This weekend has been a test for me. I bought two nights at a hotel in South Bend, IN so I could go with my girlfriend to a music festival…and then my tires blew out. Damn.
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
Needless to say, my bank account is around -$187 right now, and I couldn’t get a refund on the hotel, so I’m currently in another state with absolutely no money to my name.
But I’m not as worried as I should be. Because I know God will provide a way for me, one way or another. He always has and He will again.
There’s a verse I love about how God will provide in times of trouble:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns—and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
Luke 12:25-27
He makes sure the birds are provided for, and He loves us even more than them! We’re His kids, and what a good Father we have! Even when times get rough, I fully believe things will come together in the end. They always have before, and they will again.
Don’t worry yourself sick, but trust that you’re in good hands.
I just finished a fantastic book by Jordan Lee Dooley called Embrace Your Almost. I picked it up on a whim while shopping at Target, and let me tell you, it was full of exactly what I needed to hear.
I just got passed over for my dream internship. After dropping out of the music therapy program twice and fighting with all my might to get through all of the program’s coursework, I fell just short of where I wanted to be. Again. I was almost pissed at God for letting me down once more. Couldn’t He snap His fingers and just make me a music therapist already? I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I had everything planned out perfectly.
But our plans are not His plans. And as I learned through this book, things don’t always turn out as expected. God uses these moments where we fall short of achieving our dreams to refine us, to break us down so we can rebuild stronger than ever.
As Ecclesiastes, my favorite book of emo poetry — ahem, Biblical wisdom — states, there is a season for everything under the sun. If our dreams feel like they’re not progressing, perhaps it’s a sign that we need to slow down and take time to work on ourselves. Maybe it’s a boot camp season, as Dooley puts it in her book, where we put everything we got into becoming the best versions of ourselves so we’re ready for when the next adventure calls.
I’m learning to slow down and enjoy this stage of life, even if I’m not where I ultimately want to end up. If you haven’t achieved your dream just yet, remember there’s a reason why this is exactly where you need to be right now. God makes no mistakes — He’s the author of all of our stories, and everything will work out in His timing.
It’s been three days since my last argument with a Facebook asshole about LGBTQ stuff, and I’m still simmering from it. I think I let things like that affect me way more than I should. Maybe I really am a bleeding heart hippie.
Can’t we all just sing “Kum-Ba-Yah” together?
It’s not easy for me to sit back and just take it when randos are slinging homophobic/transphobic slurs, suicide jokes, and even pedophilia accusations against you and your favorite people. Why are some folks so eager to say disgusting, slanderous things about entire groups of people they don’t even know? It literally baffles me — I can’t wrap my mind around it. I wouldn’t say things remotely as heinous against strangers I simply don’t agree with. My momma raised me better than that.
I’m tempted to call these people evil, but I won’t. I will call it as I see it — their actions are evil —-but to borrow a phrase so often weaponized against the queer community, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” You see, the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s fear. And these people are lashing out like scared dogs at things they don’t understand.
The Bible itself says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). When you don’t understand something, the human tendency is to fear it. And often, that fear becomes hate. When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark because I didn’t know what was hiding in it. I hated being in the dark for that reason. But the dark was never bad — I just didn’t understand it.
I think these people who blindly hate those who are unlike them simply don’t know love. I understand that many people didn’t have a lot of love growing up — maybe their families were abusive, or perhaps they were bullied. That will lead to a life of fear, and a life of fear is a life of hate. The antidote is love.
Whenever I see transphobic memes online, I think of my girlfriend Olivia. I can’t wrap my mind around how anyone could possibly hate her. But they don’t know her like I know her, because to know her is to love her. I wish everyone had an Olivia to show them what love means.
So instead of letting fear win, let love in. Show love wildly, recklessly, with no remorse. Love your enemies. Love the people who persecute you. Love the people who call you names or make nasty accusations or tell you to kill yourself.
So there’s this old song by a band no one remembers called “Happily Ever After.” In it, the singer, Bethany (I don’t know if that’s her name but she sounds like a Bethany), croons about how she hopes God gives her story the ending she desires. “Author of the moment, can you tell me, do I end up happy?”
I’m being informed by Google that her name is actually Rachel and judging by the haircut worn by no straight woman ever, she ended up gay.
It’s been hard lately to surrender to the unknown future, and as of late, the future feels more unknown than ever. I have my music therapy internship interview this upcoming week. My band is starting to get some attention. I’ve been considering a number of additional paths, such as becoming a writer and teaching music full time. And my heart still longs for a child, as stupid as I feel for saying that. I sound like the “my biological clock is ticking” women I made fun of when I was younger.
