Inspire, Spring 2002

14 Spring 2002 One Christmas Eve I drove with a friend to Queensland in search of Joy. I was hardly prepared for the amazing encounter that was about to unfold. On the first night, as we arrived at the main gates of a Gold Coast camping ground, I became very restless, jumped from the car, and set off to find a telephone. Perhaps I was thinking that my children, now in the care of their grandmother, might be in special need. Several people were waiting to use the phone. I was about to turn back when someone came out of the phone booth and looked at me strangely, as if he recognized me. Instinctively, I followed him. But after turning down two streets, I lost him in the dark. In the fading light I could see a motor vehicle parked in the driveway near to where I was standing. A tree had partially blocked its view. My heart was pounding as I read the license plate and realized that this was my wife’s car. Many other equally miraculous encounters followed over the years. It seemed like every six months God would unsettle me and challenge me to find Joy. The circumstances were way beyond coincidence. In 1983 I was awarded an overseas scholarship to study music at an American university. Nearly seven years had now passed since my wife and I had separated. I managed to find her again in Queensland to gain clearance so my daughters could travel with me to the U.S. In August of 1983 my daughters and I boarded a jet and left Australia. Life in the U.S. was wonderful. I enrolled at Cedarville, and we made many new friends. My daughters attended a nearby school, and God provided a house for us to live in. Though many years had now passed, my daughters and I regularly prayed together for their mother. In late October of 1983, the entire Cedarville campus family came together for a half-day of prayer. Many people prayed for Joy and my family on that day. I didn’t know that at that very moment God was bringing Joy to a point of conversion. Two weeks later we made our way down to Virginia for our first southern-style Thanksgiving meal. We attended a little country church for a special Thanksgiving service where Jim, the friend we were traveling with, shared his concern for my estranged wife. He broke down and wept as he asked the church to pray for my family. I was somewhat surprised by his compassion which resulted in the entire church earnestly praying for Joy. An elderly lady came up to me and said, “I will pray for you tonight, and when I pray God listens.” Joy interrupts: I was married at 18 and by 22 had two little girls. By the age of 24, I was experiencing many dark days of deep depression where I felt I could no longer cope with life. My husband and I had already separated, but on one particular day when I was visiting the girls I remember feeling something snap inside me. I stood in front of my husband and threatened to cut my wrists with a razor if he didn’t give me the car keys. Reluctantly he gave them to me, and in a distraught state of mind I left home. I felt confused and out of control. I got in the car and drove and didn’t stop until many miles had passed, and many years also. In my search for happiness I journeyed most of the way around Australia and lived in many different places, always moving, always searching, and always in all the wrong places. I ended up living on a farm in Queensland keeping goats. I was searching, and my heart was always longing for truth, contentment, and happiness. After Dennis rededicated his life to God, he spent the next five years writing to me regularly. I could see the changes within him. He would tell me about an inner peace and joy he had as he now lived his life in obedience to God, and he revealed a zest for life that I had not seen in him before. He wasn’t going to give up on me, nor our marriage. What he had seemed very real and genuine. But at this time I couldn’t see it the way he did. One day, alone on the farm, I felt that I had come to the end, a very dead end. Life no longer had any purpose; it didn’t matter to me if I never saw another day. I was beginning to have very strong thoughts of suicide. Then from that deep dark pit that I was in, I cried out to God. I called to Him loudly, “God, do you hear me? Do You really exist, and if You do, what am I to You? Do I matter to You? Look at what You have done to me!” I was angry, and all the bitterness inside me was directed at God. My heart continued to cry out, “What is love anyway? And God, if You really exist, I want to know it.” As I cried out I accused Him of all sorts of things. But somehow I began to tell Him how lost and desperate I was and that if He really did exist I would give myself to Him completely. I would give Him my will totally. “Please change me,” I cried. I no longer wanted to be the person that I knew I was. I asked Him to forgive me for all the wrong I had done and to come into my life and change me. I finally found myself believing in Him. Like a small voice within I heard Him speak to my heart. “Joy, I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and again, “I am love—God is love.”