Author and speaker Camey Joy recently shared the miraculous story behind her new memoir, “Beautifully Scarred.” Born in the mountains of Guatemala with a severe cleft lip and palate, Joy was rescued and adopted after what she believes was a divine encounter involving two mysterious men—possibly angels.
As November marks National Adoption Month, Joy encouraged families considering adoption to take a step of faith, reminding them, “You don’t have to have it all figured out—you just have to give God your yes.”
“Every scar tells a story—and mine is ‘Beautifully Scarred,’” Joy told ChurchLeaders. “It started for me in the mountains of Guatemala, where I was born with a severe bilateral cleft lip and cleft palate.”
“For those of you who don’t know, it’s where you’re born without a lip and in the roof of your mouth there’s a hole,” she explained. “This obviously caused problems for me to be able to eat and nurse, and I should have died…But that’s not where my story ends.”
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“Because I was unable to eat, out of love, my biological father, Jesus, he wrapped me up in a blanket and walked down a mountain to Guatemala City. It was a three-day journey,” Joy shared. “When he arrived, the doctor took one look at me and said, ‘Jesus, I’m sorry. We don’t know how to perform the surgery—and even if we did, you wouldn’t have the money.’”
Joy’s biological father walked out of the hospital completely defeated, sat on the stairs, and began to weep over his daughter’s life.
“He knew I was going to die,” said Joy. “And out of nowhere, two men came up to him and asked him why he was crying. He couldn’t even speak, but he pulled back the blanket from my face, and the two men saw the deformity and said, ‘There is hope.’”
The two men led Joy’s father to an orphanage.
Joy said, “When we arrived…when Jesus turned around to tell the two men ‘thank you,’ they were nowhere to be found. No one had seen them or saw them. And I believe that was a divine intervention over my life, and even possibly angels.”
