Remembering Joyce

A writer and a church lady

Our faithful friend, Mary Joyce Paulk, took the hand of Jesus in her sleep Saturday night and stepped into glory.

Mrs. Joyce had a card ministry. Every day she mailed dozens of cards for the sick and the celebrating, for new babies and the lonely. She was always thinking of other people. She would often for my birthday even send money, though she had only met me a handful of times and didn’t have sufficient funds for herself. When my children were born, she remembered their birthdays too, and sent gifts for them every year. She didn’t watch television. She kept her mind sharp to the very end by letter writing, each note sent thoughtfully. She remembered so many people.

When my children would open her cards they would sometimes ask me who she was and I would say, “She is a church lady who loves you.”

“Our church mama?

“No, baby, THE church. Mrs. Joyce is a Christian.”

Mrs. Joyce was best friends with her daughter, Lorrie, who planned to care for her in her old age. She had a beautiful wing in Lorrie’s house. But suddenly and tragically, Lorrie died and Mrs. Joyce mourned the loss of her only daughter and also her security and all her hopes for the future. When an elderly person looses their caregiver, it is similar to a child being orphaned.

She came to visit and stay with my grandmother shortly before Lorrie died, and also shortly thereafter. I remember seeing her weeping. I had never seen an old lady cry before. Even the soft hearted ones were usually “dried-up”, but Mrs. Joyce had a river of tears inside of her. She lost her child, her best friend, and her caregiver and defender in a world which is indifferent and cruel to the elderly. Mrs. Joyce had injured her voice and could hardly talk. She was old and feeble. She wasn’t rich. Who would care for her now?

She went to a nursing home. Here she continued her ministry, a blessing in her local church and also to believers everywhere, like my little family. Mrs. Joyce is a familiar name to my children, just as it was in my childhood, like Noah and Moses and Jesus Himself. She is one of the stones we are built upon, Christ being the Cornerstone.

Who cared for Mrs. Joyce in the end, you might ask? Church ladies. God sent his women. Bossy, nosey, opinionated ladies who can out-love and out-work and out show-up all the women of any false god every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Once a week for the last few years, my mom and sister and I have taken turns sending her a Chick-fil-a sandwich meal with a diet coke, her favorite. This last year she needed help to eat it, and a church lady made it her mission to administer the blessed fried chicken. So many times I felt a grief in my heart, a longing to be able to care for her, and God would comfort me in the faithfulness of the local church, his boots on the ground everywhere, not lacking in this county in Georgia.

Mrs. Paulk is enjoying unending fellowship and deep satisfaction right now in her Father’s house. I am so happy for her. I will miss her cards, always saying she was praying for us by name. I know without a doubt that the Lord gave her to me as an example to walk in. All the foolish women of the world flash before my eyes, and he places Joyce before me. Be like her, Sarah. Write cards faithfully. Don’t give up on people. Hope and cry and hope again. Be a church lady.