Tag Archives: Randa Chance

Tears

Randa is back! @randomchance08 is clearly one of my favorite writers. She is witty, humorous, and yet can get in your heart with a knife but not make it hurt. She lifts up others, encourages and strengthens the Body of Christ through her spoken and written words. Be blessed.

Funny thing about strong people crying.

When you are usually the one to hold back your own unshed tears in order to be there for and strengthen others, it feels foreign and almost shameful to weep.  Almost as if you need permission from someone else to allow the floodgates to open.

This is why faces are hidden and hands cover quivering mouths in front of others. 

This is why the profound crying is usually done in the dark hours and tears are deposited into mute pillows.  When the body and spirit relax enough to become transparent and vulnerable and the longings and disappointments are exposed.  When desperate prayers are finally whispered in secret to the only One who knows and understands and sees all.

Dear warrior, just because tears do not ensue immediately does not mean that you are unfeeling.

It is just that sometimes the weeping comes from a place so deep down inside that it takes a little while for the ground to break and the tears to come forth.

It takes time for the little child to finally climb upward through the thickets of self–imposed maturity, expectations and responsibilities, the layers and layers of armor that surround a throbbing, bruised heart.  It is a struggle to come to the place where he can finally look up and open his arms with undisguised helplessness and say, “Father, this is where I am.  This is where I hurt.  I am imperfect.  I am a wild failure.  Sometimes I don’t even know what I need, or what this longing inside even is, but You do.”

Human tradition dictates that appearing in the presence of royalty entails days and days of preparation, wearing one’s finest garments, scrubbed sparkling clean, and being as near to perfect as possible.  Poise and elegance are the standards.  If the king is to extend his scepter, he must be pleased with what he sees.

Not so in the presence of the King of Kings. 

His heart is moved to see a ragged, tattered soul appear in His throne room, running with abandon toward Him with arms outstretched, screaming, “Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me!  I need you now!”

He loves to see tears snaking down a dirt–spattered face as one of His children dash headlong toward His feet, sometimes tumbling and falling in haste to reach Him.

There is no requirement for perfection in this atmosphere. 

No need to hold up a veneer of smiling face and human strength.

His greatest delight is in knowing the need of the child for his Father, and pouring out His healing love into a wounded spirit who recognizes that no other place and no one else but his Father can fill the void inside.

And so the tears slide down uninhibited.  The echoes of the ancient prophet Zephaniah whisper through the air, “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” 

Self is forsaken. 

Spirit communes with spirit as barriers slowly crumble into dust.

An exhausted, hiccuping child is held close and rocked in the arms of a Father as He croons a love song, and an aching heart is quieted.

Tears

randachance-300x300Randa Chance is a writer, speaker and pastor’s wife at the Sanctuary of San Antonio. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband, Shane, and their children. Her new book, Of Cabbages and Kings, can be purchased here. It is as delightful as and charming as Randa herself. I adore her.

 

 

 

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Offended Much?

randachanceShe’s back!! This post by Randa Chance showed up in my #timehop today and I thought it was worth sharing again. You would love her other posts,  “When The Music Stops”, and “Tears”.   This one is out of the ballpark! Please share it. 

Poor John the Baptist.

As a fellow flawed human, if I were in his shoes (or sandals), I probably would have done the same thing. Think about it.

All of your life, you have prepared the way of the Lord, who also just happens to be your relative. Everywhere you go, you bawl out the coming of the One whose shoelaces you are unworthy to loose.

You are a free spirit. 

You live in the desert, you wear smelly animal skins, and your locust-induced halitosis keeps people out of breathing range. People come to see and hear you speak about the mystery of God, but to many you are simply a circus freak. To King Herod, you present a fascinating problem. He knows you are a man of God, and he knows you speak the truth, but you also pose a threat to him. So, he throws you in prison where he can keep an eye on you.

It’s a far cry from being able to run free around the desert and feel the wind blowing through your beard. You wish you could just stand on a mountainside once more and survey the landscape while you pick your teeth with a locust leg. Instead, you sit incarcerated with hordes of rats in a damp, stinky hole, unable to do anything but languish and scratch your lice and send dejected messages to Jesus via your disciples.

Then there is your cousin, the rock star. The one you’ve been telling everyone about. The Messiah who waves His hand and causes bread crumbs and slivers of fish to fill thousands of hungry bellies. The One with the twelve groupies. Jesus, the Son of God, healing little old women with a flick of His robe, forgiving sins and spitting into blind eyeballs.

And the crowd goes wild.

I wonder if John was waiting for Jesus to come and break him out of prison or perhaps set up a series of preaching points with the two of them, complete with laser lights and smoke and, “Hallelujah! That man just jumped out of his wheelchair and is running around the building! Another miracle for our ministry team!” Jesus and John – The Dynamic Duo.

