Replacing Panic With God's Peace

Hi, this is Jim Daly with Focus on the Family. Uplifting music is such an encouragement to my faith, and I can't wait to experience the powerful songs that will be part of Sea Life 2020. Join us online as we welcome Phil Stacey, Danny Gokey, and a surprise musical guest or two for this transformational pro-life event.

Sea Life 2020 is on September 26th at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. For more information, text heartbeat to 72,000. And so I was drinking about 10 pots of coffee a day, not cups, pots of coffee a day. I was popping pills and taking in a lot of caffeine and nicotine, and I couldn't figure out why I was such a nervous wreck. We're featuring a message from Patsy Clermont today on how to overcome fear and anxiety. And let's go ahead, Jim, and just say it up front here, 10 pots of coffee is not the way to do that.

Settle down, John. We all have worries and troubles in life. The trick is to learn how to manage them, and today we'll hear how Patsy Clermont's fears made her a prisoner of her own home and how the Lord set her free. Patsy is the author of over 35 books. Her latest is called You Are More Than You Know.

Face Your Fears, Grow Stronger. Patsy and her husband Les have been married for over 50 years and live in Franklin, Tennessee. She's been traveling and speaking for 40 years and was one of the founding speakers for the Women of Faith conferences.

And here is Patsy Clermont speaking at a Women of Faith event on today's episode of Focus on the Family, and we'll pick up after some opening remarks as Patsy begins her story. I had my first panic attack after my husband and I had had what you might call a disagreement. And as he turned to walk away from me, every abandonment issue I had rose up to the surface in the form of an anxiety attack. And because I had never had one, I didn't know what was happening to me. And my pulse increased. My heart was throbbing wildly. My eyes were dilated.

It was just awful. I couldn't catch my breath. I didn't know what was wrong with me. He didn't know what was wrong with me. So we made a rush to the area hospital. When I got there, they gave me a shot of Demerol, and that pretty well knocked me right out.

My husband had a few moments of peace, as did I. But when I woke up, nobody told me what had happened to me. They must have knew it was an anxiety attack, that it wasn't coping well.

But I didn't know that. And I thought, I must be the only person in the world ever going through such a thing. And I developed a fear of fear. And I was afraid it might happen again. And sure enough, it did.

We ended up doing a regular cycle of visitations to the emergency room. And my life boundaries became smaller and smaller. I can't even call them boundaries. The restrictions that I was putting on myself because of my fear. And here's the thing about fear, girlfriends. Fear has friends. If you give in to a fear, he invites them over.

And they come in, anger and guilt and shame. And they began to hem me in, until not only was I hiding away in my home, feeling incapable of going out in public, lest I have another one of those episodes. And since I didn't know what else to call them, and I thought I was the only person in the world going through it, it was very paralyzing. And eventually, I not only hid in my home, but I hid in my bed. I didn't want to leave my bed. This was the prayer I had. Oh God, if you would only give me a disease that doesn't hurt and wouldn't kill me, but just gives me a reason to be in this bed, I would be happy never to leave here again. Aren't you glad that God doesn't answer all our prayers? Hello?

We don't know what we're talking about a lot of times. I was looking for a safe place. I was looking to be rescued from all of the things that were intimidating me, which now had become most of life. So I was hiding away in my bed and I woke up one day and I thought, Patsy, where are you going to go from here, honey? And I cried out to God and I said, I can't do this. I need you to help me. You've got to rescue me.

I don't know how to get from this place where I feel so stuck. And there was a voice. Now, voices are a little annoying when you're not stable, but there was a voice and it wasn't an out loud voice out here.

It was an inside voice in here. And what I understood that voice to say was, make your bed. And I thought, make my bed?

What does that have to do with my sanity and getting out of my fears and not being overwhelmed with my guilt and not being overcome by shame and everything was too big and too hard and I was too little and blah, blah, blah. What do you mean make my bed? That didn't seem reasonable to me as if I knew anything about reason. And so I argued with myself and with the voice.

And I said, that makes no sense. Oh God, I want to do great things for you. Make your bed. So I got out of bed and I thought, well, I could see why that was a good idea already.

Now I'm not in it. So I got out of it and I stood there and I looked at it and I thought, do I have to make both sides? Because I only slept on this side and you know who slept on that side.

Shouldn't he make his own side? Oh, I had no anger issues. And so the Lord gently prompted me to make both sides and to do that every day.

That just seemed so incidental, so unnecessary. Here I am suffering and struggling and he's saying, make your bed. But see, I didn't know that that was built on a principle. And it is this, that when you are faithful in little things, then I will give you then I will give you more. And when you are faithful and more than I'll give you much.

