madison this past May with a cumulative 3.6 GPA, 4.0 for her final semester), her extended family, and a legion of friends and admirers.

Anyone who knew her will never forget her.

Hopefully, those who didn’t will get to know her through Mark’s thoughts and reflections.

On her positive attitude.

Kim had a deep appreciation for everything anyone did for her.  She genuinely loved people. She would drop everything else to encourage whoever she was with on a consistent, daily basis. 

She had a supernatural faith. It was like the Lord living through her, and she just reached out to people. She wanted always to be doing something for someone else and not have people doing for her. 

On being the “receiver” rather than the “giver.”

It was hard, but she just accepted it. She didn’t want anybody to feel sorry for her. She wanted everyone to know that God was important in her life. She wanted other people to come into a personal relationship with the Lord. That really was her ultimate goal every day of her life. 

When the doctor told her she should call in hospice, that the treatment wasn’t working, she immediately said, “I want to tape some letters.”  She was too weak to write, but she was lucid all the way. Her letters were very powerful. She wrote me a letter which I read after she passed. She wrote a letter to Kali which she read on her graduation day. 

She didn’t miss a beat in terms of encouraging others. When people came to see her, she was just so grateful and compassionate. 

She held true to her faith. She never wavered to her dying breath. She was ready to come home. She believed that God was calling her home. She was ready and prepared. She always said that life was short, that we’re here to honor the Lord every day anyway. She held true to the end.

On the lessons she taught as she dealt with adversity.

Kim had tremendous faith. She said God doesn’t make mistakes. She was willing to take the challenges and the illness. She continued to trust. 

She was amazingly positive. She handed out smiley-face mints to the doctors, the surgeons, the nurses, and the people in the waiting rooms. 

She lit up the room wherever she went: in a doctor’s office, on a plane going to (the) MD Anderson (Clinic in Houston), everywhere.

She would be the one who was cheering everyone else up. She didn’t want the attention focused on her. She reached out to others every step of the way…amazingly so.

I am the most blessed man on earth to get to experience Kim’s love, compassion, and vision on a daily basis. She was always my biggest cheerleader, the wind beneath my sails, my hero. 

On her legacy.

She was the most amazing, incredible, Godly, compassionate, caring person I’ve ever known. She just saw the world through different eyes. She saw the world through Jesus’s eyes, and she lived that way. Each person was important to her. She saw each person as a child of God who was worthy of respect and dignity. 

She loved people. The impact she had was just incredible. She touched so many lives. People who just met her one time were changed. Her memory will never leave me or the many people that she touched.