Interview

WOF: How many books have you written now?

PATSY: You know, it's a great big pile of them―I need to stop and count them one day. I know we're in the twenties somewhere, but I don't know exactly. On top of that I'd have to put all the Women of Faith books that I've had the joy of contributing to…I would say it's about as tall as I am. (That's not saying much, for my height.)

WOF: How did you get the "bright" idea to write a book around the topic of light?

PATSY: I'm very drawn to the light because I know what the darkness feels like. When you've spent years hiding away in the house . . . I am so well acquainted with what it feels like to have the darkness of depression that settles like a deep gloom over your brain. Any time you find even a flicker of light it gives you hope. So I have been drawn to light for many, many years. The more light I step into, the more freedom I find I experience. I have found that it is a good choice.

WOF: Why is it so much easier for us to focus on what's not working in our lives, than what God has done/is doing for us?

PATSY: We can blame that on Eve. I'd like to throw an apple at her! I think that with the fall came that propensity and we've been leaning in that direction ever since. Which is why, when we see any light, we know it's different from what our natural inclination is. We all want to be liberated from some of our natural inclinations.

WOF: In one chapter you made this profound statement: "I don’t think any of us fully grasp who we are, and few of us are able to fill our roles completely." Do you think it's possible to find out who we are?

PATSY: No. I do think that revelation will be complete when we step into the presence of Christ. We always have the capacity to grow and to know more than we know now, but the fullness of all of that information—who we are, who Christ is, what heaven's all about—the fullness of that will not be (as far as I'm concerned in my own personal theology) known until we step through the veil.

WOF: Do you think we can get a hint?

PATSY: I do! I think there are those glimmers. (Now we're back to the aspect of light again.) I think there are those glimmers that come, where there are breakthrough moments where we get to step out, so to speak, of our humanity for just a moment. The type of moments I'm thinking of are like when you see a newborn baby―the thrill, the dynamics of it, the experience is beyond anything we'd known before. Or suddenly someone is singing a song and something in you opens that had never opened before. There is that rush and thrill of that moment that you can't put into words…which is probably why I'm stammering about with this. I know exactly what I want to say, but finding the words to express it are hard, which does not surprise me because anytime we are talking about the spiritual dimension it's outside the human comprehension. That's why faith is such a tricky thing, because it requires us to believe what we can't see. Then when we experience something we have nothing to measure against. It's very hard to define it.

WOF: Your chapter on candle light highlighted the importance of even one tiny flame in the darkness. That's so encouraging, because while we all can't be spotlights, anyone can be a little candle, can't they?

PATSY: That's right. That, too, is part of the whole aspect, isn't it? We aren't necessarily asked to light up the whole football field, but just the corner where we're at. When you drive through Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on their main drag all the windows have single candles in each window of the house. At night, as you drive down that main road, it is so friendly. It's a sign of the community's agreement to hospitality. I just love that! I think it's a very lovely welcoming thing. Isn't that what you feel—welcomed? I really hesitate to go up to someone's door at night if there's not a light on outside. But if there's a porch light on I think, "Oh, they're expecting me." Or "They want me to be here and they've lit up my path so I can find the way." I like that a lot.

WOF: Throughout the book, you talk about reading your Bible. Do you follow a reading plan, just dip in wherever, or how do you go about it?

PATSY: I am both eclectic and structured. I don't necessarily say, at the beginning of the year, "I'm going to read this book and this book and this book." I do a lot of word studies, but I find if you only do word studies you miss a lot of the contextual information that is important to the overall picture. I love details, so I don't want to miss out on the details. I also like to do character studies—could be because I am one, I'm not sure—but I do like to investigate different individuals to see how their life goes. I have to be careful because I do tend to show preferences to certain individuals and I just want to camp out there forever. I have to remind myself not to miss the rest of the landscape. Just because you're crazy about one person doesn't mean if you branch out you're not going to find someone else who's going to teach you a great deal, as well.

I think Liz Curtis Higgs did a great job on some of the "bad girls of the Bible" and helping us to see them in a new way. I love what Lisa Harper's doing this year. She's taking information that most people would have skipped over or seen as inconsequential and highlighting it in such a way it's absolutely thrilling. I love that she's pulled some of those characters out and danced them around in front of us so we can get an idea of who they are. It just brings to life whole areas that we might have missed.

I'm doing a study right now in the book of Proverbs. I love Proverbs. I have loved Proverbs for many years; it was one of the first books of the Bible that I felt God's spirit leading me to and leading me back to again and again. It's like a well I'm going to have to drink from the rest of my life—I thought maybe it was temporary but I'm still being led back there again and again. I think it's because it has so much to do with the mind and the mouth, which are two areas I've needed a lot of help in.

WOF: Don't we all! This is a deeply spiritual question (just warning you up front): In Chapter 4 you talk about your Christmas decorations and how you were going to scale back last year. We're dying to know: how did that pan out? Did the forest of trees go up?

PATSY: I did a forest. I tried really hard to scale back, but I'd get one tree up and say, "There. That's it." Then another one would pop up and I'd think, "There. Now I'm done." Then I thought, "Well, I really have the time, I could put this one over here…" So I did far more than I meant to. Again. It was great fun and it was a delight to me to watch the responses of my grandchildren. If they are very pleased it really makes my heart dance around.

WOF: We know you're an enthusiastic reader. What have you particularly enjoyed reading lately?

PATSY: Well, I'll tell you: when my friend died in December I kind of slipped into a funk. I knew I felt sad, but I didn't realize I was into some depression, which was manifesting itself in ways that should have been obvious. It took me a while to catch on to myself. When I recognized that it was really hard to get up in the morning, I didn't really care if I got dressed or if I didn't, and I didn't want to go anywhere…my husband would say, "Let's go get you a new outfit." And I'd say, "Nah, I don't want one." Then I knew. When we're depressed, it is very hard to read because it is difficult to maintain your focus on the sentences from beginning to end and then to remember what you've actually taken in. So I've missed some good months of reading here while I was stepping through.

But now that my head has begun to come out of that hard place back into more life, I have a stack of options waiting for me, including The Prodigal God by Tim Keller that I can't wait to get into. This week I've been reading The Noticer by Andy Andrews. Let's see, what else…I've got a book here, it's from the secular market, called A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg. It's the story of a young woman who was educated to be a lawyer but had such a passion for food and the kitchen. Her blog was her way of finding a place to put her passion while she was doing her work that she was trained for. What happened was that column became internationally known and so popular that now she has written a book. I was interested in how all of that touched her life, so I just recently picked that up and have just begun reading it.

WOF: What else would you like to tell our readers?

PATSY: I'd just like to encourage them―whether it's my book or one of my porch pals, or someone anywhere in the world who has pressed a pen to a page and caused words to marry and dance and spin and enter inside of you―to not miss the celebration. There's something about the journey inside a book that can lead you to places you might never get to go to otherwise. Most of us do not have the income to be world travelers or we do not have the time (and perhaps not the gift or inclination) to be involved in many different kinds of lifestyles, but it would be a shame to miss out on them. You can feel some level on inclusion in things that you never dreamed of, just by opening up a book. I just want to encourage people to be readers.