I thought it fitting to give a little introduction to myself and what I am about. It is an honor and pleasure to see you here, so it is only fitting to honor you by letting you know what I am about and why I am here. My name is James Joyner and I am (currently) a 30 year old, father of 3, with an extensive background in information technology and music. I have 1 child from a previous marriage (Jacob), as well as a boy and a girl (Nathan and Madison) with my beautiful wife Katie (who I love very dearly). Together we are holding down a mortgage, car payment, and many other debts off a sole income… I work in the area of IT and she is a home maker. We believe in an older style of living, where the mother stays home to nurture the children while the father works hard to make something for the family. We purchased a house in 2010, and have since been mostly living paycheck to paycheck. We are all strong Christians and believe God has to be a strong center of our lives. This means we bring His path for our lives into everything we do and pray over everything we feel He is directing us to do. This has been the case for this website and much of our motive to put ourselves out here like this. I came from nothing and currently have a rich and full life. I was a welfare child raised by my disabled grandma… I was born from nothing but now am living the american dream… So here is my story…..
I was born to a young mother (14yo) and father (19yo). Due to the age, and uncertain of ability to raise me, I was raised by my grandmother (who I’ve called Baba as long as I can remember). My father left when I was 3 years old and I don’t have any memories of him accept riding on his shoulders once. My mother has had a distant relationship with me… she is more like a sister to me at most times. My Grandma has always been the mother figure in my life. She had 3 children of her own, all still living with her, when she began to take me on as her son. She tired her best but, due to an injury at work, became disabled and ended up on welfare, SSI, Medi-cal, and HUD housing (assisted housing). Needless to say, it has been a hard life. As a kid my fondest memories where of playing with a crappy organ I had, my grandma digging through trashcans to make extra crash and find items for the house, my mom and my grandma fighting (constantly), and my grandma yelling at me to do something or listen. My mom moved out of my grandma’s house when I was very young… though I don’t remember the exact age… but I can remember my grandma throwing things at her and yelling at her. She (my mom) later had 2 daughters, who she lost to the system when I was a teenager (and they where still relatively young). My oldest sister got back in contact with us when she turned 18, but I’ve never heard from my youngest sister again. I went through life as an ADD/ADHD child with many behavioral problems. My life was never easy; my grandma and I fought constantly and never saw eye to eye on anything. I became Atheist at the age of 13 with no sign of God anywhere in my life… that I could see. It was more then hard to believe that I could ever make anything for myself and was often called worthless. Sometimes I was told that I’d be given up for adoption because my grandma said she couldn’t handle me. I did go to a foster home at one point, but this was something that my grandma did to get a break for a few months… she always took me back with love… I realize now how difficult this was for her, because of her disabilities due to the injury. She was later diagnosed with Fibromyalgia as well, so I’m sure it was very difficult to raise me… but she did it; I can’t think of where my life would have been without her.
My life of IT started when I was 14 years old. After much, much, much begging, my grandma bought me my first computer. I had a little sharp dictionary thing before this that had a modem and could connect to Bulletin Board Services… it sucked, but hey it worked. Once I got my first computer (IBM PS/2), I quickly had to learn everything about it. I had Windows 3.1 installed on it and it was such a piece of crap… but I mostly just used it to modem into BBSes and later AOL. My friend, not very computer savvy – but at this time was way more then I and I thought him to be very computer savvy, taught me the basics of DOS and Windows 3.1… as well as how to do some simple computer tasks… this was about all this computer was worth anyway. Later, again after much begging, was able to buy an HP PC with windows 95. This is really where my computer experience started, cause anyone that knows HP and windows 95, knows that it probably crashed a lot. It didn’t help that I would constantly do stuff to it that would help it crash… haha. I probably wiped and restored that thing every month for the first year… but it taught me a lot about computers, how they work, and how to fix them. I was so interested in computers I started taking classes in highschool regarding them. First a typing class… meh… then a powerpoint class where I met the teacher for an ROP Cisco curriculum class. She said, you have to take this class, cause I was beyond what she was used to for the powerpoint class. I did as she said and ended up being in the top of the class. She recommended me everywhere in school and before long I was even getting called out of class to fix computers in the library. This led to me designing the school website, and later led to me getting recommended by that teacher to work at Tustin Unified… so thank you Miss Jett! 