But it never happened, and John was disheartened, to put it mildly. When he sent two of his disciples to get Jesus’ attention, his short and to-the-point message – even by KJV standards – was certainly laced with something other than pure curiosity:

“So the men came to Jesus and said, John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, Are you the One who is to come, or shall we [continue to] look for another?” (Luke 7:17 – AMP)

Oh, he knew Jesus was The One. John knew all along. He was just sending Jesus a not-so-subtle reminder that the voice crying in the wilderness was now rotting in jail, and, oh hey, by the way, this is NOT how things were supposed to turn out. Aren’t you supposed to get some kind of perks when you know the right people? Especially when you’re related?

“Yo, cuz. Help a brotha out. No, seriously. My head is about to be chopped off. What about all the times I prepared the way for you? I even baptized you. And now I’m in jail and it looks like I’m not long for this world. Not cool. Not cool at all. Thanks a lot, man.”

offended much

Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, after telling John’s disciples to relay to him all of the miracles being performed, cut straight through all of the fluff. In Luke 7:23 he responded directly to the heart of John’s question:

“Blessed (happy–with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, apart from outward conditions–and to be envied) is he who takes no offense in Me and who is not hurt or resentful or annoyed or repelled or made to stumble [whatever may occur].”

John, I can see you. I know you’re having a rough time. Don’t be offended. I have a greater purpose that you may not understand this side of eternity. I know that you had a different set of plans for your life. I understand your unasked questions. This is an unexpected outcome for you, and you have the option to be completely bitter. It’s your call, whatever you decide. But I want you to trust my plan.

I have felt John’s frustrations before in my own life.

Sadly, I have allowed myself in several situations to become offended at God when my own expectations or projected outcomes differed from the path that God had laid out.   I doubt that anyone has never prayed, “Please allow cancer to invade my body.  Gracious Heavenly Father, let me die while my children are still young — perhaps in a fiery auto accident.   And, oh, while you’re at it, please also see to it that my finances are devastated and that my marriage falls apart.”

I am so thankful that God is a patient and loving Father, because my questions to Him have been sarcastic at times. Really, God? Are you serious? Is this your idea of a joke? It has been a painful road to walk.

For me, the blessing came one day when I was finally able to pry open my hands that clutched deep desires and hold them up to God and say, “Okay, God. Here are my dreams. Here are my aspirations. They don’t really belong to me anyway. Here are the broken parts of me. Here are my frustrations and secret sorrows. Sure, I wanted to be a psychologist/world-renowned author/gifted musician/(fill in the blank with preferred dream).

But if you need me to be a toilet scrubber right now, I will make those commodes shine. If my place in life during this season – or for the rest of my life – is to be someone’s burden bearer, without any credit ever going to me, that’s okay too. It hurts right now. I can’t deny that.

But I will be fine. Help me to be content while you mold me. As impatient as I am, still I know that your will and your timing and your plans for me are far greater than anything I could ever imagine. Just give me grace to trust you… Help me to trust you.”

And then there came the overshadowing of deep peace and quiet assurance that I was exactly where He wanted me, that this was His gig to worry about — not mine — and that gave me the strength to keep going.

All is well. It is well with my soul.

Randa Chance is a writer, speaker and pastor’s wife at the Sanctuary of San Antonio. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband, Shane, and their children. You can purchase her wonderful book, Of Cabbages and Kings here, It is as delightful as and charming as Randa herself. I adore her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When The Music Stops

Randa Chance is a writer, speaker and pastor's wife at the Sanctuary of San Antonio.

Randa Chance is a writer, speaker and pastor’s wife at the Sanctuary of San Antonio.

Anniversary Week!  Celebrating one year of Hope in the Healing by sharing some of our most popular posts with you. Randa Chance, author of “Of Cabbages and Kings”, is one of our favorite guest authors and whether you saw it the first time, almost a year ago, or viewing it today afresh, you will glean from it! 

There is no denying it.  Music is my world. 

While I am not the greatest singer or the best piano player, music takes me to another realm and envelops me with harmonies, chord progressions, shapes and movements that shake me to my toes and make my heart tremble.

Some minor chords make me weep involuntarily.  People laugh at me when I listen to music or sing.  My frame involuntarily leans into the crescendos and progressions of minor chords and I get a funny look on my face.  When I sit at my piano and begin to play, a deep solitude comes over me.  I close my eyes and everything else fades away.  Perhaps this all sounds a bit melodramatic, but if you are a musician, you know the feeling well.

On the other hand, when a wrong note is sung or played, or a chord goes sour, it causes me pain.  I remember several years ago when a choir director taught the wrong part to the altos.  When they were joined by the sopranos and tenors, the resultant sound was a screech that sounded like a freight train going off the tracks.  It made me sad.

When the band doesn’t quite play in tune, or when singers refuse to listen to each other and they go off pitch, the cacophony of jarring notes clashing together make me want to cover my ears and rock back and forth.