Every day feels the same, but I know things are slowly changing. The future needs time to cook, and I need to let it simmer for a while. I know logically I can’t rush things, but I want to get to the next stage of life so badly it hurts. I want to know I’ll have my little girl and my unconventional yet happy family and that it’ll be cupcakes and roses for everyone involved. I want to know that my career will be successful, whether it’s music therapy or playing in a rock band or something else entirely that I haven’t figured out yet.
There’s this book I just finished called You Are a Badass by a writer named Jen Sincero. The logical side of my brain considers it a little too foo-foo at times — you’re telling me I can manifest anything by wishing for it hard enough?! — but there’s some value in being thankful to the universe for all of the possibilities it could give to you. She writes of having gratitude toward God or whichever higher power you like the best as if you already have the thing you desire, and then surrendering that thing to the Universe. That’s what I have trouble with I think. The surrendering part. I hold onto things with the tenacity of a particularly angry dog.
THESE ARE MY DREAMS, UNIVERSE. NO TOUCH.
I’m in the best position I’ve ever been in. My band is on the verge of something great, I’m about to finish my degree — finally — and I have not one, but two significant others whom I love with my entire heart. There’s still room for things to go awry, however, and that’s what scares me. What if I don’t get this internship? What if one of my partners gets sick of my bullshit and leaves me? And — the one that hurts the most to think about — what if my little Cadence never comes to be? I don’t know if I could handle that.
I wish life were as easy as it were in The Sims, where I could press a few buttons and enter a cheat code and everything I ever wanted would be right there waiting for me. Maybe it is there, like Sincero said in her book, and I just need to manifest it. I should be grateful for all these possibilities that are coming my way, but it’s so hard to shake the nagging feeling of something will go wrong.
I think the real power comes in trusting that God/the Universe will provide an even cooler alternative if I don’t end up getting what I want, like how He provided a Black Sabbath tribute band after my wedding reception when the fuddy-duddies at the church I got married at didn’t allow dancing at the shindig itself. (There’s a reason that marriage didn’t last, but at least I got to party with Ozzy freakin’ Osbourne.)
The only Prince Charming I needed was the Prince of Darkness himself.
There’s a verse in the Bible that talks about how God works all things together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). That’s what I’ve been meditating on as of late. It hurts to surrender my plans to Him, but I know He’s got my best interest at heart. The Author of the moment knows more about the storyline than I do. I think back to everything I thought I wanted years ago. Had I reached Taylor Swift levels of fame and fortune, for example, I probably would have thrown myself into a meat grinder by now, with all the pressure and scrutiny weighing on my mental health. My desire to be the biggest rock star on the planet wasn’t from God — it was from me — and only in retrospect do I realize that achieving that dream would have been my ruin.
Still, I’m worried about a lot of things. I’m worried I’ll never get my real dream wedding with either of my partners. I’m worried we’ll never have our kid. I’m worried I’ll never get to go to the UK to meet my long-lost cousin/penpal. I’m worried I’ll never get to live in a little home by the lake. I worry a lot more than I let on. But I’m learning to trust that things always seem to work out for the best in the end.
Another post I originally shared as a FB status but figured it warranted its own post on here, especially since I haven’t posted on the blog in a minute. It’s been a crazy few weeks of coursework but my classes are over after this upcoming week, so expect more ramblings on here soon!
I see people posting their “I was gay but THEN I FOUND JESUS” testimonies all the time, but never any “I found Jesus but THEN I WAS GAY” testimonies. So allow me to share mine.
I used to attend an evangelical megachurch, first in my teens and again when I reached my lowest low after graduation. I was so broken and jaded I needed somewhere I could call home, and the church of my youth seemed right. I started going back, got deeply involved in the music ministry, and even married a man with an intention of starting a family, because that’s what you were “supposed” to do. But I wasn’t truly happy. I had to drink wine just to make household chores bearable. I had such a bad mental breakdown I had to go to a psychiatric emergency facility. I isolated myself from the people I loved and tried so hard to break my own bones to fit into a box that didn’t feel right to me. Even my own mom saw that I was miserable.
The breaking point came when my church announced a conversion therapy class for teenage girls — while I was standing on the stage about to lead worship. I should have walked off that stage, and I still kick myself for not doing it in the moment. But it planted a seed — something wasn’t right. I started to realize I was one of those girls! I’d been attracted to people of every gender, but I had to crush the parts of me that weren’t straight because I wanted so desperately to fit in and be “normal” by these people’s standards.
