First off I want to thank you for visiting our site. It means a lot to me as well as my family that you are here. I feel that to get a good understanding of what this site is about and what we are trying to accomplish, its best to take a few minutes to tell you about myself, my family, where I came from and where I’m going. My maiden name is Katie Porter and now I go by Katie Joyner. I am 26 years old, and have two children with my wonderful husband James. My children are Nathan Joyner who is 3 and Madison Joyner who is 1. I love my family with everything I am. I am a homemaker by choice and love pretty much every moment of it. In my spare time I love to draw, or paint. I am currently working on transforming my childrens rooms into a pirate ship battle and a fairy wonderland, with my drawing and painting skills. My husband and I bought our first home last year. Its nothing special but it meets the needs of my family and with a little bit of work and much love it has turned into a beautiful home. My husband works full time as a Virtualization/Systems Engineer. With his one income we are able to pay for our mortgage, car payment, and bills. Thats pretty much it since we live paycheck to paycheck. We have learned to cut out most everything that isn’t necessary. We do this because we don’t value items and extras. Although it would be nice to go out; a little more than we do; once in a while but we try to keep our lives simple and God and family oriented. We are strong Christians and believe that God should come first in everything we do. He has never steered us wrong. My life’s hasn’t always been simple and breezy. In fact I’ve had a pretty rocky life up to the point of putting God first. Here is my story. . . .
My mother and father met shortly after high school. They got married young and my father joined the army in order to support himself as well as his growing family. He was based in Fort Bragg North Carolina for 2 years. He was a paramedic and in the 82nd airborne. I was born in the arm hospital there. My mother was 22 when she had me and my father was 20. My father was out in training when he got the news that his daughter was dying. Normally they wouldn’t pull anyone out of a training exercise but in this case they did. It took them a week to figure out why I was dying. All they knew was that I could not hold down any liquids. I would projectile vomit. I was born weighting 9 pounds 13 ounces. I lost 5 pounds in that week. They eventually diagnosed the problem. I had pyloric stenosis. Which basically means that the pyloric muscle is thickened and cuts off food from the stomach to the small intestine. Think of it like being born with the lap band but its completely closed. Its extremely rare in females and at the time it was hard to correct. They had to take a army Dr. who was retired out of retirement in order to properly do the surgery. Needless to say I was fine after that.
After the army, my family moved to Southern California. I remember a happy childhood. My mother staying home and my father working. I remember it being pretty normal; spending the day with my mother and going to parks, and my father taking me out on weekends. My father worked at a cell phone store back when cell phones where big and bulky and you needed to install them in cars. Some days I would go with him to his store and play. I was 6 when my younger sister was born and when I was 7 we moved to Nevada. I love my sister to death. I would play with her all the time and she wanted to be just like me. It was probably best that we spent so much time together because the more time we spent on each other the more we weren’t paying attention to my mother and fathers relationship falling apart. Some nights I would hear fighting, some nights it was screaming, and others it was just quiet. More and more I saw my family splitting and my parents extreme anger and violence. They were both good people but together something was going wrong. Being that I was now 8, I wanted to protect my 2 year old sister from harm. At the time I didn’t understand their fights weren’t going to turn on us. I would hide her in piles of stuffed animals or put loud music on for her, so she wouldn’t hear what I heard. After a while my father moved out and they divorced. They both moved on with their lives. My mother had now been working as an apartment manager for a while and fell in love with the apartment maintenance man. He soon moved in with us and became my step dad. My father would still come and see me on Saturdays. It started out that he would see us and take us somewhere fun, then it was taking us to laundry mats because he was busy, and then he slowly stopped coming altogether; later on he moved to California. I now know he was just busy trying to survive like most of us, but back then all I saw was him not there. I would clear out my schedule on the Saturdays when he was to show up. Sometimes I would just sit at the door or by the phone. This was hard in other ways as well; my mother was moving the family a lot because of her job. We moved ever year and a half or so; that wasn’t very long to make friends. Being that I was clearing out my weekends for my dad it had made it that much harder. Eventually I stopped waiting and wanted to focus on myself. Although now I can look back and see that damage had already been done; the constant moving and pushing everyone away, to cling to the hope to see my family, had scared me deeply. I still notice this damage to this day. I have the hardest problem getting close to anyone, and only truly feel comfortable when I’m around family or a hand full of people. I don’t blame my family for this though, I know that they did their best to take care of my sister and I.
