It started with my name actually. Elizabeth Joy.
Elizabeth means “Set apart for God.” Joy means….”joy”.
I was in my early forties, newly transplanted again for ministry, and it felt like my life and my teenagers were tanking hard. I was in a season of real darkness: sadness, confusion, resentment. This was not where I had seen myself in my 40s.
Unsure, unfocused, uninspired and unable to decipher how my life even mattered, God reached through the dark and quieted my heart enough to hear Him speak my name over me: “Elizabeth Joy”.
I ran them together, first and middle, and I got “Set apart for God’s joy.”
Joy felt so very foreign.
But those names running together became like a guiding light for me in the darkest of spaces. Like a pinprick of sunshine at the distant end of a jet-black corridor.
What was it for, and why did my parents speak that name over me when I joined their family so many years earlier?
Because legacy mattered to them. They wanted to speak purpose into me from my first breath.
Turns out it matters to me now too.
You see, for several years after I realized God was infusing my name’s meaning into me, I began to press in about it.
I spent several years studying the scriptures about joy and intentional living. I went through a season of self-discovery and started writing, and as I was healing and walking out further into the light, I realized that God was unfolding my unique purpose.
The unique purpose He was shaping me for had been there all along – I just needed to do the work of waking up to it and articulating it as a personal mission statement:
“I live to glorify God by letting joy loose in the people around me, helping them discover spiritual, emotional, and physical wellness, and learning to live with joyful intention”.
This purpose is there to give me opportunity to connect with Him more deeply, to live a more fulfilling and fruitful life that radiates the Lord into the lives of others, and to make my life echo long after I meet Him in Heaven.
My unique purpose has helped me make a significant shift in how I live my life.
Rather than living in reaction-mode all the time, swatting at things as life comes at me, my personal mission statement is now a lens and a filter for me to make intentional decisions about how to spend my time and energy each and every day.
• I know who I am called to invest in and how to invest in them.
• I know how I’m wired and what I’m passionate about.
• I know my skills that enable me to bring my passions to the table in a realistic and helpful way for others.
This helps shape my best “YES” and my “No”.
It’s almost like I get to write a page in my legacy story each and every day, Because you know what? Impactful legacies are not accidental. They are intentional.
I started to recognize that others are like I was – chaotic, unfocused, unable to articulate the purpose or meaning for their lives. And it burdened my heart to help.
I first created a L.E.G.A.C.Y. Roadmap live online workshop to help people begin the self-discovery process in order to be able to craft their own personal mission statements.
Then I created a deeper digital course, “Your Purposeful Life”, to help people gain clearer understanding of their wiring, passions, their experiences, and skills. It guides them toward creating specific goals and strategies, using their personal mission statement as a lens and filter to say their best “YES”
I have a goal to help 1000 people in 2022 strategically begin to build their joyful legacies and I would love for you to be one of them!
I believe to my core that we radiate Christ best when we truly dig deep into who God made us to be, and lean into the joy that our calling brings.
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