His Face like Mine

May 6, 2024
Pastor Joyce recounts in this poignant debut memoir how his faith helped him grapple with the emotional challenges of Goldenhar syndrome, a rare congenital craniofacial disorder that caused the left side of his face to be severely underdeveloped. Joyce recaps a childhood spent undergoing countless reconstruction surgeries, getting bullied, and witnessing his parents’ distress over his condition. Meeting his future wife Anna helped him feel “freely chosen” for the first time, but it wasn’t until 2017, when he had a vision of a Jesus with a “face... just like mine,” that he fully understood “no amount of woundedness too ugly for the love of God.” Joyce contends that all people suffer from emotional wounds, and that they can be healed through “the power of God’s love” and the knowledge of the crucified Jesus’s wounds (“To know that God is also broken but not ugly... heals the deepest parts of you”). The author’s at his best when he mixes personal insight and pastoral wisdom in vivid metaphors, as when he writes of the thorn in the apostle Paul’s side: “God’s love and power are made real not because he pulls the thorn out of the flesh but because we find him in the middle of the pierced flesh, which can no longer destroy us.” Sensitive and nuanced, this lingers in the mind.