I continued this journey, with many desktop support and system admin jobs… and currently work in the area of virtualization. I am currently certified in Linux, Networking, and VMware Virtualization… and I’m not stopping there. I’ve been in this industry over 10 years now and can’t picture myself doing anything else… but this is way jumping ahead… let me go back a bit. When I was in junior highschool I began playing drums… this is where I realized my other passion, music. I stuck with drums all through junior highschool and highschool. I loved music… even more then I loved computers… but I never felt I had the same talent in that area. I was told I was good… but it was never said to me in the same way as when someone heard me speak about computers. My two passions, one that could make me a future and one that I’d truly struggle to do anything with.
Even though I had a bright future ahead of me with computers, out of highschool I got involved in some pretty bad stuff. I began going to raves and getting involved in its crowds. The money that this kind of life costs got me involved in running a website that promoted raves, as well as involved in rave promotions. I later became a DJ. My lust for music was so strong at this time… and I felt I was getting some where. The raves eventually became boring to me, and I wanted to start producing music. I met a group of HipHop lyricist and we began producing underground HipHop. I was pretty good on turntables at this time and actually had to battle (on decks) their previous DJ for them to truly accept me into the group. Once I was in, we thought there was no stopping us. These guys where a hugely bad influence on me… This road led me on a bad journey with my grandma and got me kicked out a few times. IT always kept me a float, as I’ve always been told I’m very bright and have a talent… that I posses a skill others don’t have. This false sense of security led me to do things others might not. Without getting into to much detail, I drove my life into the ground and ended up living out of hotels. This life, or lack of, ruined all things good in my life… including a long term relationship that I always held very dear and close. She said we where on different paths, and I actually agree… I was going no where and she was definitely going somewhere.
When I was 25 I started dating a girl that I had a pretty extensive background with and we had a child pretty quick (about two years in). I was recently out of that long term relationship when we met and I really don’t know where my head was at the time. I did fall for her, but our relationship was crazy. She had many issues and I discovered that I did too. I was diagnosed bi-polar with sever anxiety and was put on meds…. these just made me feel completely out of control; jumping out of my skin at times. It also didn’t help that her family hated and I couldn’t really speak of a direction I was heading (other then a computer admin and aspiring hip-hop producer). Even the producing days ended when one of the guys from the group tried to ask my girlfriend to have sex with her and not tell me…. I severed all ties. We ended up living at my grandmas, while she was pregnant, and her and I got married. Later I lost all jobs I had… I was jobless, addicted, homeless (for the most part), and without any future to speak of… gee, you think she left… yeah. Her family moved to Washington and gave her a choice to stay with me without any chance of ever coming back home, or move with them and they would help her raise the child. Of course she left, I don’t blame her one bit… but at that time I hated her with all my heart. She left me alone and I only saw my son for 3 days. This made me hit complete rock bottom. I honestly thought there was no where left to turn but death. I was atheist, so this thought was hard to think about… death. nothing. no hope for anything here anyway.
It was at this point that I called out to God or whatever was out there. I can truly say I had a spiritual experience where God spoke to me… I even saw a bright light in my bedroom in my minds eye… not that I actually saw the light, but I knew it was there. It spoke to me and told me it was going to be OK. I had this feeling to get online and go to plentyoffish.com… to spill out my heart there. I wrote an profile there that would make most girls run for the hills. I mean seriously, even I wouldn’t have dated me. I mostly thought this experience was just me going crazy. I really thought I was crazy at this point. I had stopped doing all that bad stuff and was making a vow to turn my life around. I had accepted God (not Jesus at this point) but that there is a God and he was speaking to me… directing me. For the first time I, as an atheist for as long as I could even think about religion for myself, called myself agnostic and was willing to accept something if it proved itself to me. Weird as it was, I knew something big was going to happen. I cried for many days straight… but one day I woke up feeling pretty good. I had this strong feeling I needed to go online to that website, which I wasn’t much checking cause I thought “who the hell would contact me with that” and I had an email… really. She had actually sent it just an hour before I went online. I replied and this is when I first met Katie.
She told me that my profile touched her… she felt she had to contact me. She felt directed to contact me. I thought this was weird, as I was having the same feelings. We talked online for awhile and then began a phone dialog. At one point I had this weird experience where I felt I needed to type straight from a stream of consciousnesses… I can’t really explain it… it was like I was being spoken through. I told her everything that I felt I was being told to say… which included that we where going to be together eventually, have 2 kids (a boy then a girl), a house, and that our future was going to be very bright. Weird as it was, and as crazy as I sounded (which I know I sounded crazy) she still wanted to be friends. Of course she didn’t want to date me though, yet. I just wanted a friend at this point… I needed someone that I could talk to. She told me more about God and about how He has helped her in her life. Things she understood helped me understand what I was experiencing. I came to my own conclusion, after research on the web and speaking to her, that I needed to accept Christ as my savior. I did so and I can say that a huge weight was lifted off me that day. I felt like I could actually go on with my life… which was huge at that point.
