Church Girl Meets God: Yvonne Randle shares how she stopped running and listened

Raised in Church, actively serving in Church, yet living in pain filled disappointment, loneliness and heartache. Yvonne Randle tells us what happened when life got too painful to handle. 

When we get sick and tired of being sick and tired, we have to do the work inside before it shows up outside. Yvonne takes us to Church in this episode.

Yvonne Randle has authored many fiction and non-fiction books that inspire people to have healthy relationships with themselves and others. She also hosts a podcast and personal development workshops through her company, You Are Dynamic, LLC.

You can get Yvonne’s Books on Amazon and other bookstores, and you can listen to her podcast on various listening platforms at Healthy Wealthy Wise Dating Podcast.

Transcript

JKO:       Welcome to this episode of Messy Can’t Stop Her, the podcast where we share the stories of women's resilience through chaos, crisis, and the challenges of life. I am your host, Judith Obatusa. J-K-O. 

On today's episode. I am so, so delighted. Before I get into today's episode, I just want to thank everyone who is listening to today's episode, because without you, there would be no podcast. It's because of you that I'm encouraged to keep going. It's because of you that I'm still here, and I thank you. Thank you for choosing Messy Can’t Stop from all the thousands of podcasts available for you and also sharing it with people, because the information in it is valuable to you. And I always love to hear from you. So please DM me through Instagram, Facebook or even LinkedIn. Let me know what you think about my episodes and what you love for us to talk about.

On today's episode. I'm very delighted. I am very delighted because this person that has given me the privilege of sharing her story with you in person is someone that I really admire. The work that she's doing is very unique. It's very unique because she's using the power of the written word to change lives. She is using the power of the written word from a background of the scriptures to make relationships better. She is someone who has experienced domestic violence directly and indirectly in other lives, and she has determined to help other people have healthy relationships where they can thrive. She is the writer of several books. Funny thing, she writes fiction, but there is truth in the fiction. Before I invited her to share her story on this podcast, I really, really don't like calling people without knowing about them. I already knew her, but I wanted to experience her writing and I read her book, Seasons of Evil Spiritual Forces. I still haven't told you her name, so don't worry, I got it. And this book should be a book that all persons, all churches give their couples in marriage counseling, premarital, marital, and even after marriage. If you have had a separation, this book will help you see what happens. This is just one of her many books. She has released two new books in the last one month. That's how prolific she is in this matter of the written word. So please join me in welcoming Yvonne Randall. Yvonne, thank you so much for honoring us with your presence. 

Yvonne:               Thank you so much, Judith, for having me here. 

JKO:       Thank you so much. Thank you. And one thing that she does, she's also a podcaster, so we know her as you are dynamic. Her podcast is to lift your spirit, elevate your mind, elevate your life by sharing the stories of other people who have come through situations and have things to teach you from their own life experiences. So if you are on the podcast today, I'm going to put the link to her podcast so that you can also listen to her podcast. And also I'm going to put links to her books so that you can know her writing and then be able to follow her writing. So, Yvonne, thank you so much for honoring us with your presence today. And I'm so excited to be able to share this moment with you and be able to ask you those questions, burning questions that I have. So I just want to start by asking you to just share a little bit about how you got to be this person I just described.

Yvonne:               Through many trials and through many, as I used to call them, but I don't anymore, through many, many failed relationships, I call them now God's path. So haven taken this journey from being a witness to domestic violence in the home to making decisions from that lens, because that's all I knew, marrying into abusive relationships and then subsequent abusive relationship. So not taking the time in between relationships Judith to focus on Yvonne to get healed, to understand what was going on, to focus on the inner child that five-year-old that I seem to have gotten stuck on, was making adult decisions. And I had no idea, Judith, that's what was going on. So throughout those things, the Lord allowed me to burn these books because each one comes from an experience that I either had or I know of someone who has had. So, through life experience, if I want to put it in a nutshell, the Lord has allowed me the privilege, and of course, I didn't use to call it that, but the privilege of going through and then not being stagnated in, but coming through and now able to share, because I used to not be able to share, because I used to be so ashamed. 

