[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Hey, everybody.
Welcome to Ladies Bible Class.
We enjoyed hearing from the leader for the past three weeks, but we get to go back to our regularly scheduled programming of our wonderful speakers. And so I'm really, really excited about the two that we have tonight.
We have Courtney Lanza and Ms. Joyce Chaney. So we're really excited about y' all being here. And thank you so much for the prep that you've put into it, especially post labs to leaders.
Thank you for saying yes to this spot. So we appreciate that.
Okay, so I'm gonna read their bios and then I'm gonna pray, and we'll hear from Courtney first and then Ms. Joyce.
Courtney Lanza. My family and I have been attending Madison for a little over four years now, and it has truly become home to us.
From the first step inside the doors, there is just something special here, and we are overjoyed to get to be a part of it.
You've probably met my husband Paul before me as he loves to greet people on Sundays. While I have to push myself out of a more introverted bubble, I don't
[00:01:49] Speaker C: believe that
[00:01:51] Speaker B: during our time here, I've had the joy of teaching cradle roll classes and also helping lead the littles playgroup. However, now I spend most of my energy as a high school English teacher and chauffeuring our two children while they live their best lives.
Being mom to our two very prayed for kiddos is my greatest joy. Our son Brinson is eight and Elora is four.
They keep me humble, entertained, and fully dependent on coffee and Jesus.
But truly, I'm just grateful, very grateful for this church, for this community of women, and for the time we get to spend together tonight.
And I think we'd all say the same thing. Okay, so Ms. Joyce Chaney was born and raised right here in Huntsville.
She moved to Sarasota, Florida for a job opportunity at 23 and returned to Madison in January of 2020, just before the COVID lockdown.
She became a Christian at age 27, and it has been her life since that time.
She's often said that she moved away to find her own faith, not the faith of her grandparents, mom and siblings. She loves to serve others and is the co coordinator for comfort and kindness. So thank you all so much. So we'll say a prayer and then we'll hear from Courtney.
Dear Lord, thank you so much for allowing us to come out here tonight. We have really, absolutely loved this beautiful weather, and we praise you for that. We thank you for providing all the beauty around us, the cool breeze and the wonderful flowers we get to look at in the sunshine. We do not take that for granted. Lord, I thank you for every lady in this room, God, and what they mean to me and what we mean to each other.
Like Courtney said, God, we feel a special bond with each other and a special feeling in this place. And we know that comes straight from you. So we praise you for that. And we know that that is not anything we have done on our own.
It's not anything that we provide ourselves, but it's you working through us and your holy spirit and your son, and all the things that we glean and learn from all three of you that allow us to feel those feelings and to know your presence and to feel all of you here with us. And we look forward to how that will translate into our eternal home and how it will, you know, bring us closer to each other as we get closer to heaven. And we're looking so forward to that, Lord. And we just pray that we will feel, feel that tug on our hearts, the tug of heaven, the tug of being with you. And more importantly than just going there, that we will feel how important, how special it is and how special it will be just to be in your presence.
Dear Lord, I ask that you be with all the women in this room. As we know several of us are going through valleys that we didn't ask for. We knew could be a possibility that we would go through a valley, you know, in our near future. But we, a lot of them are not things we asked for or wanted. And so I pray that you will please give our sisters who are in the valley right now strength and comfort and peace and help us to have our eyes open so that we can see needs and help our sisters who are in the valley to be vulnerable and share with us the things that would actually Help them and the things that we could do to reach out to them. Lord, help those conversations that we have along those lines to be fruitful and to be helpful and. And to bring us out of the valleys and the ones of us that are. That might be on the mountaintop. I pray that we have the strength to reach down and pull our sisters up and that we will work together to make this a place of peace and comfort as we love each other through our days.
We love you so much. And we pray that you be with Courtney and Ms. Joyce as they talk to us, that you will talk through them and that the stories that they bring to us, we will know were orchestrated perfectly by you and your providence. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: So coming off of, lads, if you will bear with me just a little bit, I am a little more on my notes than I probably wanted to be, but we will get through it. And I just pray that some, some of this or part of it would land on the hearts or the ears that need to hear it, or through me or in spite of me, however it. However it reaches. So she did what she could.
