Finding Joy in the Broken Pieces

By Joy O

In Finding Joy in the Broken Pieces, Joy takes us along on her personal journey through brokenness, restoration and redemption. Where do we run when life circumstances find you broken on the floor 8, 000 miles from home? How do we heal when our feet are planted firmly in paradise? What do you do with a life restored and taken to new heights of redemption? Let's find out...

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781973682691

Joy O

Joy was raised in Georgetown, South Carolina and is a lover of all things Southern. A veteran military spouse, Joy resides in Colorado Springs, CO with her husband and three children. Her passion is to share her experience with the broken in hopes that they will discover the revelation that God's promises don't change when life circumstances take a turn for the worse.

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Copyright © 2020 Joy O.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-8268-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8270-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8269-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020900635

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/10/2020

For the world changers:

You are not victims, but survivors

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Bottle Beautifully Mixed

CHAPTER 2 Shattered

CHAPTER 3 Scattered

CHAPTER 4 Motion

CHAPTER 5 Rolling: A Long Journey Home

CHAPTER 6 Friction

CHAPTER 7 Shaping

CHAPTER 8 Tides

CHAPTER 9 Form

CHAPTER 10 Transform

CHAPTER 11 Direction

CHAPTER 12 Stay

CHAPTER 13 Reflect: A New Home

CHAPTER 14 Landing: A Painted Picture

PREFACE

Humble Beginnings

Georgetown, South Carolina: a hidden gem. The third oldest town in South Carolina, nestled on the coast, beautifully centered between Charleston and Myrtle Beach. The air is warm, tea is sweet, porches are big, and hugs are plentiful. As the old country song said it best, everybody knows everybody and everybody calls you friend. I was seven years old when my family moved from Alabama to this cute little town. My father, a minister, moved all seven of us to this state for his assignment to a new church. Yes, you read that right! I am one of seven children. My mother is a saint! Growing up a pastor’s daughter, I knew the church was my family. If the doors to the church were open, then we were there. Folding bulletins, setting out chairs, greeting, keeping the nursery, and quietly waiting in the back of the church for those long after-service conversations were my childhood norm. Growing up surrounded by so much truth and grace was truly incredible. God’s love was the fragrance, Jesus’s love for us was our inheritance, and the obvious works of the Holy Spirit were the guideposts for our destiny. Church was family, church was home, and church was the mold that shaped how I perceived the things of this world. Even though we were homeschooled, my mother wanted us to stay involved, so we were all very active in piano lessons, dance, baseball, softball, soccer—you name it and I’m sure at least one of us siblings did it. Around the age of eleven, I discovered that I was pretty good at softball. Playing the game was completely natural, and it quickly became my obsession.

The Shift

Playing softball was all I could think about! If I wasn’t playing ball, then I would go down to the local recreation center and watch my brothers or any other game, including the little T-ball players. I taught myself how to keep the scorebook for my dad’s team and would sit in the dugout on an old paint bucket and record every pitch, every hit, and every error. This hobby filled my tank and gave me a grit and determination to literally knock everything out of the park. What was the harm in having a hobby, right? Everyone needs a hobby, but for me, playing softball was a full-on obsession. Missing youth group was excusable as long as it was for practice or a game, and so the shift began. I don’t remember the defining moment, but somewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen, church and my spiritual relationship just … well, fizzled. Home life was the same, but my focus was everywhere except on the condition of my heart. The weeks ran into months and months into years. My number one priority was to make the varsity high school team—which I did, not just in softball, but in volleyball as well. There it was: my identity, a jock. Sports and making good enough grades to not get benched were all I wanted, until they weren’t.

What’s Next?

According to Strength Finders 2.0 by Tom Rath, my number one strength is being an activator. When can we start?, What are we waiting on?, and What is next? are among the questions that swirl around in my head at any given moment! Don’t you want to be my friend already? Time was never meant to be wasted, and there is always something to do inside of any waiting period. Cue junior year of high school. After meeting with my academic advisor, I found out that all I needed was four classes to graduate. Instantly, my activator was, well, activated! Why would I stick around for an entire year of high school if I could go off to college? I can remember telling all my teammates and coaches that I was forfeiting my senior year of playing sports to head off to college. Everyone thought I was crazy, and nobody understood why I wouldn’t want to chill out for my senior year, cut out for lunch, hit the beach, and enjoy my final season as a senior. My parents were supportive of my decision, and I was already gone in my mind. College! Watch out, world—I am coming for you! Ready … activate!

College, wow! Now as a mother of three children, two of whom are daughters, I would gladly take suggestions on how to time-warp them through this phase of life. I know, I know, unrealistic parental sheltering. After a few years at a junior college, I decide to transfer to the University of South Carolina to snag my bachelor’s degree. Hello, university life!

MRS Degree

I couldn’t wait to move up to Columbia, South Carolina, and start this next phase of college life. My high school best friend was already studying at the university and had organized the renting of a home for six girls not too far from campus. Sounds like something straight out of the MTV Real World playbook, right? Weeks before we were due to move in, two of the girls on our lease backed out, quickly being replaced with two guy friends. Yeah, you see where this is going!

