Farewell, Dr. Karyn Purvis
A friend sent me an email, yesterday, and it made my eyes well up and my shoulders droop: Dr. Karyn Purvis ended her long battle with cancer, losing her body to the disease, but confident in a final victory over death through her faith in Christ.
I am not the only parent of an adopted child that she has helped - she was a wise instructor and a beloved "parent" to those with children from hard places. Her tender heart and gentle loving tools and techniques are what first drew me to her life’s work and videos.
Dr. Purvis was the director of the TCU Institute of Child Development and co-author of the best-selling adoption book, The Connected Child. She was a foster parent, a mother to three boys and a grandmother to eight.
And it’s no exaggeration to say that Karyn nurtured tens of thousands of other children, too — many of them children from very hard places — toward healing and health. Her melodic voice (yes, it really was melodic) and soft touch extended through foster and adoptive parents, social workers and mentors across America and far beyond – always gentle, always gracious, always hopeful. She had such a rare gentleness that it was sometimes hard to believe that she always handled children so consistently gentle. From my own experience, it is very difficult to stay patient and calm in the midst of a storm of fury that comes from a tiny child-from-hard-places. But her consistency in those things taught me otherwise.
From her writing to the videos I watched, she dependably modeled the character of Jesus, described so well in I Corinthians 13, “Love is patient, love is kind… It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
I will miss each of these qualities deeply. And hope to see them reflected, daily, in my home. Because of her teachings and example, I will kneel and speak face-to-face with my son, while he hits and spits. I will take his small face in my hands, expressing how precious he is to me, through his storm. I will correct with equal parts firmness and tenderness, and seek connection above all, reflecting the One who created us to connect. This inheritance, passed from one generation to the next, will echo again, as my children become parents and mentors and teachers themselves, long after the name of Karyn Purvis has been forgotten. Could anyone hope for a legacy greater than that?