JKO:       There's something that sticks out to me from everything you said. Not taking time to learn what makes even tea, the way you're thinking in your hair. I've always believed that you don't have to tell a woman to leave an abusive relationship. You need to empower her to be more self aware and more resilient. Being able to make courageous decisions because she understands herself. So many of us don't even know what we like, what we don't like, what floats our boat, what makes us uncomfortable. We have spent so many years of our lives trying to please mom, dad, uncle, brother, principal, husband, boyfriend, sisters, church members, community, be politically correct. And we lost our person in all of that. We lost our uniqueness, lost our individuality. I believe that a woman should be taught to know herself. She should be helped to understand who she is and what she loves. And that's what you just said, and I thank you for it, because many people want you to tell them what to do. But what Yvonne does or what Judith does is not always what Anna needs to do. (Yvonne: Exactly.) And so what you just said is very important. I want to latch onto that. You said you kept going from one negative to the next because you didn't stop to know who you are and use that knowledge to make decisions. So what made you what point did you get to that made you say, you know what? I need to check me instead of running after love or whatever it was that…

Yvonne:               Running after things is exactly what I was doing, I was seeking. It didn't just come and sit on my shoulder and say, hey, Yvonne, this is what it is. It was through a series of sitting down and going, I actually went to God and said, God, what is wrong with me? Because nothing relationship wise seems to be working. I got tired of being in this relationship, and I do liken it to the story of the prodigal son in the Bible. And God keeps bringing that to me. He came to himself. So he saw himself in the pig pen. He was eating what the pigs were eating when he came to himself. So I looked at Yvonne. I said, Wait a minute. You're alone. Is this where you need to really be? Because this is where you continue to end up. There's a reason for that. You've been in this relationship at this age and now you're alone. Here you are again. You've gone through another relationship. So the self reflection of being alone and that's what I was running from, which is so I don't want to say coincidental because I don't believe in coincidences, but the hard headedness and I look at myself now and go, you were hard headed. Your mom was trying to tell you and your friends were trying to tell you, but you're going to do it your way. So God said, okay, Yvonne, I'm hands off. I'm sending help your way and your intuition and your spirit is telling you is making you feel that something is wrong. You need to slow down. You need to stop because nothing positive is coming out of this. So I had to have the intervention, but the intervention had to happen when Ivana was open and ready to receive the intervention. The Holy Spirit was the intervention, but I wasn't listening. So until I believe this wholeheartedly, until we get to the point where the pain is strong enough, we're going to keep going around that circle and God's going to continue to give us a chance over and over until we get it. And then we'll take the chance and we'll sit down. Hopefully it's not too late and we're not 99 years old, but we'll sit down and we'll say, I did something's not right. So I had closed out intuition, I had closed out God and I closed out friends. And I had to come to that point like the prodigal son had and finally sit there and go, what? You were running from being alone. You still are alone. But in that moment, Judith God stepped in and he said, but you are not alone because you have me and I'm what you need. I'm the one that can help you move forward. I'm the one that can take the scales off your eyes. I'm the one that can sit down with you and give you that love, give you the attention you were craving. I'm the one that can fill that space in your heart that was empty. May I can't do that for you. Yvonne and that's what you were running after. 

JKO:       Awesome. So you had to get to the place where the pain was so much that you couldn't move anymore. You didn't have those emotional strength to even run after that which you had been running after. Because the pain of loss, the pain of rejection, the pain of the abuses you had endured emotionally, physically, in every way possible, was so much. It stopped you in your tracks. And you said you asked God, some people talk about this issue of God a lot. If God were good, he wouldn't let us go through pain. So how were you able to not blame God? And rather than blaming him and saying, you know what, God, I'm done with you. Let me just go and do me, what made you come to him to ask God? Okay, he seems I haven't been listening. He says, I have actually been trying to do me. What made you choose to go to God and not go to some other person or some other thing? 

Yvonne:               Because I had tried Yvonne’s way for so long and it wasn't working. But I know that God is a god of love. God is love, you know what I mean? He is love. So he's not going to like he didn't force me to choose him in the first place. He's not a God that's going to force you to do anything because he loves you. He wants you to come to Him on your own. So I stepped back and I said, well, if you're a God of love and it's so funny that you asked that question because I never did look at Him as the reason for my choices. I just didn't look at Him and say, well, it's your fault, God. But I did look at Him and say, okay, God, if you're God and I'm not, you're trying to tell me something, and if you're God and I'm not, and you're sovereign and I'm not, you know, the beginning from the end. So I never blamed God for my choices because he didn't say, Ivan, go choose that man. He said in a quiet time, did I tell you to choose that man? He bond. And he didn't say it in a belittling way. He said it in love. Well, daughter. And it wasn't a voice. It was a quiet voice. Well, daughter, did I tell you to choose that? And he didn't do it at a time when I was so frustrated with myself. It came at a time when I surrendered. I wasn't in the pain anymore. I had just surrendered. And then I could hear. But while all this other stuff was going through my head and Yvonne was trying to fix it, Yvonne couldn't hear a word I was trying to say. So he just stepped back and waited for me to get enough. And when he finally got enough, the pain was so bad, Judith and I didn't realize it, but I had began to get physically ill. I would lose my voice. I would have migraine headaches. I will become so depressed. And I didn't realize those were all signs of where Yvonne had taken herself. 

