Joy's Story

This is from Joy's speech at the Single Moms' Valentine's Banquet 2024:

On The 27th of this month, it will be 11 years since I left my abuser. While that is not all I'm going to talk about tonight, It is what brought me to the truths about God's love that I have learned over the past few years.

When we first started planning this event, I knew the theme was supposed to be about love, but when I started praying about what I was supposed to talk about, all I kept hearing was the word fear. I ignored that for a while, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this is what I was supposed to talk about.

I have spent so many years of my life living in fear. Even the moment I gave my heart to Jesus at 4 years old was centered in fear. I was watching something on a Christian TV channel and a video came on of a little girl running through the forest. It was obvious she was scared. She tripped over something and fell and Jesus came and helped her up. Even though I understood what it was to be a Christian, as I look back on it now, it was because I understood the fear that little girl was feeling.

As I was growing up and into adulthood I let fear of just being myself and fear of not being good enough just by myself lead me into a string of bad choices and “relationships”. When I met my ex husband, I had stepped away from the church and was working all the time. I was so lonely, and being in my late 20s I was terrified of being alone forever. All I had ever wanted to be was a wife and mother. Instead of letting God work that out, I got impatient and decided to take care of it on my own. How many of us know how well that doesn't work?

Throughout the years I've always been somebody's sister, somebody's best friend. It's never been something about me in particular. It was always somebody else's worth that defined who I was as a person. I had a friend tell me once that they had known me for years but didn't really know who I was because of me always talking about other people and never actually about myself. That really struck me hard, but I didn't know how to fix it because that's who I always had been.

Then I met my ex-husband and slowly even the little bits of who I was was taken from me. Instead he tried to put what his version of me was in my head. That I was obsessive because I wanted to know where he was when he disappeared for days on end. That I was crazy when in reality he was just projecting his own issues onto me.

Once I left him I realized that I had no idea who I was anymore and I've spent the last almost 11 years trying to figure that out. Finding new names for myself that don't include somebody else's name to show my worth.

Like:

Survivor

Loved

Accepted

Worthy

Never in a million years would I have foreseen where I am today. I was in an abusive marriage and scared for my life. Terrified of what would happen if I would leave. Always on the brink of financial ruin. I’ve been homeless. I’ve been on every state assistance I could get. I’ve had my power shut off multiple times. I’ve not had a vehicle and had to figure out where I was going to find the money to ride the bus to work. I’ve been unemployed and 7 months pregnant where no one would hire me. I’ve dealt with a drug addicted, cheating, abusive husband.

I spent those years living in fear. Fear of leaving. Fear of staying. Fear of being alone. Fear of being a single mother. There aren’t many women that choose to be a single mother. Most of the time they have that thrust upon them.

A few years ago, I was praying about what God wanted me to do in ministry. I distinctly heard him ask how could I expect to have success in any ministry when my house wasn’t in order. You see, I’ve never been a great housekeeper, but in the last 8 years or so, something just switched off in my brain. I used to be the “hostess with the mostest”. I loved having people over. When I was with my ex, he constantly was bringing people over or letting them stay with us that I had no say over. It didn’t matter what I wanted. Then after he got out of prison and moved back to Springfield, I went into hiding. I didn’t want anyone knowing where I lived and I told no one. There are still very few people that know where I live or have ever been in my house. I moved into a place that I wasn’t all that excited to be living in and I started dating a guy that made me feel like I never quite measured up, and then COVID happened and it was like something just shut down in me.

My house just kept getting worse and worse, to the point that it was completely overwhelming to me to even think about cleaning. So, instead of doing anything about it, I just ignored it. I have spent years in fear having people tell me how strong they thought I was while listening to the voices inside me telling me what a fraud I was and if people only knew how disgusted they would be. I’ve wasted so many opportunities because I was afraid to walk through that pain.

God sometimes lets things happen to make you face that fear. I had some things happen late last year that made me finally face my house, the fear and the overwhelming feelings. I couldn’t take the stranglehold, literally at times, that it had on me. It is nowhere done, but for the first time in years, my house is not an embarrassment to me. Some of you may have seen the picture I shared on Facebook recently of my kitchen table. That is the story behind that picture.

In all of that fear God has shown me a few things I’d like to share with you tonight.

You are loved

The scripture we used as a theme for tonight is 1 Corinthians 13:13, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” I always wondered why this verse states that love is greater than faith and hope, and then it hit me one day that faith and hope are our responses to God. The Greek word for love in this verse is Agape love which by definition is the highest form of love; God’s love for us.

So when 1 John 4:18, it says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” it’s saying that God, in his love for us, is stronger than the fear inside you.

The God who created the galaxies and everything around us, looked down at this world and thought this world needed one of each of you. He uniquely designed each one of you. He said in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you.”

That fear that you feel inside, God wants you to know that

You are accepted

In Ephesians 1:4 it says “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault.”

Wow, Even before God made the world, he chose each one of you in this room tonight. That’s pretty incredible.

God also wants you to know that You are worthy.

In Ephesians 2:10 it says, “For we are God’s masterpiece.”

There is a Japanese form of art called Kintsugi. An artist will take a broken piece of pottery and put it back together. But instead of trying to hide the broken parts, the artist will highlight those broken pieces in gold.

Tonight I want to tell you that fear may have you feeling like you are broken. That the pieces may never be able to be put back together, but God wants you to know that he can change those names the world and people have spoken over you in the past to words like Beloved, Accepted, Worthy. He can take your broken pieces and make them beautiful.

God laid this song by Natalie Grant on my heart for this evening. The lyrics are at each of your places. Let the message of ‘It’s Clean’ fill YOUR heart as I sing.

“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD ’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the L ORD for the display of His splendor.” Isaiah 61:1-3