A curly-headed, big-eyed farm boy from Dillon, South Carolina, was one of the two. Y’all you will never meet a funnier soul on this planet. I think I spent the next five months laughing until I was, as they say in the South, in stitches. I’m not sure who decided they liked whom, but somewhere around the month of October, our friendship was developing into something more. That Thanksgiving, we both went home to meet each other’s families, and by February, I was pregnant! Didn’t see that coming, did ya? Neither did I! Not a smooth move by the oldest pastor’s daughter, I might add! I don’t say that out of shame, but more to knock myself off of any pedestal that anyone tries to put me on throughout this book.

That May, my daddy married us in what I still think was the most beautiful candlelight wedding ever thrown together in four months.

Stuck

What does it mean to be stuck? My stuck looked a little less like not being able to move and more like not choosing to move. I believe we all can reference a time in our life that we were stuck. It’s not as much about being in a total rut with life but that creeping, slow path of an undeveloped and stunted season. This is exactly where I was and how I felt. Remember, I told you that from my adolescence, I allowed my relationship with God to totally fizzle, but that was about to change. Change was coming in my favorite way that God works: in the abruptness of life.

Becoming a mom was beautiful, but also extremely lonely. My circle of friends mostly consisted of the passing hello from another mom during my daily walk. This social butterfly had quickly become socially awkward. After our wedding my, husband was offered a management position at the restaurant we had both served at while dating. The pay was great for an unfinished college graduate, and it provided the necessary benefits to get our family off to a strong start. One thing the restaurant did not provide was favorable hours for a healthy family life. One and two o’clock in the morning waiting for bar customers to leave were not in my fairytale story of family life. I was so lonely! No matter how much I talked to that cute little baby boy, he never would talk back. But through it all, there were some deep roots of faith that were planted firm. My soul was thirsting to tap the geyser of the wellspring of life that was stirring (probably from the prayers of my parents). The distance between my husband and me was miles long. Every dream, every fairytale, every happily-ever-after that my young mind created about marriage was busted. As a couple, we actually had more of a relationship as friends, and the tone of love was mute! At the time, my oldest brother served at a church in the upstate of South Carolina, and he randomly texted me to ask if we had found a church. Um, church? We had never attended church together as a couple, ever! My brother, in all his wisdom, said, Well, Joy, you know we have our sermons online now, and the series that my pastor is doing is on the topic of being stuck. I think you would really like it. The seed was planted. I had heard my brother talk about his pastor and actually visited their church once while in the upstate. One afternoon, I looked up the podcast and ran through the listings of sermons until I reached the first teachings of the Stuck series. My hand couldn’t write notes fast enough! This was the condition of my heart! The Holy Spirit met me there in that tiny apartment in Columbia, South Carolina, and breathed life back into my spirit. It was in the suddenly that God moved and removed me from my place of stuckness. That day, all the dreams that were revealed to me as a child came back to life.

Nagging Wife

The shift of my heart changed everything! I became aware of God’s goodness again. Did God ever stop being good? Nope, I just stopped seeing it. If you are married, then you know how frustrating it can be to live on two separate planets when it comes to a particular issue. I guess I shouldn’t say that my husband and I lived spiritually on different planets, but the disconnect was there. Don’t get me wrong; my husband was also from the South, which meant he grew up going to the church every Sunday and spent his entire childhood going to a Christian school! Matter of fact, this man I married was a wellspring of biblical knowledge! Knowledge was there but, just like with me, there was a gap that pushed the knowing of God to the back burner. Our marriage was getting worse by the day! I couldn’t take the late nights anymore, and I started spending more and more time traveling those back roads home to visit my parents. I knew I couldn’t change him. I knew my nagging would only distance him from me, and so I did the only thing that I knew would make a difference: I prayed. I prayed fierce prayers, the kind that leave you sweating and out of breath. I would wake in the middle of the night and pray over my husband as he slept! I called out to his spirit and spoke into the destiny that lived inside of him. If you are a wife reading this, I am telling you now, stop nagging and start praying—and by the way, you can’t use the Well, I am praying for you as fuel inside of your nagging! Anyway, back to being stuck. Once again, God was about to meet me inside of the suddenly. One afternoon, I had driven down to Georgetown and was sitting in my mom’s salon chair when my phone rang. My husband was on the other end of the line. I still remember every word as I sat there staring at the red leather of the chair. Hey, babe, I just wanted to call you and tell you that I just left the restaurant owner’s office and told him that I was quitting managing. I’m not giving a notice because I need to get out of this toxic environment for us. I don’t know what we will do. I don’t know where we will live, but we will figure something out. The peace that passes all understanding was our portion, and although it was extremely scary, I knew in my heart of hearts that this was a true beginning.

Army Strong

Full surrender and total dependency on the giver of all good things was the new path. Did that make it less scary?