Welcome to the team!
Help us welcome our new Director of Families Joy Boudreaux. Joy has so gracious accepted this volunteer position to be an advocate of our families needs and be a point of contact when a new family comes to us for support. In her role as Director of Families, Joy will continue keeping our children’s memories alive, and sharing their
Joy and Ben Boudreaux have been best friends & attached at the hip since they were high school sweethearts. Married in 1995, they now have 15 children: 5 in heaven (Mary Joe - 18, Henry - 13, Eric & Adam (twins)-11, and Ella -5) and 10 living (Anthony - 24, Thomas - 21, Samuel - 19, Grace - 17, Teresa - 14, Charlie - 13, Max & Simon - 12 (twins), Carolyn - 9, and Lucy - 8). They've experienced child loss in nearly all its forms: miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death. Because of the lack of community and support for loss parents when they were learning to 'wear their ugly shoes', Ben and Joy are both passionate about ministering to and reaching out to other parents of loss to let them know that they aren't alone; that there IS HOPE on the other side of loss.
The Boudreaux family attends St. Bernard Catholic Church in their lifelong hometown of Breaux Bridge, LA. Ben works in corporate IT systems management and Joy is a full time wife/mom who has homeschooled their kids for over 15 years. They're both blog contributors to Red Bird Ministries.
We Interviewed Joy and this is what she had to say!
Why do you want to contribute as a blogger?
Joy: I went through my initial losses 'pre-Facebook', so there was no readily available support. There were no books that I could read about child loss; there were plenty on LOSS, but not child loss. I had other very young kids so even if there had been any in our area, I couldn't GO to support groups. It was an intense feeling of isolation and helplessness. Nowadays with the internet and social media platforms so easily and readily accessible, I want to share my experiences and lessons I learned (the hard way) with other moms who may be going through the same thing. If by sharing my 'crazy train', I can keep even ONE moma from feeling the desolation and loneliness that I felt, or from thinking that she's alone or that she has to keep her loss to herself because it was't a 'real' loss, then just call me the 'Hot Mess Express'!
2. What does healing and restoration mean to you
Joy: To be honest, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm only just starting the healing process. You'd think after 18 years since the first of our 5 losses, I'd have found time to start working on that! For me, healing has come in the form of making peace with my life before and life after my kids died. That is currently and will likely always be an ongoing process for me.
Restoration for me has recently been redefined. I used to think that being restored meant being back to my 'old' self and so it was something that just wasn't attainable. I NOW see that restoration as being restored to a state of grace that will be worthy of getting to heaven. Restoration is a journey that I'm only now beginning to be ready to undertake. My grief kept me from seeing the path to Heaven right in front of me, so I stepped in ALLLLLLLLLLLLL the potholes and turned down ALLLLLLLLLLLL the wrong roads and u-turns, probably a few illegal turns and even ran out of gas. This year I learned to 'be still' and and let him remind me which one of us was God and was running this show. (Turns out, IT'S NOT ME!)
3. What are you passionate about?
Joy: 10 things I’m passionate about besides my husband and my kids.
making sure the unseen are seen
keeping it real while encouraging momas in the trenches of loss (or of homeschooling, of life with newborns or toddlers, teens, tweens, adult kids, etc) and recognizing instead of minimizing their struggles because ALL momming IS HARD and there will be unique struggles with every stage of motherhood/parenting, but its SO GOOD and worth ALL the struggles you'll ever face
reading & learning! and sharing what I learn with my kids and other people, if they can benefit from it.
all things Shakespeare
black & white movies, GOOD ones
pizza!
algebra, in that I dislike it passionately and despise having to teach it.
good music (my music tastes are literally ALL over the place)
coffee
HUGS
4. What is your religious affiliation and prayer life?
Joy: I'm a cradle Catholic who is a little tardy to the party. I'm only now at 44 (45 in January) really coming to appreciate the richness and beauty and history of Mother Church. I'm especially drawn to learning about the lives of the saints. Learning about their flawed, messed up, tarnished-halo, earthly lives helps me to remember that Heaven is meant for all of us, not just the St. Mother Teresas and St. John Paul the Greats of the world.
5. What are your favorite devotions and prayers?
Joy: Being a Catholic woman in south Louisiana, naturally I have a devotion to the rosary, but I think even as a little girl (way back when dinosaurs were kept as pets), I had a devotion to the Blessed Mother. Also, as a child I felt a budding 'friendship' with Jesus that was derailed (mea culpa) in my grief. I'm currently on speaking terms with him again and we're... OKAY, OKAY.... I'M working on rebuilding it. I have found peace and strength in quiet mornings spent on the porch with my husband reading daily Scripture readings and meditations. Those 20-30 minutes of prayer and meditation set the tone for my day and I definitely notice a difference when I don't get my Scripture and prayer time. I've also come to REQUIRE my weekly hour of Eucharistic Adoration.
6. What are your other affiliations?
Joy: Maddie's Footprints, my own (just started) homeschool tips-n-tricks FB page "True Stories from a Homeschooling Wildflower"
