She began by telling how she first got the news that was to change her life. “It was in 1988 and I was living in the San Bernardino area of Southern California and was married to a man who had become very ill and had difficulty breathing and walking and was very weak,” she said. He was put into the hospital and after about three days I was told that he had AIDS. After the dust had settled, my husband told me that he had been unfaithful during our marriage and that he had contracted HIV through other sexual relationships.

“It was then that I guessed that I was probably going to be HIV-positive as well. At that time there wasn’t very much known about HIV; the only thing I did know was that it was a death sentence and I was terrified. If I hadn’t been a Christian who had a walk with Jesus Christ, I don’t know how I would have survived that hit.

“''He died eighteen months later, because, at that time, a diagnosis of AIDS really meant that you had twelve to eighteen months to live. He pretty much fitted that profile. As you can imagine, I felt tremendously betrayed and hurt but I chose to stay with him because I knew he was dying. I knew that our lives were very disrupted and I didn’t want my children to lose their dad once to divorce and another time to death.

So we stayed together. I cared for him until he died. It took me six months to get the courage to get tested and I did test HIV positive. When I found out, I was just terrified and I thought my life was over. I didn’t know how I was going to make it from that day forward. I had children to take care of. My husband who was dying at that point. I had to keep working and I had a home to keep up, but I didn’t know how I was going to be able to move forward.”

Joan said that she was deeply hurt when she went to her pastor for help. “Initially, I went to my pastor at my church and told them we needed some help and prayer and basically our family was ignored from that point,” she said. “About a year later, I started going to another church because I really needed pastoral care. At first I didn’t tell the pastor that I had HIV because I was afraid that I would get kicked out. I had heard of that happening at other churches.

So I didn’t say anything. But one day I found out that my daughter had told her Sunday school teacher that her daddy had died of AIDS, so I kind of got ‘outed’ as they say. I went to my pastor and I told him that my daughter had revealed to her Sunday school class that her daddy had died of AIDS. I told him, ‘I wanted to let you know first before it got around the congregation.’ I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said, ‘If anybody messes with you, they’ll have to answer to me.’ So, at that point, I knew that I was safe; I was supported and loved and so were my children. It was a wonderful oasis for my children and me.

The funeral

Joan then spoke about her husband’s funeral. "It was a very discouraging time because my husband had a big family and they were in various states of denial and they didn’t want to admit that he had HIV,” she said. “In fact, some of them were very antagonistic towards me. I don’t really understand that because I hadn’t done anything to deserve that, so it was a very painful time. My husband had been very involved in civic activities and so there was kind of a celebration of who he was. You like to remember the good things that people have accomplished when they die; but underneath all of that I was dealing with the betrayal and the heartache. So it felt like it was kind of an almost hypocritical type of service. It just was very painful and it didn’t offer me a lot of consolation.”

Joan talked about how her children reacted to the situation. “At first I didn’t even tell them that their dad had AIDS or that I was HIV positive,” she said. “My son was only nine when his father died and my daughter was only seven. And, by the way, they’re both HIV-negative thank God. So I decided to wait until things kind of settled down in our lives. After their father died, we started going to a counselor and the counselor helped me tell them that I was HIV-positive. They really had a lot of anger and depression which has lasted to this day; they’re in their twenties now.

“It was anger that was just aimed out there. It wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular; it was just generalized anger. My son, especially, became very prone to blow up and get anger fits while my daughter just kept it all inside.

“But the one thing that I’ve noticed with my two children is that almost every time I have a birthday or at Christmas time or Mother’s Day, I get a card from them and it says, ‘I’m so thankful Mom to have you for another birthday…another Christmas…another Mother’s Day.’ I get almost the same message written every year and that just hurts my heart that they’ve had this threat of losing their mom hanging over their heads their entire lives.”

Joan then spoke about how difficult it was at first in her walk with Christ. “I found that it was one thing to give my heart to Christ, but then it’s another thing to live a life walking with Christ because I had all the normal emotions of anyone; the anger, the ‘why me?’ question; the depression; the worry. I found that I got angry at God because I knew that God could heal me instantly. If I could be healthy and fine, it felt like all my worries would be over. So I kept asking why didn’t God do that? But He chose not to and I really had to let myself experience being angry at God and knowing that I could let my anger at God come out; that He wasn’t going to punish me for being angry; but that He was willing to let me go through all the emotions.

“I got a lot of help from reading the Psalms because in reading the Psalms the writers allowed their anger and their worry and their fear to come out.”

The great miracle of love

Joan admitted that she was convinced that her children would end up as orphans and didn’t know who would take care of them. “Like I said, in the 1980s, HIV was a death sentence. But God has been very good to me. In 1994, I remarried a wonderful man, Galen, who is a believer. He is HIV-negative and he has brought in a kind of a love that represented the way I believe Christ loves us. He saw me even though I was infected and chose to love me any way. I really see his love as a metaphor for the love of Christ.