I was now getting older and developing as a young women. That’s when things started to change with my step dad. I didn’t know it then but I certainly understand it now. My step father was an alcoholic. From an outside point of view, I’m sure he came off as a fun loving, responsible guy, but on the inside of our home he ran things. He verbally abused my sister and I. He would call my sister, who was around the age of 8, horrible names and put her down; she would often be called whale (even though she wasn’t big). Unfortunately though it caused her to get so depressed that she wouldn’t go out to do anything, see anyone, and eventually become home schooled. She ended up gaining a lot of weight. I’m happy to say that she now has lost all that weight, but back to my story. . . I remember him throwing things when we weren’t looking so it would hit our heads, pining us down, hurting us, and making us feel so down about our self and that we couldn’t do any better. He pushed my mother in to a corner mentally, where she felt that if he left then her world would fall apart and she would die alone. She would tell me and my sister many times that we had to keep him happy in order for him to stay with us, otherwise she couldn’t make enough to support us. What my mother, father, and sister didn’t know was that my step father was attracted to me. It started by him telling me things like “You look good, I would date you” to much nastier things. He would allow me, at the age of 14 and up, to drink with him… trying to get me tipsy. One night I remember him trying to play the game truth or dare; I was bored so I played. It led to him taking off his pants and trying to touch me and hold me close. I started crying loudly and my mother was asleep in the next room. So he backed off. I think I started closing off to people around me, becoming depressed and quiet, then my mother asked me what was going on. I lied because I was embarrassed and thought I did something wrong. I told her that I walked in on him and I saw him naked… that I was just taken back and embarrassed; she gave me my space after that. I cant tell you how much this messed me up. I had real men problems mentally. I thought my Dad had left me, my step father, that was suppose to be taking care of me, really wanted to sleep with me or toss me around and hurt me, and then there was the next guy that I’ll get to in a minute. In regards to my stepdad, my mom eventually kicked him out. My sister ended up moving to California to live with my dad. My mother got a job offer in California and moved away from me as well; I stayed alone in Nevada.
I eventually graduated school and wanted to move in with my high school sweetheart. This guy, I felt, was my protector and my savor from my step dad; a guy that truly cared for me and stood up for me… I really fell hard for him. Now that my family all moved back to California, and I was still in Nevada, I needed somewhere to live and someone to live with, to help pay for the bills. Now his parent were really old school and didn’t want their son moving in with a female unless they were going to get married… So at the age of 18 we got married. Things were great for 6 months, then the truth started to come to light. I guess I was blinded by love or maybe the real world started to show my husbands true colors as time went on. I can see it so clearly now, but I guess that’s what happens when you look back on things. He too was an alcoholic, a cocaine addict, and a stripper (probably to pay for his habits). He cheated on me with my brides maid, stole all my money, and sold all of our belonging. I ended up losing all of my child hood memories and things I cherished. There were times that we were living with, what I thought were, friends but now I see were probably his dealers. There were times we had no food for weeks, along with no power or running water. My family kept sending me money for food, which was nice… I don’t know if I would have ate otherwise. I was working most of this time. My husband would say the deposited money was going to bills but we would get kicked out into the streets. It got to the point that he made me a shut in. I was afraid of picking up the phone to find out that he lost his job again or he was in jail. I was afraid that, by answering the door, it would be the police telling us we have 3 days to leave… or worse that he owed someone money and they were their to collect. I was also very week and pail. I lost 60 pounds without trying in a matter of months. This is about the time I started crying out to God for help. Well, it was more like wanting help and complaining about why my life was like this when I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I read the bible a lot, since there was nothing else to do in my studio apartment. I felt as if though God was telling me just wait; He hears my cry’s and better days are coming. Years went by… Then one days my family said they wanted to fly me out to visit my sister for her birthday. I packed a bag of clothes and left thinking I was coming back in a few weeks. What ended up happening was, my husband landed himself in jail. So I waited in California; I am a very loyal person. Never once did I think about leaving him. Then months went by… Most of the time he didn’t have a phone or a place to live for me to come back to. Then it started sounding like he didn’t care if i came back. I broke down again crying out to God. “WHY, what have I done wrong for my life to be this way”.