She did what she could. It kind of sounds like a cliche Hobby lobby sign, right? And I have a lot of those hanging around my house, but she did what she could.
I want you to just put a pin in that for a moment because we'll come back to that at the end, hopefully in a full circle bit that makes sense.
But really, that line came from Mark 14:8, after the story that we all know about Mary pouring the perfume on Jesus, which was met with a lot of criticism.
Her good works that she had to those around her seem like a waste, that maybe she didn't steward what she had. Well, they thought she could have sold the perfume and maybe given to the poor and used her gifts a little bit better.
But what Jesus turned around and said was she did what she could.
That line has always kind of stuck with me. But for a little more context, remember in Luke 10 that this is the same Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, that when they were busy preparing for Jesus to come, Martha, who I resonate with so much with, was really busy preparing for the guests.
Mary was the one who realized that the guest was already in the room. Right. That Mary was the one sitting at Jesus's feet.
And I love in Luke 10:42, where Jesus comments that Mary has chosen the good part or she has chosen the good part.
What we choose matters.
So back to maybe those overused sayings that we have hanging on our Walls. If you love Hobby Lobby like I do, I have a large sign that hangs in my living room that says choose Joy.
We've all heard the saying, right? Jesus, others you, in that order, choose joy. Also have a sign that's pretty big in the back of my classroom that says the same thing for me to remember as I'm teaching.
But it looks different on a day to day, right? To have that sign hanging up in my home or in my classroom and actually doing that.
And I'm pretty sure that my students and my own children can testify to that.
You see, growing up, I was a competitive cheerleader. And what the coach always said was smile big or you get the Vaseline.
And what that line actually meant was smile or else.
Else you got that nasty goop that they would put on your teeth to make sure that you did not want to close your mouth so that you were smiling no matter what you looked like you were choosing joy, whether you really were or not.
It's funny how that idea can carry over into life though.
We hear things all the time, just put on a smile or fake it till you make it or choose Joy.
And while those things are well meaning overall, it gets a little bit harder when life starts lifing, right?
When choosing joy, try as you might, just does not happen easily.
And we struggle to do like Mary or like Jesus said, to choose the good part.
I know I'm a little all over the place, so welcome to my brain.
But I hope as I explain this a little bit more, we can tie all these ends together.
I grew up in a family of preachers, Bible class teachers, church secretary, so wanting time at church wasn't a big thing. I spent a lot of time at church. I'm pretty sure I went to every vacation Bible school there was.
And I loved it.
I could recite the books of the Bible. I knew the little hymns and church songs.
I also did a pretty good impression of our preacher on Sunday mornings in his sermons. Although I'm not sure it was as flattering or a form of imitation that I thought at the time.
But I remember sitting in the youth group as a teenager thinking, what is my story?
I don't really have a cool story.
When you grow up in church your whole life, by the time you're a teenager, you've heard all the Bible stories of the great heroes of faith.
You've heard people around you and their transformations, and some of them are just really cool.
But mine felt lacking. As a teenager, I couldn't remember a time of not knowing God. From the time I was born, they tell you about Jesus and you learn the little songs. And I had the pink little Precious Moments Bible.
You memorize scripture and knowing about Jesus is just what you do.
It's life.
But we all know that knowing about Jesus and knowing him are two very different things.
And I'm a little ashamed to say that it took me a lot longer than I'd like to admit to really let that hit home.
This teenage girl that didn't think she had much of a cool story.
When you fast forward 20 years and you have that rear view mirror, it's mega humbling. And you start to realize that his faithfulness and his hands were in those puzzle pieces all along.
That I served a God who stood by me when I didn't deserve it nor earn it. Still don't.
And I now realize it's a pretty cool story after all.
So let me give you the summarized version of what I now realize is a cool story. The teenagers would hate how much I've used that word already, but we're covering 36 years, so hold on tight. Okay, we're going to go quickly.
You see, I've always had what I would consider a pretty easy life.
