How the pain of a tremendous loss led me to my purpose

By Sonya Joy Mack

Sonya Joy Mack

My mom was my safe place and I was her joy. Sonya Joy to be exact. She gifted me the name because I was meant to “spread joy to the world.” 

By the age of five, her friends called me her mini-me. With the same permed, fire-red hair and short, fluffy build, it was easy to see why. 

As a child I would crawl up on her lap — a trend I continued even when my age and size made it unusual — and lean my ear to her chest to listen to her heartbeat. 

I would stare out the window of our home in the small town of Algona, Iowa, watching the corn roll in waves for miles and the birds perched in the nearby elm. I’d imagine our future together — my mom by my side when my children were born — and us traveling once we both had more than our modest lifestyle could afford.

My Mom, Vicki, was my compass, my roadmap to life. 

Trying to numb the pain 

In 2005 my first year of school to become a Physician Assistant was rolling to an end. Just as our dreams for the future were within reach, my mom was diagnosed with ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that slowly breaks down muscles leaving it's victims unable to walk, talk, and eventually, breathe. 

Five years later, my family gathered around a hospital bed in the living room of my childhood home, medical equipment crowding the once ample space. I put my ear to her chest to listen to her heartbeat. Only this time, it was for the last time. 

We buried my mom in the depths of winter, our feet crunching the underlying snow as we walked to her headstone. I was 29 years old.

At that moment, I was so afraid. 

I didn’t know how to live without her. I feared that with time, I might forget the honey smell of her Avon perfume, the tinkling sound of her laughter, or the way her eyes crinkled at the sides when she smiled. 

God and I had always been close, a faith-by-heart mentality born more from a “feeling” than anything learned in a book, a trait I inherited from my mother. 

I knew He was there, even when I couldn’t explain or rationalize it. But in my pain, and without my compass, I wandered spiritually. I couldn’t understand how God, who was supposed to be my “loving Father,” would allow me to suffer a pain so crippling, much less consider it part of a greater plan.

Lost and alone, I tried to numb the pain by doing what I do best. I picked up a pen and wrote. I’d always found God there before, scrawled in the words that flowed from my hand, and I was desperate to find Him once again, hoping He could soothe my despair. 

For years, despite my distrust and anger with God, a recurring theme resonated within me. The words rose as if they were mine, but they weren’t. 

They originated from my core, far deeper than my humanness, they came from the One that created me. For years He repeated these words, tattooing them in indelible ink on my heart, and no matter my confusion or frustration, they never altered. 

“You’re meant for something bigger, something different.” 

Not understanding what the words meant, I threw myself into hobbies and passions, thinking one would be my “something bigger and different.” 

I tried voice and acting lessons, but nothing felt right. Trying desperately to restore my relationship with God, I continue to put pen to paper, scrawling out my pain.

A calling: Your pain has purpose

It was a calm summer’s night almost seven years after my mom’s death. I was 36 years old, listening to the crickets chirp outside my bedroom window. My girls, now 3 and 5, slept in their nearby rooms. I cried out in desperation to God.

“What does this all mean? I just want this pain to go away. I just want to find my joy.” Defeated, I screamed, “Where are you?”

His voice came to me as clear as if it were my own.

“You find your joy when you find Me. Through Me, your pain has purpose.”

Shaken, but more alive then I’d been in years, I began to flip frantically through my journals, the place I knew I had found Him before. There in bold, capitalized letters were words like FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, CHOICE, INSPIRATION — spiritual principles meant to lead me down the right road.

It was that night, after years of heartbreak that included two traumatic births, the near death of a child, and chronic physical pain, I finally realized my pain was the road to my “something bigger, something different.”

My pain, connected with the promises of God, was a message to every woman who was hurting from the deepest places.

There is more than just hope on the other side of pain. There is purpose.

The words in my journal weren’t just words. They were a framework for living, feeling, and growing from the pain in my life. These principles were the roadmap to living a life of joy, and it was a message God had fashioned me to share.

After years of suffering, my relationship with God is closer than ever before as I came to realize His true intentions.

God didn’t create my pain, but He allowed me to go through it so I could grow through it.

When I gave my pain over to God, it became so much more than the hurt in my heart; it became a pathway that led to my God-given purpose.

Sonya Joy Mack has treated grief and illness for over fifteen years as a Physician Assistant. Sonya created The LIVE JOY LIFE, an organization that empowers women through community, mindset, and the LIVE JOY principles, to live in the joy God intended by giving their pain a purpose. Her debut book “This Changes Everything: When Death No Longer Has the Final Say,” is a story of hope, humor, and healing for those who grieve and encouragement to follow God-given dreams. Her work can be seen as a guest blog for “Find Your Harbor,” “The Well Des Moines,” and “Des Moines Mom Collective,” and in the Guidepost Compilation “In the Arms of Angels.” Sonya lives in Des Moines, Iowa with her husband and two spunky daughters, where she enjoys red wine, dark chocolate, big hugs, and living room dance parties. Sonya continues to advocate for a treatment and cure for ALS, the disease that took her mother’s life. You can find her at on Instagram @sonyajoymack, Facebook at www.facebook.com/SonyaJoyMackAuthor, or become a part of the LIVE JOY LIFE family at www.sonyajoymack.com.