JKO:       So when you say you knew that God was love or God is love, how did you know that? For somebody who is listening, you sound like you're a Christian and you've been a Christian for a while and you know a lot about God's Word and who he is. If I don't know about this Christianity of a thing, you say you knew that God was love or God is love and he didn't make you choose all those things. How did you know this? 

Yvonne:               Having been brought up in the church was one thing, but when I got old enough to actually, because I call that religion, you religiously, go to church, you join the choir, you become an usher. That's religion. That's what your family brought you up doing. But at 38 and I looked one day and that was the beginning of my actual relationship. So I looked at Yvonne and I said, this is not how I want my life to be at 38 years old. I don't like me. I don't like me. I don't like the cursing I used to do. I could curse you out in a sentence. I don't like having these relationships that were empty with these men who just wanted sex. I don't like that. I don't have morals and I don't have values. I just didn't like that person. And when I got to that point and I had been going to church at that time, but I had also been studying the Word, I have been reading God's Word. I have been going to Bible studies. I have been going to Christian education. I was in the church, but I was also walking that line, right, doing the things that I should, I had no business doing. And I got convicted. And that's how come I know that the Holy Spirit lives inside of me, is because before I was not convicted, that's when I had religion. But when I accepted crumbling into my life, that's when the conviction came. That's when I knew the Holy Spirit began to live inside of me, because I stopped wanting to do those same things. I kept hearing Yvonne cursed and I said, oh, wow, I don't like that. And then I would see the caliber of relationships I had male friendships and I mean really friendships. And that's not where God was leading me because those friendships were friendships with benefits. That was not what I wanted and I knew that. And that was because the conviction of the Holy Spirit, that's how I knew. So the before was the religion and after I accepted Christ and started living even though it wasn't perfect, was when the Holy Spirit came and lived inside of me. And that was the change. That was my barometer. And that's how I know that God loves me because OK, you're my daughter, there's a change. My mom even said it's so funny, she noticed a change. She said, oh Yvonne, you must have a new boyfriend. (JKO: It was all about boyfriends prior to this time). And I said, mom, why do you say that? And she said, Because you're a total different person. Nice. And that's when I explained to her what happened. 

JKO:       Oh my, that is so cool. So your mother noticed the change in you and why you say God loves you is that he allowed you to make this decision to come back to focus on Him? Or is there any other detail you want to tell us? Is there any experience that you had, some experiential learning about God's love for you? Did you have that? When you say God loves you, can you share a little about some of that? For those who are here listening to this conversation, want to know, when she says God loves me, what does she mean? 

Yvonne:               During the whole time that I was living on the edge. So I was going to church and doing what he wanted to do and it was still wrong. I was still studying the Word. He was still drawing me to him the whole time. So even though I would go to, like I said, Christian education, I would go to church and be a part of the church, I was still learning. And so during that time, even though I wasn't doing because now I look back and I go, who was that person? His word was still ruminating, his world was still growing deep like what's inside of me. And I didn't know that's what was happening at the time. And that's how I know he loves me because he continued to grow himself inside of me even though I was going that way. And he knew that I was going to do that. But he never gave up on me, Judith. He just never did. So that's how I know. And feeling his spirit inside of you, knowing that he never and I keep saying that he never gave up on me. It's because he allowed his word to work in me. He never said, I'm done, okay? I'm done with you. He still gave me the chance. He still let the Word grow roots inside of me. And as I matured in that, that's how I realized his love for me. So I still had work to do. I still had to continue reading. I still had to look at Yvonne, but I still also had to listen for his spirit. 

