About Joy

Life is more than smiles, sunsets, & kisses. It’s also tears, doubts, and boatloads of poo. I write about it all.

Joy in this Journey in a nutshell: Joy is a Christian woman writing through grief and loss (our oldest child was born with severe special needs and passed away in 2008 at the age of 8), depression, and the overhaul of my faith in the face of suffering. I write naked (visit this page to learn about what that means), so if that makes you uncomfortable, you may prefer other blogs. This Journey includes adventures in living a fully-dimensioned life of faith — one that not only believes but also acts as James described: faith without works is dead, missions and charity, suffering, doubt and questions about theology, parenting, women’s issues, worship, and the Bible. I’ve been blogging for over six years and writing since second grade.

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I snapped the picture in my blog header on a weekend getaway with my husband. We sat on the shore of one of the Great Lakes, soaking in the quiet, and I began envying the seagulls floating, gliding, soaring through the sunshine, living the carefree glorious life I dreamed about as a girl.

I’ve done very little soaring as an adult.

Instead, my life more resembles the plant in this photo. I admit it, I wallowed in a bit of self-pity as I imagined it clutching tightly to a rock while battered by relentless wind and waves in summer and encased in ice and snow all winter. But as I watched it bob and wave in the breeze with defiance and maybe even cheer, my longing to be a seagull dissolved and my admiration for the plant grew. It grows despite apparent lack of nourishing soil. It will not be beaten down. It is stronger and more inspiring than a soaring seagull, and it has become my mascot.

My name is Joy (hence my blog name), and I began Joy In This Journey on Blogger in the summer of 2005. I’ve written to survive since I first learned how to put words into sentences. When I started the blog, I was the mother of three young children, one of whom (our oldest, Ellie) had profound special needs, and I was desperate to find an outlet for my words. My days were consumed with diapers, feedings, medical treatments/appointments/therapies, surgeries, emergencies, and hospitalizations, and I was losing who I was and my memories of those days in the fatigue fog. It was also a better way to share funny parenting stories than sending emails or updating our Carepage. In 2007, we added a fourth child, also with some significant medical issues. We were officially a “double-whammy family.”

I began to write about the effect of this kind of life on my faith. I tried to keep a sense of humor about it all by sharing stories of the ridiculous scenarios I found myself in. I do not have it all together and refuse to pretend that I do.

Ellie died in the fall of 2008, and my blog became a place to write through my grief, depression, and overhaul of faith. Eventually, I moved my posts from October 2008 to the present to WordPress. (You can read still old posts from before Ellie passed on my old Blogger blog.)

Many people are afraid to speak openly about depression, grieving, and spiritual crises. We think that good Christians just aren’t supposed to be depressed or doubt their faith, so we fear the shame of admitting it. We’ve heard too many health-and-wealth preachers tell us that if we do all the right things, life will be full of success and devoid of tragedy. This is false teaching. And when we experience suffering (and we all do), we carry tremendous burdens of guilt.

The only way to escape that guilt and heal is to talk openly and honestly. To listen and to love each other in the midst of the pain and the questions.

This is my mission for Joy In This Journey. You are not alone. You can keep going. We can do it together.

If you are struggling, losing hope grieving, depressed… please don’t go it alone. I would love to connect with you. Please email me (joy [at] joyinthisjourney [dot] com) or contact me through Twitter.