I was tired. And so I came out.
I’m so glad I chose to live my truth as a pansexual woman. I ended up leaving the marriage I rushed into for the sake of “staying pure” and married my best friend, who I realized I was in love with the entire time. I have a family of fellow queerdos who are truer friends to me than anyone at that church I left. My blood family even sees how happy I am now and is happy for me! And I didn’t have to leave behind my faith in Christ to embrace my true self — I found an affirming church that accepted me and my gay and trans siblings for who they are.
Being queer and following Christ aren’t mutually exclusive things. My faith is stronger for having been tested. God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and He truly blessed me with so much. I love who He made me to be, and I’m glad I can finally live in the light.
Feel free to share if my story reaches you in some way. I want the world to know it’s okay not to fit into the mold of American evangelical Christianity. God doesn’t love you any less. You are exactly who He created you to be ❤️
I originally posted this on my Facebook and Instagram pages (@thejessajoyce, if you’re curious), but I wanted to share this brief little write-up here as well. It’s so important to get this message out there since more often than not, the theoretical future of society and the fight to better it is co-opted by straight, cis, white, non-disabled people in an effort to tear down people who are not like them. I want to present a counter-argument. If all lives truly matter, as many on the political right say, and we must “think of the children,” my future children should be considered as well. There is room for everyone at the table of life, and we need to remember that this Easter.
Reading this book (Feminist Queer Crip by Alison Kafer) at the suggestion of one of my favorite professors for my capstone project on autism, and it feels especially poignant in the days of #blacklivesmatter and #SaveTheChildren and #autismawarenessmonth and the recent fight against drag and transgender rights. The first chapter talks a lot about the Child — the personification of the future of society — who is often politicized and weaponized. Think of the children, people say. The image of the Child is more often than not a white cishet non-disabled child born to white cishet non-disabled parents. This Child absolutely matters. But I’m not interested in fighting for him, not because I don’t care about him, but because he already has enough people fighting for his right to exist in peace. Instead, I want to fight for my children.
In a few short years, I’ll likely have a child of my own. That child will likely have a disability of some sort, or rather, a difference that makes it harder to exist in a world that isn’t built for her. Considering my family history, she’ll likely be autistic or ADHD. Depending on our donor, she will likely be at least part black, and she’ll have queer parents who will support her should she eventually come to terms with her own queerness. And guess what? Her life will matter too. She should have a right to exist in peace alongside the theoretical Child described above. I want her to have a future too.
That’s why it’s so important to keep fighting for equality. I feel like it’s important to note that it’s Easter Sunday as I post this. I am a Christian through and through, despite the fact that I don’t “fit” the American Evangelical mold, and I firmly believe that Christ died for EVERYONE. Not just white Americans or straight people or cisgender people or able-bodied and able-minded people. We are all wonderfully made and we all should have a right to inhabit this beautiful planet. This post is a call to prayer and more importantly, a call to action. We need to be a light to this sometimes dark and scary world. We need to keep fighting the good fight.
(This one’s for all the Christians who read this blog. If you’re not into that, this post will probably not be applicable to you.)
Yay! Another musical episode! You’ll need to watch this video for any of this to make sense — and at the end it still might not make sense, I dunno.
If you’ve never heard of The Masked Singer, it’s this TV show where a bunch of celebrities put on fursuits and other ridiculous costumes and sing. The judges are tasked with guessing who each singer really is. As you can see in this video, Jacket Potato is assumed by the judges to be a number of different dudes.
But in the comments, one name is mentioned more than all of the celebrities put forth by the judges combined — Richie Sambora.
And if you don’t know who Richie Sambora is, you clearly haven’t spent enough time on my blog.
These judges have to be insane to not realize that Jacket Potato is Richie Sambora. Seriously, just listen to any of his solo works and compare the voices. Even if you just compare the second “wanted!” in the chorus of Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive” to the vocals of Jacket Potato, it’s obvious, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this spud is Richie incognito.
No, not this guy.
Fine, here’s all the proof you need:
Do you ever feel like the people in the comments? Like you’re screaming “For Christ’s sake (literally), Jesus is the way!” to a world that just isn’t listening? I mean, we were told to share the Gospel with everyone, right? We know the way to God, and it’s through knowing His Son.
