My middle name is Joy. I never liked it.  I felt like having the word joy in my name meant I had to embody the emotion, which I felt I never did.

My senior year of college was especially joy-less.  With life’s scary changes looming on the horizon, I became overwhelmed with purposelessness and lack of passion.  Nothing I did seemed to matter.  I felt abandoned by God.  I remained numb for months - lost, drowning in despair.

Ironically at that time, I was leading a Bible Study for InterVarsity.  One Sunday night I gathered the courage to share my pain with my co-leaders, expecting I might drop out of leadership.  They listened and they cared and that was it.

Looking back on that year, I can see that God placed me in that InterVarsity community for a reason.  My friends there held on to hope for me and later I found out, they met together everyday to pray for me.

It was months later, during a weekend retreat up in Portland, everything changed.  In a matter of minutes, the deep sense of despair that weighed my heart down was replaced with a refreshing sense of JOYfulness! 

My joy was uncontainable.  I knew that nothing could have caused the change - but God.

Over the next few days, I started seeing life in a whole new light: God created me to live for Him, serve Him, and experience His Joy.  He created me with a purpose in mind to bless the world as well as be blessed with Joy.  I felt as if God had planted a gratifying seed of joy in my heart to which I became addicted.  I wanted more but I also knew that the only way to experience more would be to follow God’s lead.

Shortly after this transformation, I came across a photo I’d taken of my friend Jakki dancing on an Oregon beach. I saw in this photo a raw Joy which I knew I had to do something with.  Then I remembered a favorite Henri Nouwen quote that says,

“The Place God calls you to is the place where your deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

The quote and the image fit perfectly together.  Suddenly those scary big life questions that had overwhelmed me didn’t feel so daunting.  I knew that all that was required of me was to walk in the path that God had for me and trust in His Will.

Now, two years later, I strain to remain on that path of trust that God guided me to.  It’s an exciting path, but scary at times.  Yes, I still struggle BUT one thing has permanently changed - no longer am I ashamed to be called Naphtalie JOY Squier.