I asked Katie to take me to her church… I felt I needed to go… but I was still closed minded. I didn’t believe that all this could be real, just something I’m doing to make myself feel better. Atheists can be very closed minded and accepting this kind of thing has been a struggle without proof. I prayed to God that if He was real, this is his moment to show me. I wasn’t going to accept maybes here… this was it. Make this service speak to me… directly to me…. I actually though, yeah right. I can’t explain this, it actually did… down to the pastor talking about divorce and the pain it can cause, non-believers, how God chooses you, what can happen to a person in that… I mean, this message felt like he was talking directly to me. I was tearing up through the whole service… and at the end I accepted Christ for real… repeating a pray that the pastor (Rick Warren) asked us to pray. It was like my life opened up from here. I felt ok for the first time in my life. I felt that I needed to change… I could see things I never saw before in my life…. things I was doing to myself to hurt myself and those around me…. to mess up my life. I don’t blame being an Atheist for this, but I do think that if I had God directing me I’d had seen it sooner. Later Katie and I started talking about a relationship. I didn’t think anyone would want to date me if they knew who I really was… so I told her, I’m going to try and scare you off. I told her that I was going to tell her anything that I thought would possibly scare her off and actually try to scare her from dating me. She thought this was fun and wanted to do the same. For weeks we talked and would say “Oh! Bet this will scare you off…” but it never did.
We began dating and the rest is pretty much history. She gave me a sense of confidence in myself I never had with anyone else. She built me up and believed in me. She helped to believe I was a strong person and good at what I do (computers and music)… but that computer was going to take me far. My confidence level ended up landing me a job back in IT… after a job at CVS that I got then quit 4 weeks later because I felt I was better then it. Together we moved out to an apartment and started our lives. We kept going to church and I was baptized on 7/7/07 (this date was not on purpose, but I see a lot of meaning in it). After an accidental pregnancy and miscarriage, we wanted a child, so we had our first kid together… a Son (to my surprise because that was what was foretold to me). She too was going through a divorce and mine had still not ended, but we decided that we where going to get married as soon as possible. In our minds though, we were already married… we accepted that we where meant for each other… soul mates even. God had put us together and what God puts together no one can tear apart. We did get married in 2009 and later had a daughter. This time I always said it was going to be a girl, as this is what God told us. We even bought the house, as God had told me. I can’t explain any of this, but have always given full praise to God and accepting Jesus as my savior… as each step of the way I’ve been told to do something, like in that first experience, and followed whole heatedly. This was down to job changes and moving forward in areas that seemed hopeless. I can’t see myself without God or Katie in my life… I’m sure I would have been dead otherwise. To this day I’ve left all areas of my past, and the bad things that came with it, behind me. I am a completely changed person… I give all praise to God for this. When people say that accepting Christ changes you, you can’t even imagine what that means till you experience it for real.
Currently I work as a Virtualization Engineer for the county of LA. I am musician still to this day and have the studio of my dreams in my home office. It’s not the most glamorous, but it would make many home producers drool. I continue to hold God as my center focus in all things in my life (including music and my job)… we’ve made church changes and major decisions with God at the center… it has never steered us wrong (never.) This post is both a testimony as well as a life story for me. I can’t imagine my life story without God in it… and this is coming from a former atheist that was very very strong in my belief there was no God. I regret the things I did to convince others there was no God, as this was a past time of mine I used to love doing… but I know that now my story may be a testimony others will read and may help them accept Christ… or at the very least be accepting of the fact their may be a God. I had to die to myself to begin living.
My Mom and I have a pretty good relationship now… it is still more like a sister then a mom, but we have moved past our pasts. She is in my kids lives and they love her to death. My grandma and I have also moved past our history of fighting. I don’t know where I would be today without her in my life. She is a big inspiration to me. I think all kids have issues with their parents when they are younger, and though mine where pretty extreme at the time, I can see that it molded me to who I am today. I never saw my Dad again, not even to this day. I don’t know if he ever bothered to look for me, but I never wanted to look for someone who never wanted me in the first place. I respect my family for how they tried to help me, and I appreciated that I am given the chance to give my kids a life they weren’t able to give me… even though I know they would have if they could of. God does amazing things with people, tears them down and builds them back up stronger. To live a childhood like mine is much more of a blessing then a curse, because without knowing what it is to have nothing, you can never truly appreciate having something.