“I met him at my church,” she said, “and when I talked before about my daughter announcing in her Sunday school class that her daddy had died of AIDS, it turned out that my husband’s daughter was in the same Sunday school class; and she told him what my daughter had said. He was just a friend at the time. He called me up and said he had heard this rumor about my late husband having AIDS, and I told him that it was true. He chose to be friends with me and I was so thankful that he just didn’t reject me out of hand that I didn’t even expect anything more to come from it. Gradually, he grew to love me and he said that his love for me became stronger than his fear of AIDS.

“And so we were married in 1994 with the blessing of our pastor and our families. He and the love of God and the HIV medications have given me an opportunity to live way longer than I ever anticipated in those days.”

Joan, who was in Toronto as part of a team from He Intends Victory, a Christian ministry to those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, then spoke how she joined the ministry and is now a board member.

“The first time I learned about He Intends Victory was about ten years after I was tested HIV positive,” she said. “It was the first Christian support group for HIV and AIDS that I’d ever found. They shared their joy and their love for each other and prayed for each other and I said,’ I’ve just got be a part of this.’

“One of the blessings that I’ve had since I joined He Intends Victory is that I’ve been able to travel. One of the highlights was two years ago, when my husband and I were able to go to Ecuador where we started a He Intends Victory chapter. My husband is also Spanish speaking, as well as I. We’re so excited because we’re really launching a wing of He Intends Victory into Latin America. There’s so much need all over the world that you just feel like you could ‘put your finger in the dike,’ so to speak. Any thing you do is a drop in the bucket.

“While we were in Ecuador, we met a Catholic priest who is taking care of boys in a reformatory and these boys had no access to HIV testing. Some of them have had high risk behavior and they were afraid that they might be HIV-positive. So one of my hopes is that we can get more testing for this group of boys in the reformatory there.”

She said that in the Latino World, few people talk about HIV/AIDS.

“It’s kind of a cultural taboo to talk about matters dealing with HIV and sexuality. We found that there’s a lot of stigma for people who have HIV in the Latino world; so people don’t want to come forward and be tested. At a seminar here in Toronto, I was just hearing a report that worldwide, over ninety percent of people who are HIV-positive don’t know. That means ninety percent of these people that are walking around as HIV-positive could be infecting other people. So we really need to help people get tested so they know their status.”

I wondered if she had suffered at the hands of Christians because of her HIV status.

“I’ve had more of two types of attitudes,” said Joan. “One is that people with AIDS or HIV did something wrong to deserve it and that God is judging them. But when you think about it that way, everybody is a sinner and we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. So by that standard we could all deserve it, you might say.

“When I got infected, I was a Christian and I was faithful to my husband. I did not use drugs and I still got infected. So we need to look at people with HIV as people who Jesus loves and to not judge people with HIV; but to see them as an area of ministry and an area of outreach that can share the hope of Jesus Christ.”

Joan Yorba-Gray has written a book with her testimony. It also includes a devotional for people with HIV/AIDS. "It is called In His Shadow and I wrote it a few years ago during a time I was really dealing with a lot of emotional dilemmas that I was working through with God,” she said. “I was working through my anger with God and I was reading the scriptures about how to handle my anger. I was asking how I should handle my fear, my worry and my stress. It seemed like, through the scripture and through my prayer time, the Lord taught me some valuable lessons.

“One example is when I was dealing with my anger, that in the psalms God gave David permission to express his anger and He accepted his anger. So I studied that and then I felt like I was able to be angry with God. I learned the scriptures about worry. The Bible says, ‘Sufficient are the cares for today’ and that ‘He cares for us and He cares for the sparrows and the birds in the air.’ So I realized that He will care for us as well.

“I’ve written a different chapter on each of these topics. I put it together as a devotional to kind of meditate on, and think about, and pray for people who are dealing with HIV. I had been told by other people that it really works for many life conditions.”

I then asked Joan what advice she would give to someone who has just discovered that they are HIV-positive. “I would like to say ‘go to the Lord with it and let Him have your pain and anger.’”

“He’s big enough and He can take it. At the moments when we find ourselves at the end of our rope, God intervenes. It might be a small way; it might be a miraculous way, but He does intervene to show us that He’s God and that He loves us dearly. Then we should then hang on to that hope.”

I concluded by asking Joan if, looking back, if she would change anything. “I don’t regret all the lessons I’ve learned,” she said. “In fact, I wrote a poem called ‘My gift’ and it talks about what the experience of living with HIV has put me through and how it has helped me have a better trust for God.

“Having HIV has put me through seeing the love of people around me that I hadn’t seen before. I’ve been able to travel to many countries all over the world that I would have never been able to see before. I’ve been able to see how precious life is in a way that I never did before. I’ve made some wonderful friends, so even though I wouldn’t have chosen to have become infected, and I would take a cure today if it were given, I sure am glad for what God has given me in the process.”

If you would like a free copy of Joan Yorba-Gray’s book, In His Shadow, go to www.heintendsvictory.com where you can get more details. You can also send a message of encouragement to Joan at joanielou@msn.com.

By Dan Wooding Founder of ASSIST Ministries