The problem is, historically, people didn’t just leave YouTube comments yelling about how Richie Sambora is definitely Jacket Potato. They broke into the judges’ houses, murdered their families, and made them declare that Richie Sambora was Jacket Potato. And this is absolutely not what Richie Sambora would want.
“Please do not kill people for me.” – Richie Sambora, probably
And it’s not what God wants His people to do, either
We should want to share the good news, but not because we want to hurt or exert power over others. Instead, we should do it because we know peace and unconditional love unlike anything we can find on this planet, and we should want other people to feel that good too! It’s the same as how I want everyone to know who the singing potato really is. I want the world to know Richie Sambora’s name because I know people are missing out by not hearing his soulful singing voice or exquisite guitar playing. That’s how we should feel about the name of Jesus.
Part of this involves humility and admitting we don’t have all the answers. I could get to Heaven someday and be greeted by Anubis. I could die and become reincarnated as something else entirely. Or maybe there’s nothing else after death, and we go back into the same darkness we felt before we were born. But I believe what I believe because I’ve felt it myself. And of course I want to talk about that feeling, because it’s a huge part of my lived experience.
In that same vein, they could take off Jacket Potato’s mask and it could be any number of the dudes the judges named, or somebody else entirely. But in my heart, I know that voice. I know it well, because I heard it many times throughout my life. Jesus is my King and Richie Sambora is my Jacket Potato, and if those beliefs encourage me to live my life with purpose and love, so be it. I could be wrong about everything, but it’s enough for me to know I could be right.
And it feels really good to find out you’re right.
If you didn’t grow up in the church, the idea of a “Genesis week” is probably foreign to you. If you did grow up in the church, you probably heard it told a zillion times in Sunday school, but maybe never heard it phrased that way. Basically, it’s the creation story of the Abrahamic faiths — God spoke, and in seven days, the universe was formed.
These days, in my post-evangelical philosophy, I don’t believe the world was formed in seven 24-hour days, but over several eras, in accordance to what we now know from scientific discoveries. This ideology is known as old-earth creationism, and seeks to reconcile the concepts of evolution and the text of the holy scriptures. In fact, the Hebrew word for “day,” yom, can mean a period of time, not just 24-hours, which implies the creation “week” was actually millions upon billions of years.
This is tangentially related to the topic at hand, kind of (I hope).
I’ve been a little creatively stifled as of late, mostly owing to my own dumb brain. I’ve been meaning to post the entire first part of my story (not just the intro), but I keep chickening out and not doing it. At the same time, my band is in the midst of recording its debut album, and of course, that’s progressing at a snail’s pace too. I want to write and play music and draw and dance and do all of the things that have been on my heart, but I just can’t seem to shake this mental block.
I revisited Psalm 51, the emo poetry King David wrote after being called out by the prophet Nathan for thinking with his dick. (I need to be a biblical scholar with these descriptions, I swear.) I’ve always related to this passage as someone who’s also slutted too close to the sun and ended up hurting people I care about (although I never, you know, had a dude killed in war so I could sleep with his wife). A lot of the time, when reading through this psalm, I’d reflect on the whole “I suck and need God’s grace” aspect of it, but there’s a sneaky little part that I’ve always overlooked. I discovered it when I switched over to The Message version of the Bible, which is basically the translated scripture disguised as John Mayer lyrics.
God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
-Psalm 51 (MSG)
There it is! The Genesis week!
The intention of this verse, I’m assuming, is that we need God to take a Genesis week to work on us, but my first instinct was to apply this to my own life as well. Do I need a Genesis week — a week (or an entire era) of intense creation?
Humans are innately creative, but I feel like sometimes we suppress that part of ourselves. As children, we were always playing make-believe and acting out stories we made up. The fact that we’re born like this is no accident — we were made in the image of God, and so the power and desire to create is rooted in the very depths of the human spirit. It’s the one thing that makes us different from the rest of Animalia. Even if my cat had opposable thumbs, he still wouldn’t be able to paint a picture, or write a story, or dance in a ballet production (as hilarious as that would be). That’s a uniquely human characteristic.
Basically, when God created humans, He gifted us with His own special ability to imagine, to create. Think about it — the power that created the entire universe is inside you! And yet, we take that for granted. Our society tries to beat the imagination out of you before you have the change to do something revolutionary with it, and sadly, it often succeeds. It reduces us to little more than lazy housecats content to eat, sleep, and poop all day. We were built to be like God, but spend most of our time being like Garfield.