JKO:       That's how you knew that he loves you. But there's something that you said you kept going to church and that really made a whole lot of difference, because though you were not living, like all sold out to God, because you were still in the corridors of His Word, someday he talked to you. There's something I always talk about listening to your heart. Listening to your heart for me is important because I believe that the heart is your own personal GPS from God to guide you in the affairs of your life. And when you say when you stopped to hear, when you stop to have these conversations, what was that like? Could you just describe the experience of stopping to listen instead of running? Keep on. Some of us, that's why they call it the ranch ways. You just keep going, it doesn't end. It's actually like guinea pigs on the cycle, on the circle. They keep running, they don't stop. It's just the way some of us are living. Some people actually don't even sleep enough because they spend the whole so you said you stopped and you were able to have a conversation with God to ask questions. How was that experience? How were you able to hear? Because when you say you hear God, some people are like, why is such a rogue? And how can you hear God? We want to understand this. Yvonne, you seem to have a telephone line to Jesus or to God? I don't know. Tell us, Liz. We want to know how to do it too. 

Yvonne:               It is because and I keep going back to being sick and tired of being sick and tired. It's going back to that. The Bible says the heart is deceitfully wicked. That's what the Bible says about the heart. So I separate the heart because my heart would say, go on and stay with Richard. I just use that name, go on and stay with Richard and continue. Because he has ABC. But the spirit, God spirit, when you accept Him, live inside, that's your guidance. And when you stop at 03:00 in the morning, because that's when I will get to the visitation at 300 in the morning, boom. My eyes would open and I'm wide awake. Awake. That's when it's quiet for me. No TV, no phone, no nothing. And I'm wide awake. Why do I why is that? Because my mind is open. There's nothing else happening at that time. I don't have to get up to go to work, I don't have to have breakfast, I don't have to attend anything. And that's when he will come to you. Now, he's not going to come to me the same way he comes to you. So for you listeners, he's going to come to you because he knows you. He made you, he created you. He knows what you need. He's going to meet you at your needs. So that was my need when he met me. So when you're quiet and you ask Him, Lord, help me, those might be the only three words you need to say, lord, help me. And it's not a one time thing. It's going to happen over and over. It's a process. So those who want to hear from God, you have to want to hear from God. That opens up a whole another box, right? But you have to want to hear from God. You have to want to know, okay, God, what do you want? Lord, help me, was all I had to say. Lord, help me. Because I don't like the direction I'm going in. I just don't ring. And he does not give you the whole picture all at once. That's how he loves us. Right, Judith? He gives us a step at a time, a step at a time. And we keep coming back because we want to know what the next step is. Okay, I'm listening. You have to want to hear from Him, because when you have done things your way over and over and over, it's not working. There's a reason it's not working. 

JKO:       I like that. You have to want there has to be a desire. You have to desire, you have to long. The psalmist talks about it so long again for this connection, you have to long for it. And I always tell people this, and other people confirmed this to me, too. Once you start longing for something else, life just brings those things away. For example, when you start thinking, there's more to my life than this, exactly. What? Am I here? There must be something more. I'm not here just to eat, drink, and sleep and just do me. What's my purpose in life? Then you begin to meet people like Cathy Heller, come up on your newsfeed. You have no idea how God is going to meet that need. 

Yvonne:               You just said that. You just said what I was going to say. I believe he puts that longing inside of us. And I don't think you can ever be fulfilled until you reach out, because you're reaching out for the wrong things. And he said, Reach out for me. Matthew 633 speak ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all other things will be added onto you. Jeremiah 20 911 for I know the plans, plural with an S I have for you. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you hope in the future. Judas. If we took those words in the promises of God in the Bible, just think about that. If we took those words that God gave us and we started believing them in getting them, so he said, Hide my Word in your heart. So you walk in against me the answers are sold, like, right there. I'm getting so excited. But the answers are there. They really aren't there. And when we stop, I read my Bible every day. I'm not a superwoman. And I'm not trying to say that I am, because I'm definitely not. I have fear and I have worries and blah, blah, blah. And I'm still human, but I know who to go to. You know who to go to. I might be sitting at work worried and frustrated, and I literally will sit there, and I'm silent, and I literally will say, god help me. If it's a problem I need help with or something I need to figure out, I literally will say and I say it in my mind. And sometimes I take a walk outside and say, lord, I need your help. I don't know how to do it. Lord, I'm having a headache. Just simple stuff. Bring it to him. He's interested in our day to day, the little the meaning, the mundane parts of our lives, as much as he's interested in the magnificent parts of our lives. 

Yvonne:               He meets us right there. He knows what's you need, and he knows when you need it, and he knows how to bring it to you, because that's who he is. 

JKO:       That's amazing. I really love this.