Loreatha Gunnels Mayberry

Beyond the Tears: Moving from Misery to Joy Loreatha Gunnels Mayberry

An inspiring story of strength and faith, Beyond the Tears: Moving from Misery to Joy is a powerful tribute to the beauty of the human spirit's triumph over adversity. Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in rural Arkansas, Loreatha Gunnels Mayberry and her family struggle to survive in the South's poverty. Even though slavery was abolished during the Civil War, the family endures a different kind of bondage: sharecropping. But despite the intimidation and cheating from the land's owners, Mayberry and her siblings never want for anything. But Mayberry's life changes forever when she discovers she's pregnant at the age of sixteen. Two years after her son's birth, Mayberry marries the child's father, Luke, and the two settle in with Luke's parents. But in 1965, the couple separates, and Mayberry struggles to make a life for herself and her little boy. A divorce and one failed marriage later, she accepts Jesus Christ as her savior-and realizes that God has given her the gift of healing. Beyond the Tears shares Mayberry's startling transformation from a sharecropper's daughter to an ordained minister and college graduate, and reveals the overwhelming power of God's love.