Growing up, I was very shy. The thought of talking to people made me uneasy and nervous. In school, when we had to do an oral report, I would take a failing grade before I would stand up in front of the class and talk. I didn’t want anyone looking at me. It was more than shyness…It was fear!
Fear of not saying the right thing. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of being made fun of. We grew up really poor and kids would make fun of my clothes and my house and the fact that my dad was an alcoholic. I always felt awkward, shy, and my school clothes looked funny, mis matched, and used. My clothes smelled like cigarettes because my clothes would hang in the room where my dad smoked. We had no way to wash our clothes. Finding a way to take a shower was a challenge because most of the time we did not have running water. This was all after my mom left us when I was 8 years old. My dad was so heartbroken that he became an alcoholic and struggled to provide food and clothing for me and my brother. I grew up on cereal, can pinto beans and boloney. We didn’t have a car or a phone like everyone else. People were always staring at me.
I spent most of my time outside in our yard by myself singing and dancing and picking flowers and daydreaming. I loved being outside where the lightening bugs and butterflies were. The smell of grass and flowers was my happy place. That is where I felt the most joy. It was the beginning of my great love for God and I didn’t even know it yet. One day, I saw a sign for vacation bible school at a little church I passed every day walking home from school. I decided to ask my dad if I could go. We didn’t go to church and I didn’t know anyone who did. I didn’t know much about Jesus but I just felt so drawn to go to this thing called vacation bible school. At this little church is where I felt the love of Jesus for the first time in my life. I felt accepted and it didn’t matter that I was poor. It didn’t matter that my clothes were old and worn. Jesus loved me!
I was so overwhelmed with the salvation message of love, belonging, and hope that I gave my heart to the Lord during the altar call. I was filled with so much joy and freedom and excitement!
From that day forward and throughout my whole childhood, I wrote a letter to Jesus every night before bed telling him about my day at school and telling Him everything I was feeling. He became my best friend. I can look back through all the pages of my life and see all the times that Jesus took care of me, encouraged me, strengthened me, helped me, and guided me. When I turned 17, life’s issues took center stage and I stopped writing my letters to Jesus and He got put on the back burner. I quit school at 17 and got a job and my own apartment. My life was all about work, friends, and having fun.
When I was 26 and five months pregnant with my son, me and my best friend Lisa heard a scripture that was talking about hell and that scared us both and we got out a bible to look it up and starting reading about the love of Jesus. We were both so convicted and started crying and we knelt on the floor right then and there and gave our heart to the Lord. Memories of me and Jesus from my childhood came flooding back to me. I got into His Word, started going to church and was there every time the doors were open. I discovered Christian music like Carman and Petra. My lifestyle completely changed and He was working on every area of my life.
I had my son and when he was one years old, we got on a Greyhound bus with only a suitcase and moved to Newport Tennessee. . I did not know what was in store for me in Tennessee but I just knew God wanted me to go there. God blessed me with a place to rent there and a job and that is where I met my friend Nancy Shults. We became fast friends and she took me to several revivals and took me to a church in Morristown Tennessee called New Direction Christian Center. There was so much love and fellowship there! As soon as I walked into those doors, I knew I was home. God had led me to a place where He wanted to give me everything I had lost. He gave me spiritual parents (Pastor Doug Cox and Sheila Cox) who loved and encouraged me and taught me the Word of God and how to truly love like Jesus. He gave me a huge church family and sisters in Christ that would love me and speak into my life. This was a church that believed everyone in the body of Christ had a gift and a purpose in the Kingdom. They were very active in outreach. They were always encouraging us to step out in our gift and calling.
Well… I was still so shy and the thought of talking in front of the church or praying out loud or doing anything that would draw attention to myself scared me. There was a group there called Soul Seekers and they would go out and knock on doors and invite people to church and ask them if they needed prayer. I was always silently praying oh please don’t ask me to do this! But my heart so desired to do something for the Lord! I didn’t want any recognition… I just wanted to please the Lord and work behind the scenes. So… I started doing things like cleaning the church. They gave me a key and I absolutely loved going to the church putting on music and cleaning and I would pray over all the seats and ask God to bless the person who would sit there on Sunday. I would leave so blessed. It felt good doing something for God.
One day I noticed that they needed someone to record the service videos and make copies. I started doing that. That brought me joy to do this. After doing this, I got a little braver and I started driving the church van on Sunday mornings to pick people up who needed a ride. I was blessed to do all these things for the Lord.