I grew up. My childhood was not plagued with turmoil or a series of unfortunate events like the Baudelaire children, if you know that book series. I'm an English teacher, by the way.
Academics came fairly easy to me. My parents made sure that I never lacked anything I needed. And I definitely received more than what I deserved of my wants.
I didn't make cheer squad one year in middle school, and I had my fair share of high school situations or a couple breakups. But overall, my life was going pretty smoothly.
Not that my 17 year old self was aware of it at the time.
I graduated high school at the top of my class, went on to college on a full scholarship, got involved on campus. God even allowed me to lead a girl's Bible study that he somehow blessed. And it grew farther than I would have ever imagined.
I even got to help with a project and be on that old TLC show. And this will age me a bit. But Extreme Home Makeover, where I got to help with a home for a family in need.
Later on, I even had the privilege to babysit for a movie director.
It sounds pretty good. On the outside, it was all smiles. Remember that Vaseline story? I learned to wear it.
However, there were a few situations during those college years that led my little happy garden of life to certainly develop weeds. And lots of them that would have to be intentionally pruned for years and still now, not to choke out the good, to make sure I could still choose the good part.
Those particular events and stories are for another day. And while many of them I would rather forget, I can still see now how God's hand was working alongside or maybe in spite of them and my choices.
I finished college, got married to my husband Paul, that extrovert greeter that was mentioned in the intro.
I went jobless for about eight months.
Getting a teaching job wasn't as easy as you would think at the time. But then God opened up doors and connections that only he could and felt life felt like it was getting back on track. We were newlyweds. We got plugged into different ministry opportunities. Some of our favorites were mission trips and tutoring kids after school, teaching a kindergarten class together through an inner city bus ministry.
On the surface, we were checking the boxes and again, it looked good.
We were all smiles.
Then very quickly came a season where I started to resonate with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
That more refined in the fire type season that you don't ask for in Daniel 3, 17, 18.
And I'm going to, for sake of time, just kind of sum this up a little bit.
It says if we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to to deliver us.
But even if he does not, then we will not serve your gods.
That phrase up there that's in kind of a pinkish color, we serve actually comes from the Hebrew. And I can't do the like guttural ending, but it's palak.
And it means more than just lip service. It's not just worship or praise. It is a level of devotion and loyalty that exists regardless of your circumstances.
And it was during this season that my circumstances really started to test my devotion.
I tried to believe that God was doing something good in all of it.
And while we were serving kiddos all the time in church work, I wanted so badly to be a mom myself.
Paul and I wanted a larger family. Four children was our game plan.
But the plan was not going how we thought it would.
There were so many shots, procedures, tests, prayers, losses.
I'm pretty sure I went to God with every emotion known to man.
And just as a side note, in case someone's never told you he's big enough to handle it, he's a pretty big God and you don't have to fake it till you make it or put on the Vaseline smile when it comes to him.
But the words of those three men became my mantra.
The God we serve is able.
But even if he does not remember earlier when I said what we choose matters, choosing joy wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse at this moment.
What was I going to choose if he did not?
There was a line I said so much and so often to myself and others that a sweet co worker actually made me the necklace that you see on the screen.
And those seven words were on repeat for years in my heart and in my mind.
And if not, he is still good.
But was I still going to claim that he was good if he did not?
We always said we wanted four children and in reality we received eight.
A double portion. Praise God, just not all. Earthside While we eagerly await our reunion with our six other babies, we now get the immense privilege of being mom and dad to Brinson and Elora.
And that is a joy that is so easy to choose.
But that's not where the story ends.
A few weeks before Elora was born, the doctor met me with some concerns. And I say me because this was the during the 2020 shutdown. So every appointment was by myself.
I was already high risk, so frequent scans were a thing.
And in a nutshell I walked in and was told to prepare to never bring her home.
And if I did that, her life would be quite different than what we had envisioned.
God, I know you're able, but if you don't, will I still say that you are good.
The day that she was born, she had to be put on oxygen for quite a while.
I didn't get to see her for several hours, but then we brought her spunky self home. And if you have ever met Elora, then you know that little note in my intro about being fully dependent on Jesus and coffee.