I was now 20 turning 21, living out of a suitcase for the last year, and sleeping on a blowup mattress in a spare bedroom at my moms. God told me this, “Its time to move on.” I felt a strong sense of peace and the need to go online at that moment… I found a small website called plentyoffish. Plentyoffish was a very small free website where you can meet people or find dates. That is were I met James. On his profile he had spilled out his heart, telling the world everything he was going through with his ex wife and losing his son. I contacted him even though most girls would run away from what they had just read; God was telling me to run toward it. After talking to him for a few weeks, I got a strong sense that we were both broken and could help each other build up again… We were like puzzle pieces. I had strong issues with men both mentally and physical; James has been able to correct that by proving to me over time that he isn’t what I have seen most men be. He had a strong sense of worthlessness and I have been able to build him up from that… We healed each other mentally and helped each other in other ways. James had IRS debt; I’m good at budgeting and math. He had no car, and I did. I was not use to the large California freeways or getting around them, he could. I had problems trying to leave the house and meet people after being a shut in and scared of the world, he helped me see the world differently. He was an atheist or maybe agnostic by this time and I started getting him to go to church, shortly after he got baptized and we started walking together with God at the center of our life. We were just friends in the beginning and even when he asked me, I refused to date him. This was because I didn’t want to destroy any change he could patch with his family. After a while it was obvious there was no hope of patching his family, so we dated.
After dating a short while, I had a dream. It was so realistic and different than any of my other dreams. It showed me a house, with a backyard, with a wooden fence, and a single tree. There was a little boy just above knee high hugging my leg and a little baby girl in my arms. When I woke up, I knew that God had told me this was to come; this was the better days he had told me years ago. I miss understood it though. I thought the little girl was ours and the little boy was James’ first born with his ex-wife. I was wrong though, because a short while later I got pregnant with our son Nathan. When I told my work I was pregnant they let me go. We lost everything; even my medical and our apartment. We moved in with my mother until we could get on our feet. At this time, I thought that it must have been just a dream. Little did I know, I was wrong; God was just shifting around our lives so He could give us what He had promised. It was at this time that our divorces were finalized. We both knew for sure God was/is real and we needed to keep putting him first in everything we do and did. We kept going to church and holding onto hope that things would turn around. James couldn’t make enough to support us and no one wanted to hire a pregnant lady. I was fearful with what might happen when my unemployment ran out, bring as we still had many bills. When it was about to end, I was able to get on pregnancy disability. I was thankful for that, but the day I went into labor James lost his job; the company went under… talk about a lot of extra stress at the wrong time. I gave it to God and for good reason; He always knew what He was doing. James spent the next few months with Nathan and I, instead of looking for work… he had setup paid family leave and was able to get paid through that while he spent time with his new child. He saw that as a blessing since he only got to see his first son with his ex wife for 3 days before she ran out on him. God gave him 3 months to spend with us while living off of his paid family leave then he said its time to look for work. We were fearful that nothing was out there. The economy was/is bad and I didn’t know how we could afford to get an apartment of our own or both work and take care of a kid… or even pay for childcare… but again we gave it to God. God blessed James, because James landed a job that paid a little more then what we had been making when we were both working, which was just enough to cover our basic needs and let me stay home to watch our son and take care of the house.
We were able to move into an apartment for a year and I got pregnant with our daughter Madison. A few months later God blessed us with a chance to buy a home, 20 minutes from my mother and 15 from my father. A few months after buying the home my daughter was born. We were truly blessed. That’s the moment that I remembered the dream He gave me 3 years earlier. I was currently walking through my backyard with my husband standing next to me, holding my baby girl and my son who was now two stood right above knee high. The house had a wooden fence just as I had remembered it and one single tree that shaded the yard. God has made it so our family is happy and healthy, like both James and I never had (or at least had for very long). I now have a good relationship with my family. I am able to stay home and raise the kids and be there to support them both physically and mentally. He has blessed us with the ability to give our kids what we weren’t given. I owe everything to God. My family is scraping to get by, like most are, but we are happy about it. I lost everything along my life’s path, but I was fine, so I’ve learned I don’t need things to make me happy. My husband and I might like to keep to ourselves but we put that time, that most go out, into our family and God. It might be simple but we enjoy it. Currently, James and I feel that God wants us to share our story, our life, and our testimony. So here we are… We built a website for all to see. Over the coming months you will find more and more up here. Everything from my recipes, reviews on things we have, my art and comics, James’ music, stories, pictures (bringing you into our home), our testimony, things we find interesting, etc. We hope you enjoy it as well as help you in some way. God Bless.