I think we all need a Genesis week. Imagine what would happen if we all stepped back for a while and did what made our hearts happy. What would happen if we threw ourselves into our creations and stopped caring what other people think? What if we wrote, sang, danced with abandon? What if instead of being so divided, we united over music and art and storytelling, the way we were intended to be? I think that would spark more than just a revolution. It would create a new Eden, a place of peace and contentment.
There’s a reason I study music therapy, and it’s because I feel there’s nothing closer to God than the act of creation. Nothing heals and changes people quite like creating music — or creating anything for that matter! Throw yourself into your creative endeavours, and if you don’t have one yet, find your passion. Maybe it’s baking. Maybe it’s knitting cat sweaters. It doesn’t matter.
Seriously. Every time I’ve tried to do anything by myself, I usually fall flat on my big dumb face. And if there’s anything I’ve learned about my particular brand of ADHD, it’s that I need someone else there to hold me to my word. Accountability is a necessity for me.
My wife and I have been trying to get back in shape, which isn’t a new thing. Years of heavy drinking and treating our bodies like dive bars instead of temples has turned us into bloated, chonky, weak shells of our former selves.
And our former selves were HOT.
The problem is whenever we tried to commit to working out or eating better, we let ourselves make tiny excuses until eventually those tiny excuses rolled into bigger excuses, and soon enough, we were right back at the start. Maybe we could stop drinking and smoking cold turkey, but starting a new habit was going to take a lot more effort. And help!
When we joined our local gym, we were invited to try working with a personal trainer. And just having someone to show us the ropes and cheer us on helped so much, so we signed on to have him train us weekly. (Even though we’re going to have to hustle hard to pay for it, ick.) And having someone hold us to our word is helping immensely. We’ve been training three days a week now and I’m already seeing results. It’s amazing what happens when you’re nice to your body for once.
But even if you can’t afford a trainer, just having someone else around to help you stay motivated works as well. Find a friend who wants to get in shape as much as you do. When you don’t want to work out, there’s a chance they do. And they’ll be the one push you to get in the gym and do the damn thing. There’s a saying in Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite books of the Bible for good reason (and not just because it’s an entire chapter of emo ramblings).
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10
Sometimes you need a little help, and there’s no shame in that! Think about a goal you want to accomplish, and find some folks to rally around you and fight alongside you. Maybe it’s working out and getting healthy, or maybe you’re trying to stay accountable for finishing a project. Just find your team and get moving!
It’s a question I get asked a lot, especially during sandal season, when my little anchor tattoo is clearly visible on my left foot. It’s the symbol I chose to represent my blog, my business, and my spirituality as a whole. But where did my obsession with anchors originate, and why are they so special — dare I say, sacred — to me?
It helps to know a little about the traditional symbolism. In sailor culture, tattoos were popular long before they made their way onto the lower backs of even the most demure housewife. To these seafarers, the anchor represented stability. A sailor often got an anchor tattoo for a special lady, typically a lover or his mother, to remind him of the love and security he has waiting for him back home.
Additionally, the anchor is associated with bodies of water, to which I’ve always felt a connection to. I’ve lived near the same river for a majority of my life, and being a Pisces, the element holds a spiritual importance to me. The shape of the anchor resembles a cross, which is significant to me as well, as my Christian-rooted beliefs play no small part in my personal spiritual practices.
But believe it or not, it goes even deeper than that.
I remember briefly dating a fellow musician my freshman year of college. He was someone I admired greatly, and still do, for his musicianship as well as his humility. He would tell me about how he made music for other people, simply because he loved the way it made them happy. Music was more than just his hobby or his job. It was the way he connected with others, and he viewed it as something of a sacred duty to use his talents to spread joy. His band used a lot of anchors in their symbolism as well, representing humility and groundedness. He never wanted to lose sight of why he did what he did. He never wanted music to become a selfish act.
That philosophy really resonated with me, especially as a music therapist-in-training, and despite the relationship ending, I held fast to the wisdom he had shared. Music — and all my creative endeavours for that matter — now held a deeper meaning to me, and I adopted the anchor as a symbol of staying humble and remembering why I do what I do. Getting that tattoo, my first tattoo for that matter, was my way of making sure I always had that reminder to put others first in all things. Music and life in general shouldn’t be about getting famous or hitting it big. It should be about leaving the world a brighter place than how you found it.
No matter how far I sail in this life, I won’t forget or forsake the people and places I hold dear. May everything I do reflect a heart of humility and love.
JESSA JOYCE 