In a perfect world, the music flows beautifully.  You wear a size 4, your children are attending medical school on full scholarships, there is a ready-made casserole cooking in the oven, you have no past-due medical bills, your marriage is full of passion and laughter, and the dog is housetrained.

In reality, though, there are quite a few harsh notes.

You probably either work a 40-plus-hour job to make ends meet, or you are a stay-at-home parent with just as many responsibilities, and just as little time.  I am sure that if I had the privilege of dropping by your home unannounced, I would be greeted with an overflowing trash can, a mountain of laundry, a stack of bills, and children running around in various stages of undress with sticky faces.  If I looked closely, I might witness an argument between you and your spouse over money. I might even see a family shattered by infidelity or divorce.

when the music stops

When the music stops, what do you do? 

  • When the lights are turned off at church, the choir is silent, the dazzling media presentations are powered down and the saints have gone, what then?  You sit down on a pew in the darkened sanctuary and weary tears spring up without warning.

  • When you flash a strong smile to everyone around you and tell them you are doing “…just fine, God is so good…” and then return home to a broken relationship and finances in shambles.

  • When you lose someone precious to you and bear up under the load of caring for everyone else, while you die inside and wonder how on earth you will carry on without crumbling into a thousand tears.

What happens then?

I never dreamed that I would be the wife of a church planter.  In fact, I vowed and declared it would never happen because we were so poor when I was a child and my father was a home missionary.  Today, that is what I am.  Don’t get me wrong – this is where God called us and I have grown and learned more in the past four years than I ever have.  But there are days when I am so burned out that I could easily walk away from all of it.

It was beyond my imagination that I would witness the love of my life dealing with severe physical pain every single day, just to do the normal things that the rest of us take for granted, and cope with the emotional devastation that comes along with suffering from congenital abnormalities.

I never dreamed that I would have an ongoing battle against a spirit of deepest, darkest depression that made me feel like I was standing inside a 5 x 5 room built with dark cement bricks with no door and no way of escape or change.

I have always been strong, but situations in the past several years of my life have been some of the most difficult I have ever lived through.  They have left my heart raw and scars on my spirit.  They have stripped away every bit of pride and left me bare.  I never thought it would be possible to feel so numb or shattered when I had a relationship with God.

A few months ago, I drove down the road weeping over a personal situation.  I felt deep self-pity and literally told God that I felt like a barrel full of radioactive liquid that was about to spill over.  I just whined and told Him all about it.

And in His still, small voice, He whispered, “Why don’t you take everything to me in the first place?  Don’t you know I am the One who will give you the strength to cope and be victorious?”

Oh, but what is that flaw deep within me that even I fail to see, which He sees, and in His infinite wisdom, says, “This must be purified.  That must be burned away.”

Could it be that He allowed this suffering to take place in my life so that I must rely completely upon Him and no other?

In my seeking to find balance between all of my obligations as a wife, working full-time outside the home, caring for our three children, serving at our church as pastor’s wife, music director, Sunday school teacher and church custodian, sometimes I find myself spinning out of control.

I know that to whom much is given, much is required, and I over-extend myself and give beyond my means, because I am faced every single day with the realization of my own mortality and the knowledge that I have no idea how long this life will be given to me.  I long to live in peace and stability.  But instead, I realize that I am overcome with fatigue and weariness, and have been for ever so long.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul speaks about his own suffering: “There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.  For this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me.  And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

“Sufficient.” Think about it.  What does that word really mean?

In “The Hidden Life”, J.R. Miller defined “sufficient” as “…one whose meaning expands and amplifies with the measure of the need. No necessity is so small as not to be included, and none is so great as to go beyond the capacity of the blessing which is promised.”

It covers my need completely.  No more or less than exactly what is needed.

When I am exhausted, His grace is sufficient.  When I am beyond the point of wounded and have no strength left, his strength is perfect.  All of my frantic running and seeking for perfection is nothing more than running on a hamster wheel.  It does nothing but exhaust me.

And all the time, He whispers, “Come closer.  Be still, my love.  Know that I am God.”

  • Are you frantic in all of your searching to find the answer in your crisis?
  • Do you feel the difficulty of focusing on anything beyond your pain?
  • Is life a ball of roiling confusion and heartache?

It’s time to take a deep breath, and rest your eyes on the One who holds all of your tomorrows in the palm of His hand. 

Enter into His presence and stay there.  Let Him speak peace into your life.

Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

When your music stops, when your ability to manage and care for, and do and be all things to all men comes to a screeching halt, when you can no longer deal with the hurt…that is when He will step in.  In the very middle of your pain, you can still walk with Him in the cool of the day.  And HE will sing over you.  He will quiet you.  He will comfort and soothe you.

Rest.

Randa Chance is a writer, speaker and pastor’s wife at the Sanctuary of San Antonio. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband, Shane, and their children. Her new book, Of Cabbages and Kings, can be purchased by clicking on the picture here on my blog to the right! It is as delightful as and charming as Randa herself. I adore her.

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