Yep, as the years have progressed, that same line gets challenged repeatedly.
We've recently had diagnoses with our son that has recalibrated our family quite a bit.
Job changes that definitely were not on the game plan originally.
Typical life and home setbacks that we all have that come out of left field usually at the worst times, that whole when it rains it pours thing, and most recently my little sister's stage four cancer diagnosis.
So many of you have been praying fervently for her, so I thought I would add a face to go with a name.
Caitlin is 30, rocking her treatment, still going to work where she works with little children at the children's hospital that are receiving some of the same treatments that she is. She's like their superhero.
She still puts on that smile, she did cheer too. So that Vaseline thing, she learned it early on.
But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that some days that mantra gets hard.
The God we serve is able, but even if he does not, will, I still say that he is good.
A few weeks ago, the culmination of all this stuff together really hit hard.
And, you know, a few things here and there are fine. But I had eventually reached my breaking point.
Remember that line at the beginning where I said she did what she could when I was a younger mom? I'm getting older now. But when I was younger, that became my little line. And Paul and I would almost say it to each other as a joke. Not irreverently, but just.
I don't know, it was my way to laugh instead of cry, right? Like when I was worn out, I would say, well, she did what she could. Even Jesus said that to Mary.
And friends and co workers have often told me that I tend to downplay things, and maybe I do. I think it's kind of a defense mechanism.
We can blame it on the Vaseline trend or trying to keep the smile, but a couple months ago, it all just kind of came to a head. And I remember thinking, she did what she could.
And then that moment was, which is nothing.
And I took the Vaseline smile off and I cried out to God with emotions that he can handle.
And I said, God, how am I supposed to do this?
She did what she could and it's not enough.
Now. I've never heard God audibly speak to me, though that would be welcome.
But in the middle of this distress prayer, God, how am I supposed to do this?
It was a still, small voice that whispered in my head, that's the point.
You're not.
I am.
God has equipped us to do good works, and yes, we should do what we can.
But we also need to remember that we serve a God who is very, very able.
And I know and believe that he gave us this church, this community.
Because many of you have lifted me up when I didn't have it left.
Kind of like Aaron and her held up the hands of Moses. I guess I just kind of want to leave with this.
When we reach that point where choosing the good part is really hard, choosing joy and we don't know how to put on the smile.
Can I recommend to borrow one from a sister?
Borrow the joy from them.
We girls like to share accessories anyway, so to end, what I do know is, is that these chapters of my life so far of this story are Actually pretty cool. When I look back and see God's hand, I don't know how the story ends, but what I do know is that all my life he's been faithful.
And all my life, he has been so, so good.
So I'm going to do what I can. She did what she could, all while knowing that the God I serve is able.
But even if he does not, he's still good.
[00:22:59] Speaker D: Thank you.
For those of you who don't know, I am the biggest crybaby this side of Georgia.
So, sisters, we have had some amazing lessons this quarter.
We've had thoughtful journaling.
We've had homeschooling.
We've had divorce and remarriage.
We've had health issues, including mastectomies, infertility, miscarriages.
Today I'm going to talk to you about alcoholism, and I'm going to tell you the story of my daughter.
I'm the seventh of eight kids.
Most of us were born right here in Madison County.
When I married, I expected to have at least three, probably four.
That was agreed before we married.
After 13 years of marriage, I managed one.
Her name is Adrian, and she's an alcohol.
The verse that got me through is Proverbs 22, 6.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he or she is older, she will not depart from it.
This is my Adrienne.
This is how Adrienne looked in 2019.
I got a call that no parent ever wants to get.
I thought she had a good life.
I found out she was lying.
I found out that not only was she in a very physically abusive relationship, but that she had been molested when she was 13 by someone we totally trusted.
People. Protect your kids.
You think you know people.
I knew this person 26 years.
Protect your kids.
I don't want this lesson to be about that.
I want to let this lesson be about survival and the fact that even though our kids go through that valley and we go through it with them, there is joy on the other side.
