Our beloved wife and mother, Joy Marie Dunlap, passed away at the age of 60 in Redding, California on the morning of January 29, 2022, after a valiant 2-month battle to recover from emergency surgery. She had diabetes, heart failure, and kidney failure working against her.

Joymarie was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, the second daughter of Sally Ann (Folger) and T. Wayne Dye, PhD, who raised her on the tropical island of New Guinea where they did translation work for Wycliffe Bible Translators, working with the Bahinemo tribe in Wagu village, East Sepik Province.

As a teenager, Joymarie dedicated her life to serving God by loving and serving other people. She had a passion for teaching, and after high school graduation, she stayed in New Guinea and taught school in Wagu village for a year. (Joy Marie’s love for the country of Papua New Guinea and its people, and most especially for the missionary community of Ukarumpa that served them and the Wagu village people, who were her aunts and uncles and friends, lasted for her lifetime. She always considered it her home.)

She came back to the USA in 1979 and attended Spring Arbor College in Michigan for a year before transferring to BIOLA University in California, where she met her husband, James D. Dunlap. They were married September 18, 1982 in Santa Ana, California.

Joymarie became wheelchair-bound in 1989 due to pregnancies and childhood injuries that were never corrected. Despite needing a wheelchair, she homeschooled all 5 of her children. From 1993 to 2000 she wrote articles for the premier homeschool publication at the time, The Teaching Home magazine. From there she launched her own business, LightHome Publications, providing educational materials (over 100 products total) to homeschoolers all over the world at www.LightHome.net.

Joymarie loved to sing and wrote over 100 songs while still a teenager, as well as producing 2 CD albums with her husband and children. She had the very special ability to compose music at will, as well as possessing prolific creativity in many areas. Creative ideas and projects flowed from her like water from a fountain. She wrote many poems, and was working on several books, including a well-researched historical novel and a book on true vs. false Christianity, as well as a whole series of art courses, one per grade or 2 from grade 1 all the way to grade 12, including Basic Art, Aqua Art, and Art Appreciation, and many more of her A-Z handwriting books.

Joymarie gave her life to God's service, accepting Jesus as her Lord and Savior and Protector at the tender age of 3, and giving Christ her life more fully at 9 and 14 years of age. She was tender, sensitive and kind. She had hardship and difficulty throughout her life and debilitating pain since age 9, but she was a fighter and would not back down from the truth.

Joymarie loved the Bible, all of it, but her favorite passages were Matthew 25:31-46 and 1 John 3:16-19. These were lived out in her missionary home community of Ukarumpa in Papua New Guinea, which had a lifelong impact on her. She struggled throughout her adulthood with the contrast between the Christianity she saw in that loving community and the religion she found upon returning to America. Her life message was that love is at the very heart of Christianity. She wrote in her Bible, "When Love Comes Last, It Isn't Christian."

Joymarie is survived by her husband of 39 years, James, their children, Joshua, Justin, Judah, Jennaya, and Jonathan, her parents, Wayne and Sally Dye, her older sister, Edie Bakker, and younger brothers, Tom and Jamey, and her 5 grandchildren, Caleb, Chloe, Rosa, Yaotl, and Landon.

Due to COVID-19, a memorial service will be held on Saturday, April 9. She will be interred at Mount Shasta Memorial Park.

Donations can be made at www.tinyurl.com/JMDBurialFund and will be used to offset burial costs. Anything above that will go to the charity she once worked at, World Vision.

Send to someone

Share this obituary with others

https://everloved.com/life-of/joy-dunlap/obituary/

Copy