“Petite, profound and playful” are the first three words of Patsy Clairmont’s bio on her website. Absolutely true!
She is tiny! By her own admission, she “made five feet” but has now started to shrink — “What’s with that?!” And she is playful; I laughed so often and so abruptly during her talk that I had to ignore my hot tea lest I scald myself! And boy oh boy, she is profound. When I wasn’t laughing I was jotting down notes from her many insights.
“Life is messy. People are textured. God is mysterious,” Patsy stated, and then for 40 minutes she made us laugh and think as she developed those powerful truisms. But what really grabbed me was her admission that agoraphobia in her 20s had literally locked her up inside her home. And yet, here she was, living proof that she was no longer a prisoner to her fear. She has been traveling the world with Women of Faith for 15 years speaking to millions of people. How did it happen?
One yes at a time.
Desperate, terrified, locked up inside her home, she called out to God for help. She heard three words, “Make your bed,” she told us. Then she added, “I was looking for the Great Magician, not the Great Physician!” She had expected something more than “make your bed.” Don’t we all? When we bring our monumental problem to God and fall facedown in desperation and cry out for help we want to see shackles fall off, mountains move, heavens open, smoke billow, lightning crash, thunder roll, and sometimes, just sometimes, pounds fall off just in time for our upcoming high school reunion.
Most of the time God doesn’t work that way.
Instead He gives us one simple, immediate, possible instruction and asks us to say yes. And if we do, it begins a journey to wholeness that we walk hand in hand with Him. And that’s what Patsy did. She said yes. She made her bed. And as we talked, one on one, after her speech was over, she told me that it was a process that took a couple of years and hundreds of small yes’s that led her out of the self-made prison of fear and into the life that God had for her. Boy am I glad she said yes!
What simple, immediate, possible thing is God asking you to say yes to today? Make your bed? Pick up that phone? Send that email? Put down that remote? Pick up that Bible? Close that refrigerator? Open that door? Our journey into hope begins with one yes.
Hope for the Rest of Us 