I was raised in a church in Michigan City, IN. When I was eleven years old my brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was fourteen years old. His accident was horrifying, and I knew it would change my life, but I never realized how much it had, until I was older.
After my brother’s death, my parents went in total different directions. My dad hated God. My mother consumed herself in the church. Soon my dad started drinking and started abusing my mom verbally and eventually even physically. Then he started abusing me physically and mentally. So by the age of 13 my parents were divorcing. My dad was becoming an alcoholic and didn’t even realize what he was doing. He hardly ever paid child support, which left my mom working two jobs to try and make enough money to support her and I.
Mom and I ended up living in government housing on the lower side of the city, which is where my problems started. My mom was gone a lot and I was forced to grow up quickly, taking care of things at home. I began to see guys, which led to premarital sex by the age of 15.
When I was 17 years old my mom decided to move down to Princeton, IN to help my brother start his restaurant. She decided to leave me with an older sister and her husband. I was a junior in high school and just wanted to finish high school there. That became my goal: stay focused and finish school. I was working and going to school, which became pretty difficult. I worked at night and then went home to do homework. The more tired I became the more my sister and I fought. It was time for me to leave. I moved back in with my father who was now drinking more than ever. I lived there for a month and then I got kicked out. I’m not really sure why, but I have always felt like it was because dad felt like he might hurt me again and so I needed to go.
By this time I had a steady boyfriend and his parents were Christians. They told me maybe their older son and his wife would let me stay with them. I was thinking it would be good to be around Christians. Well it turned out, the son wasn’t a Christian. I did stay with them, and they also lived in government housing, so my lifestyle started getting worse there. I started drinking alcohol and fighting all the time. Gangs were everywhere, however, I just couldn’t see myself being controlled by anyone, after being out on my own for a year. Gang leaders controlled their people so I avoided the gang scene!!! I thank God every day for that.
Soon alcohol and partying turned into drugs and alcohol every day. I was taking speed to stay awake to work and go to school. Alcohol was my downer to sleep at night.
I remember the day that I realized God hadn’t left me. It has stayed so clear to me all these years. I slept in a water heater room, on a small cot that I had to fold my legs up to sleep on, but I didn’t complain. I wasn’t sleeping on the street, and they were very nice to let me stay there. They were doing drugs and partying pretty hard one night and I went to my cot, because I had a huge history/government test the next day that was going to make me either pass or fail the class! I wanted to graduate!!
I wanted to sleep so badly, and it just seemed like they were getting louder and louder. Now, you have to know, that I hadn’t prayed since I was 12 or 13 years old... I’m not even sure I knew how BUT, I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling in that room.
“God, what am I doing here?” I questioned.
I felt God's response to me, “Joyce, I never left you, you left me.” I thought yeah Joyce, you’re crazy, and there is no way that was God. God would never answer you… I lived in the ghetto and was doing things God would never approve of! He wouldn’t speak to me. I rolled over and ignored what I had heard in my heart. Once again I was ignoring God. I just didn’t feel like I needed God or anyone else’s help; or so I thought!!
I started noticing little things that were odd. I know now that it was God being the father that I needed. He was watching and keeping me out of things that I shouldn’t have been involved with. STRANGE!! There were a couple things that I remember off hand. One was how every time I was headed to a party that I shouldn’t have been at, my car either broke down, ran out of gas, or end up with a flat tire. There were so many things like this…all of a sudden someone was watching out for me again?!! Weird, I thought. Another thing I remember was how I loved journalism class… I loved to write. Now I know why. It is freeing to pour your heart out!!
I would be writing poems in class and the poems would be about things that I needed to hear, like wake up calls. I wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, but they were always good words.
In the meantime, I got into a fight with the people I lived with and ended up moving in with another friend and his family. I was still dating my high school sweetheart and we were going to be married as soon as we graduated in May. We thought July would work. One night I was at my friend’s house and my boyfriend had gone to the beach with some friends and apparently decided to try some drugs. When he came to the house that I was staying at, he was angry at me about everything. He was influenced by the drugs and beat me until I had bruises everywhere. When he stopped hitting me, I told him that he would never see me again. That was in May 1985, and to this day, I have never seen him again.
I didn’t know what to do. I called my mom in southern Indiana and told her I had no insurance and didn’t want to go to the hospital because they would arrest him and he was just out of it and would be fine tomorrow. She asked if I could drive down to Princeton, IN or if I had somewhere to get away from him. I jumped in my car with no money and nothing that I owned, not that I had much anyway. The little I had, was my treasure.
I planned to stay there just long enough to heal and then I was heading out. I didn’t want to live in a little country town. Then I figured out that God had other plans. Still He was right beside me, never leaving me!!!
I started being a hostess at my brother’s restaurant in Princeton. I met a lady that was so sad, that she would come in for coffee. I started talking to her and found out that her husband died of cancer just two month prior to meeting her. He had been only 42 years old. She came to have coffee to just get out of the house. We became friends and she told me that I needed to learn Evansville, because it was a larger city and I would probably like it better.
One day we were headed to Evansville, IN to go shopping and she was going to show me around. We had to stop by her house before we left town and there was a handsome guy sitting on her couch. At this point, I had no idea who he was, but he was cute. We got in the car and she told me it was her son. Well long story short, he is my husband now. We have been together for 33 years and married for 31 years. We have a beautiful daughter who is 28 years old and an amazing son who is 20 years old. Speaking of my daughter, that takes me to the final part of my testimony. She was an angel God sent to help change my life.
After she was born we met a couple that we started bar hopping with every weekend leaving her with his sister or my mom. We would pick her up and bring her home and tuck her in bed, like the good parents that we wanted to be!! One night when my daughter was 5yrs old, I was tucking her in bed and she said, “Mommy, don’t kiss me, you stink, I don’t like it, please!”
I lost it. I cried myself to sleep that night. I thought back on how I felt with my dad’s beer breath breathing on me when he was hurting me, or his beer breath screaming in my face. Thinking I HATE that smell, and here I was doing the same thing to my beautiful baby! Not hurting her physically, but mentally doing the same to her.
I laid in bed that night looking at the ceiling and said “God, what am I doing?” Yes, the exact words I used in that water heater room 17 years earlier. I didn’t feel God say anything that night. I went off to sleep. The next morning, I turned the TV on, flipping for cartoons for the kids I was watching. I flipped past a woman who was talking, but I noticed at the bottom of the screen her name was Joyce also. So, I stopped to see what it was.
In her message she was talking about her father hurting her and how she always felt like it was her fault. But, she talked about how God had healed her heart and she was able to forgive both of her parents. I wanted that, too!! I started crying, and fell to my knees at my couch. God heard my heart, I had no words, and then I heard in my heart again “Joyce, I never left you, you left me!” My heart was melting as it was receiving Gods words.
I knew then that I needed to repent and ask God to forgive me of my sins. That was in September of 1995. From that day on, we began to go to church and I started working in the church office. I became best friends with my pastor’s wife, who was my age. I learned a lot from her and started praying the prayer that Jabez prayed in 1 Chronicles 4:10. I wanted God to use me and widen my borders to help with His kingdom, yet never let me hurt people. Never in my wildest dreams, did I ever imagine that God would so richly bless this sinner with all the love of my husband, children and friends. I am so blessed.
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| Joyce (on the left) with her husband and family. |
Gods answer was simple: “Open your own shop and widen your borders to spread my word.” So my salon has been open 10 years now. I get to talk to people every day, I encourage them when life is getting too hard, to find where their help comes from.
Without Christ I am nothing, but through Christ I can do all things!
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"A Perspective Change"
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