She called me in April of 2019 and said about six weeks after this picture was made and told me that she was in the hospital. She had had a nervous break, that she couldn't stay in Tennessee any longer, that she was moving back to Florida, which she did.
What I didn't know was that she was drinking and drinking heavily.
Milo came on June 6th of 2020.
It was her 35th birthday.
I drove to Florida.
Our plan was to spend the day at the zoo.
She wanted a pot roast dinner with cornbread and cheesecake.
I stopped on the way to her home and grocery shopped. I had bags and bags and bags of things because I was going to stay several days and planned many meals. For those of you who don't know me well, I love to cook.
I unloaded the groceries, went into her apartment.
She had already been drinking. At 10am I said, I bought the tickets to the zoo. And she said, why did you do that?
And I said, because that was the plan for the day.
She informed me that was not the plan for the day that she was going to bed.
And I went on to explain that this is what we planned. Da, da, da, da. At which point she went into a rage, went in her bedroom and closed the door.
I'm sitting on the sofa when I hear a knock, knock, knock.
I go to the door and it's two police officers.
She has called 911, told them that I assaulted her and had me trespassed.
She never came back out of her room.
I had an officer stand inside and one stand outside while I gathered my things.
They literally looked at my grocery receipt to make sure, item by item, that I didn't take anything that didn't belong to me.
I left there that day not knowing if I would ever see her again.
One of the officers, who was a very nice gentleman named Conrad, said to me, remember one thing.
If you ever come back here and she accuses you again of hitting her, whether you did it or whether you didn't, you go to jail for 48 hours.
Please leave.
So I left, not knowing if I would ever hear from her again.
She blocked me.
She blocked me on her phone. She blocked me on Facebook.
But, guys, God is good.
Just less than three weeks later, on June 25, her friend Shawn tried to reach her and was unable to do so.
He knocked on her door. Her front door was unlocked. He went into her apartment and found her having a grand mal seizure.
I'm going to give you. I have some slides, but I'm going to give you a warning that some of these are very hard to see.
I got a phone call from a doctor that Adrian had been admitted for acute intoxication.
He explained to me that the legal limit for alcohol in Florida is 0.08.
When they took her blood alcohol level, it was 0.42, more than five times the lingual limit.
He said to me, we're going to try to save her.
We're going to give her something called Mega Gold.
For those of you in the health care field, you might have heard of this before, it was very popular during COVID It is a solution of minerals and vitamins and healthy things that they pump into you as fast as your body can absorb it.
They put her in a drug induced coma for three weeks in order to detox her as carefully as they could.
When they released her in three weeks, this is what she looked like.
She had lost £40.
She was jaundiced, she was in acute liver failure.
But when the doctor came into her room, he said, what do you want to do?
And she said, I want to call my mom.
And her statement to me was, I just found out that I have not had alcohol in three weeks.
If I haven't had it in three weeks, I don't ever have to have it again. I'm done with this.
I'm going to leave here and I'm going to go to recovery.
The picture on the left is what she looked like the day she came out of recovery.
The picture on the right is the next day when she shaved her head.
Some of you might remember when I shaved my head, that was in October of 2020.
She called me and told me that she had done that and that if her dad was alive, he would have shaved his head.
I gathered 28 of my family members, had my sister shave my head, had my great nephew Sam. Some of you who have been here a long time know my great nephew Sam.
Had Sam take a straight razor and shave me bald.
It was quite a shock to a lot of people when I showed up that Sunday night.
Her Christmas gift to me that December of 2020 was, mom, for the next 12 months you are going to hear from me every day.
It might be a phone call, it might be a text, I might show up on your door, it might be something posted on Facebook.
But you will hear from me every day for the next 12 months.
In 2026, I don't hear from her every day, but I hear from her most days.
In July of 2022, she got engaged to that friend who showed up on her door.
His name is SEAN.
He is a 6 6, 170 pound bundle of love and joy.
He is the best son in law anybody ever wanted in their whole life.
I texted them last week and told them that I was coming to Florida in May.
He texted back and said, how long are you staying?
And I said about a month.
And he said, it's not going to work for me.
