Joy! Correspondence With Pat Boone

The book “Joy!” is a story of a lesbian’s search for fulfillment by corresponding with the Christian entertainer Pat Boone. The book reprints the letters from Barbara Evans (not her real name) to Pat Boone during her year-long journey out of homosexuality.

Pat Boone: Like other entertainers who appear on TV, I receive a good bit of fan mail. But I had never read a letter like this one. The writer said she was 27 – and a lesbian. And while she claimed to be “happily married” to her former high school teacher, it was obvious that she was disturbed by her lesbian relationship. She had read my book “A New Song,” in which I related my own story of entrapment by the world, self-concern and the devil – and my escape.

While she didn’t say so in so many words, it was obvious that she also felt trapped in her world – and wondered if there was an escape for her!

“Can you help me?” she asked.

Well, you don’t have to be around the entertainment profession long to discover that it is peopled by quite a few lesbians and homosexuals. So I had my share of contacts with them, many times on a very friendly basis.

Now I was being asked by a lesbian for help. What could I do? Psychiatry tries to peel away the layers, painfully, one by one, hoping to get back to the ‘primal scream.’ But Jesus starts on the inside, motivating action, creating a new personality from within. Only God Himself can do that.

Barbara: I felt if anyone would know where to seek help, you would. I know I should go to God, but I’m so afraid. It could mean a change in my way of living, and that it could destroy someone else’s life. You see, one of our gay group had some kind of religious experience and now she lives alone.

Pat Boone: Barbara, I’m not a preacher, and I’m no great Christian. I’m just a human being who has come to understand a little bit of God’s love and power for us today.

I want you to know that I do not judge or condemn you in any way. As you already read in my book, I slipped into all kinds of sin and it nearly wrecked my life. I thought I had good reasons for it, and a lot of it seemed harmless and even very good for me and the other people involved. But gradually, like a cancer, it was destroying everything that was really precious to me and making it impossible for me to function as I was meant by God to function – and therefore robbing me of the only real happiness that there is in this life.

It is not your love for your friends that is wrong and destructive; it’s the sensual element woven into it, taking advantage of mutual weaknesses and mutual emotional scars and twisting them into something destructive to you and to your friends. Jesus won’t ask you to give up your love for them; but He will purify it and make it constructive and helpful for their sakes, for yours and for His own sake.

Barbara: Well, Pat, I want you to know that when the church service began, I knew there was no way I could turn away. How could I partake of communion with God and return to something I had been totally convinced in my own heart was wrong? It was not possible. Oh, thank God for Christian people like my school chum. Although she could in no way take away the pain of realizing my sinfulness, she put her arm around me as I openly cried during the communion hymn. There was no other way. Thank God that He has been so patient with me.

But now, the real difficult part for me to talk about comes. Last night I began thinking all sorts of things about my situation. Why had I been called from a fairly contented life? What am I supposed to do? If God is truly leading me, why can’t I keep control of that feeling of His presence? Then bang! Some of my old physical longings returned – when I had thrown them away. Wow! I started crying uncontrollably and begged God’s forgiveness, as I do even now.

Oh Pat, how do you know when your life is completely taken over by the will of God? I love God and want only to serve Him, yet my human nature continues to plague me with these feelings. I am so worthless. I don’t see how God can put up with me or why you even try to counsel me.

Pat Boone: Please don’t feel badly simply because you’re tempted! It is not a sin to be tempted! Jesus was tempted with every temptation known to man! This doesn’t mean that it was just laid in front of Him and that He shrugged His shoulders with no emotional feeling about it. It means that many of these wiles and tricks and traps actually appealed to Jesus, and I’m sure in many cases that He longed and yearned to indulge His human appetites—otherwise there would have been no temptation.

Barbara: You also mentioned that God’s blessings and strength might be blocked by not forgiving those around us. I’ve been praying that God will help me forgive those who have hurt me in the past. I really feel that He has given me forgiveness, especially for my father. However, I have difficulty in feeling the love for him I think God wants me to have. I’m praying that God will fill me with His love.

I had dinner with my parents Sunday. In the course of the conversation, I told my father that I could forgive him for all that had happened when I was a teenager. Of course he didn’t understand completely. Although I feel more love for my parents than in the past, I’m still not as free as I desire to be. It seems especially hard to love my father when I still feel some of the old hurts. I don’t really hold them against him, but it’s hard to love him.

Pat Boone: Barbara, I know that you will go through many lonely days and nights and valley experiences between the mountain top highs. We all do. But the Lord does tell us we will never be tempted beyond that which we are able to bear, and that Jesus Himself learned obedience through the things that He suffered.

Barbara: Then my father started in on me about this “crazy religion” I’d gotten into – how I wasn’t the same. I had been praying silently in the Spirit, but then I realized I was beginning to react. I excused myself and went to another room. There I prayed for the Lord to take full command of this situation, and I thanked Him for doing so and for the lessons we would learn from it.

I heard Gina [my church friend] ask my father if she could pray before we left. At this I began to feel such a tremendous love for my father. It was almost as if someone has lit a fire inside of me. Yet, I felt reluctant to go to him. I did go to my mother. I told her that I loved her whether she loved me or not. I hugged her gently and went back to where I had been standing between Gina and my dad. My father asked my mother if she wanted Gina to pray, and she said yes.

Gina’s prayer must have been by the Holy Spirit. It was beautiful! One thing really got through – she thanked God for the wonderful love He had given her for my mother and especially my father. Wow! The fire of love inside me exploded! When she finished, I went to my father, put my arms around him and told him I loved him very much, just as I had told my mother. I told him that the Lord had given me forgiveness in my heart earlier this year, but I still hadn’t been able to love him as I should. When we finally left, I was truly rejoicing – for God had given me love in my heart for my father. The whole situation had been in the Lord’s hands.

In thinking about this situation now, I feel that one reason I had difficulty accepting the love which God has for me was because I did not have a good father image. It was a fear image rather than a love image. Isn’t it beautiful that when I accepted God’s love and verbally acknowledged it that God bathed me in a wonderful flow of love which allowed me to love my father for the first time I can remember since I was a small child? Praise our wonderful Lord and Savior.

Pat Boone: I could never hope to match that last letter of yours, and I won’t even try. Janet [secretary] and I had both been wondering why we hadn’t heard from you in so long, but now we know. Boy, do we know!

Barbara: Tuesday was another beautiful day. I felt that I wanted to call on my former lover. I had some money which I still owed her, and I wanted to take it to her in person. Before leaving I asked if I could pray. She said I could if I wished to. So, I prayed for her and then hugged her. It was a hug in the purity of God’s wonderful love! Hallelujah! I’m really free!

Pat, do you remember that in your first letter you said God would purify my love for my roommate? Then Gina’s message for me was that God wanted to purify me in His love. For the first time in ten years I was able to hug the one whom I had loved in the flesh in the purity of God’s love. Praise the Almighty and Everlasting God!

Through counseling and being willing to let pride go by the wayside, the Lord has revealed areas of my life that I had not even remembered! Praise His Name!

(Note: This 1973 book is out of print. You can buy a used copy at www.amazon.com and www.half.com)

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