One Sunday after church was over, I was sitting in the back of the church. There were some ladies who were practicing carrying some big flags down the aisle to the altar for a flag presentation they were working on. They looked at me and said “Hey would you like to carry one of these flags for the presentation?” I immediately said oh no thank you! Because there was no way I was going to carry a flag down the aisle on a Sunday morning and have all those people looking at me! I was just too shy for that. But as I sat there watching them, I had tears in my eyes and I felt so moved and drawn by what they were doing. They were not dancing with the flags or anything like that. They were simply carrying different flags that had the names of God on them and the Lion of Judah. As I sat there, I felt like the Lord was speaking to my heart saying “One day you will be over flags and dance and drama in this church”. I thought to myself… Where did that come from! That can’t be God saying this to me because doesn’t He know I do not know a thing about flags or dance or drama?? Doesn’t He know I would turn red and pass out before I could stand up in front of people? We didn’t even have dance or drama or flag worship there so I didn’t understand what that meant. A few weeks later, the pastor’s wife, Sister Sheila, came up to me after service and said that she was praying and while praying she saw my face and that the Lord spoke to her and said “Missy will be over flags, dance and drama”. When she told me this, I was so stunned and without words! But I didn’t tell her at that time that I heard those exact words in my heart. I wrestled with this for about a week and finally I went to her and told her that I felt like the Lord had told me the same thing but how can I do something like that when I am so shy and I have no experience in any of this! Why would God want me to do this? She told me that God would equip me and that He equips us with what He calls us to do. She told me that I had more than shyness holding me back, and that I had a spirit of fear and when I am ready, God will deliver me completely of that fear and use me in this ministry.
Not long after this, I went to a big worship conference with several ladies from the church and while I was at that worship conference, the ladies gathered around me to pray over me in the hotel room and Sister Sheila anointed me and prayed powerfully over me. And right there in that hotel room, the Lord delivered me of that fear! We went back to the conference that night and I freely worshipped and I heard the most beautiful song I had ever heard. The Lord spoke to my heart and told me that song would be my first flag dance. The song was called You Are Good by Jeff Deyo. When we got back home, I got some purple material and I glued it to two dowel rods and made two flags and that next Sunday, I danced to that song with those flags I made. I didn’t practice moves for that dance or practice what I would do because I didn’t know how to do that. I just stepped out and starting worshipping and dancing with those flags to the song and was spinning and twirling like I did as a little girl with Jesus in the fields of flowers. I could feel the Holy Spirit guiding me and my movements and when the song was over, I looked up and everyone was crying myself included! You could hear a pin drop. I just remember Pastor Doug and Sheila hugging me and telling me to get ready that this was the beginning of what God wanted to do in my life. From that moment on, I would hear a song and I would see movement interpretation to it and I would see full story dramas. I began to minister in interpretive story dances and flags. Before I knew it, He had put together a children’s team, a youth team, a ladies team. We did interpretive dance, flags, dramas to songs, interpretive mime. He anointed all of it. It was ALL Him!
We started going to other churches and ministering in dance and drama and mime and flags and the Holy Spirit would draw people to the altar and they would get saved and delivered. We would just stand there in Awe of the Lord. I remember the first time He told me I was going to speak about the dance ministry in front of the whole church and do a teaching on it. I said Ok Lord, Your Word says all I have to do is open my mouth and you will do the rest. I am counting on this! That is exactly what happened! Every time I would open my mouth, He would speak for me and it would flow out. I didn’t even use half my notes. I was so relieved that He was faithful to do this! I know that it was all Him because on my own I could not do any of that! After that it became easy for me to speak in front of a congregation of people. To pray for people, to join Soul Seekers and knock on doors!
When I met my husband James, He was a Texas boy… we fell in love and we got married and I moved back to Texas where he lived. I did not know what God had in store for me in Texas. I grew up in Texas but Tennessee was my home. My church family was my home. Once in Texas, I thought my season of flag ministry was over. We were out driving one day and we passed a church. We felt drawn to turn around and we sat in the parking lot. We knew we needed to visit. We went on a Wednesday night and we were met with people full of joy and love. We started going to this church and the teaching of the Word was so deep and really stirred up our hearts. The Lord opened a door for me to teach flags and drama to the youth and for me and James to minister together in interpretive story dances and mime. He moved us to another church in another city and He had me do the same thing there.
In 2016, James lost his job of 27 years. We told the Lord “Ok Lord, we are not tied down to a job anymore and whatever you have for us, whatever you want us to do, here we are! Well, when you tell the Lord that then be prepared for Him to take you up on it! He sent us to Kentucky in 2016 for what we thought would be just a year of doing outreach and street ministry and we had no idea that He was going to have us buy and start a church and a ministry there for 3 years. He told us He wanted us to be a hub, a place for the body of Christ to come together in unity to worship together, to disciple people and to be a place of hope. He told me that I would be bringing flag worship to the area and to get ready. I made several sets of flags in preparation. He just opened door after door for flag ministry. Before I knew it, the churches He sent me to wanted me to make them flags and they started using them in their worship services. He sent women to me that wanted to learn about the flags. How to make them, how to worship with them. He put together a flag team of women from different churches to meet and pray together, encourage each other, and to go out and minister at churches and events. In 2020, God brought Me and James back home to Texas. Every time I think God is done using me in flag ministry, He opens a new door. We were at James’ moms memorial service and I did a flag dance in honor of her. The pastor of that church was there and he came up to me afterward and asked me If I would do a flag dance there on a Sunday morning. That lead to teaching flags and a ministry of sharing the gospel through flags and interpretive story drama. I will continue doing this as long as God wants me to.
Every time He opens a new door to do this, I am always surprised and humbled. I still get overwhelmed at the thought that God saw something in that shy awkward little girl who escaped by dancing and twirling in a field and decided to use her for His purpose. He truly does use imperfect people. He truly does equip the called. I am living proof that if He can use me, He can use anyone!