I said, why? He said, you can't get through my list of things I want you to cook for me by then it's going to take at least six weeks.
This is the two of them. In September 2023, they eloped.
I was in Florida. They had bought a home.
I was staying at the home of a friend in Sarasota.
And they went out on a Friday night, called me and said, you're leaving Tuesday, right? I said, right.
And they said, can you stay a little longer?
I said, maybe. What's up?
And they said, September 9th is the three year anniversary of our first official date when Adrienne was in rehab.
We're going to go to the courthouse and get married. Would like you there.
So I stayed.
Now I ran home. I love them. I stayed, went to the courthouse with them. It was a lovely day, as you can see.
She had a lovely dress.
First dress she tried on, we tried on dozens more.
Not a whole lot available when you're getting married in three weeks. Ladies keep that in mind.
Finally I said to her, what is it that's making you not choose a dress?
She said, that first dress made me feel like I was wrapped up in one of Mama Chaney's tablecloths.
And nothing else compares.
I said, then why did you not buy that dress? Or why did we not buy that dress? She said, because it's a spaghetti strip and I hate spaghetti strips.
So I said, okay, let's go back to the store.
So we went back, she put on the dress.
She said, it's perfect. Except. And I said, who are you talking to, young lady?
I can have that altered in five minutes and make it a halter top.
And that's exactly what I did. After she learned that I could do that, I did five more.
This is us celebrating my birthday on December 17th. Yes, I was there six weeks then, by the way, when they bought their home. I have my own room and bathroom on the back of the house. I have my own in law suite and my wonderful technology nerd son in law, all 6ft 170 pounds of him, had my thumbprint on the door so I can come and go at my leisure.
That bald headed girl five years ago, six years ago, almost now.
This is a current photo of him. This was made in February.
I've been asked by so many people how I survived.
I have one hope.
Hope is the most powerful force in the world.
It's the most powerful force in the human heart.
When hope is alive, it changes the way that we see life and the way that we see adversity.
The apostle Paul wrote in Titus 1:2 that our faith rests in hope of an eternal life in heaven, which God Never lies promises before the ages began.
Christian hope is not wishful thinking or a vague optimism.
It's our confident expectation based on the promises of God.
Because God cannot lie. His Word tells us he cannot lie and his promises are certain.
This hope shapes our survival. This hope shaped my survival.
This hope strengthens us during difficult times, though times may include some of the issues that we've discussed in here, including illnesses and loss.
In Romans 5 through 5, Paul tells us, rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, character and hope.
Here's the one that I love.
Hope does not disappoint because God has poured out his love into our hearts.
Note that he did not emphasize perseverance or character. He just listed those.
Hope does not disappoint because God has poured out his love. He emphasized our focus on hope.
I can tell you some tools that have been very valuable to me.
David Hargett and PR were my strength.
When Adrian was released from rehab, David made arrangements for us to zoom the PR classes. On Wednesday night, Adrian and Sean are at church. Every time the door opens.
One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things.
Weekly, she shares her Spotify playlist of Christian songs that she is listening to that week.
In 2024, when I was with her, we ran into a friend of hers named Parker.
Parker was going through a divorce.
He had two young children.
He was losing his home to foreclosure. He was losing his business due to neglect.
And he told Adrian he didn't know why this was happening to him.
She said, parker, what do you do when you leave work every day?
Well, Adrian, I stop by a bar and have a few drinks before I go home.
She said, parker, that's your problem.
He said, all the guys do it.
Her response was, that's an excuse for alcoholism.
Let me take you to an AA meeting.
When I was at her house in December, she got a call from Parker.
He had been to rehab.
He had that day received his six month sobriety pin.
He's trying to make his life right.
He's trying to get back his wife and kids.
He's now going to church with Adrienne and Sean.
And if you asked Adrienne today, she would tell you she would do it all over again to save someone.
Just as she's currently trying to say Parker, say Bugbet.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Thank y' all so, so much.
[00:41:42] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: So prepare for the hugs and we really, really appreciate that.
That was a lot.
[00:41:50] Speaker C: That was a lot in a great way.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: So we love y' all very much and thank you.
