Joyce Laurent, Baptist Pastor’s Wife

I met Joyce in the mid-80’s through her husband Bob, a Baptist minister who was attending Andrews University for his doctoral degree in Religious Education. Bob and I shared a couple of classes.

This couple took pity on me as a poor graduate student and paid for me to attend my very first women’s retreat. When Joyce invited me, she excitedly informed me that they’d be more than 3,000 women attending. At first I wasn’t sure that that was a selling point for me. But I took her up on their generous offer to include me.

When Joyce and I got on the bus with the other women from her church the experience began. A woman prayed for us and for our families and that God would do something incredible for each of us. I started crying. I remember crying a lot that weekend. Somehow the message I kept getting was that God loved me so much, not IN SPITE of the fact that I was a woman, but BECAUSE I was a woman. I didn’t realize that I needed that message.

Whenever I attend or plan a women’s retreat I remember Joyce and her friends with deep gratitude and I try to replicate that prayer.