But I hadn't even been faithful in the least of things. And I wanted him to give me everything. I wanted him to be great magician. He said, no, no, that's physician.

And you honey need surgery. I wanted him to fix me in the night while I was resting so I could rise up righteous in the morning. But his way of doing it was so distant from mine. And his was to invite me into the fray of my own emotions that we might begin to untangle some of the snarls that were there. I went back to my doctor and I said to him, do not give me one more pill. You see, I was at that time a fairly addictive person. And I was trying all the coping skills I could think up, all my bright ideas. And so I was drinking about 10 pots of coffee a day, not cups, pots of coffee a day. I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. And I took four very strong tranquilizers every day. The doctor said, I give you enough to neck out a horse. And I thought, well, that's where my horse went. He said, and it barely phases you. So I was popping pills and taking in a lot of caffeine and nicotine. And I couldn't figure out why I was such a nervous wreck.

Yeah. So I said to the doctor, do not give me one more pill. I want you to help me get well. And he said, well, I'll give you to go to church. I said, if I could do that, I wouldn't be here. And he said, okay, all right. He said, there is a self-help group that you could go to.

And he said, they have one in your hometown and one in the town next to your town and you could go to two a week. So I started attending the self-help group meetings, but the first one was a huge step. And may I say to you, if you feel stuck, it's necessary in your stuckness to take and risk a step forward.

It will always feel unnatural and threatening, but it is the way we find our liberty is our willingness to take a step. And I hope it doesn't take you as long as it did me, because I was really dragging my feet and going forward because I was so self protective and I don't know what I thought I was protecting because my life was a mess. So I went to the first meeting, but I made my husband go with me.

He didn't come inside to the meeting. He sat outside and waited for me. And so he took me there and he dropped me off and I went in and they began talking and they were talking my language of being broken and finding hope. And so I listened to them and I thought, well, for heaven's sakes, I am not the only banana cracker out there. There's a whole box of us right here in this room. There is something that gives you such hope when someone understands where you're coming from. I love that.

That is why God has given us the body of Christ, that we might come together and that we might give hope one to another. And so I came out of that meeting absolutely thrilled. In fact, after that meeting, I never again had to be taken back to a hospital with an anxiety attack. I had many anxiety attacks after that, but I finally found out I wasn't the only one, that there was a way to handle this and to manage myself.

I didn't know that. So every word they said was thrilling to me until they told me the guidelines that you had to use to participate in the meeting. And it was that you would tell a story of something that was really hard for you to deal with. And that in the dealing of it, you didn't handle it well.

And you tell the story and then they help give you principles that you can put into place so that you can deal with that situation more rationally. So I was all for that until they said there are three things you cannot do when you tell your story. You cannot complain, you cannot whine, and you cannot whine, and you cannot exaggerate.

I thought, well, you've taken my three best tools away from me. I mean, how can I not complain? And I don't whine.

I'm not a whiner. But the exaggerating part of it, that was tough, because how am I certain that you have truly understood how bad it is for me if I don't make it as big as possible? And what I found out about those three things, the complaining and the whining and the exaggerating, is those are three ways we keep anger going. It's three ways we cement our feet into the stuck place we're in and then blame others we're like this.

It is the three ways that will eat up the vitality of our faith and keep us believing the lie that we can't be any more whole than we are right now. And life is made to be an ongoing journey for us to enter into fully and freely. And I didn't have fully or freely, but I was sure wanting it pretty bad. But I didn't desire it until I got to the bottom of myself. Sometimes we try to rescue people and we go in too soon to do for them what they should have done for themselves.

And they never get to the end of themselves and surrender to the plan of God. So come alongside people, but don't rescue them from the very things that God would use to draw them to himself. And so I went into this meeting and I heard the words of hope that I was not alone and I began to take the skills that they were teaching in the group and I realized that every skill they had lined up with the principle of God's word and that's why it worked. And so I've come with a word of encouragement to you that your broken emotions, they leave you in a very vulnerable place, but as God picks up the brokenness of your life, it's like putting the pieces and shards of glass into a kaleidoscope and holding it up and spinning the wheel.

And suddenly, because light has touched it, there's beautiful patterns that appear and what looked like it could have no value now becomes the most priceless thing that you have to offer another person and that is the work that Christ has done in you. I learned from me that I needed to have boundaries on my emotions. For me to say everything that was on my mind was in no one's best interest and Proverbs says, to tell it all is foolishness.

It is a wise person who restrains his lips. And so that was really important for me to learn to have boundaries on my emotions on my emotions and to harness my thoughts. There is a little three-step thing that I have given out for years and will do it as long as there's breath in my body if I think it will help one of you to collect your thoughts up in a way that really helps you and that is when you have impure, unkind, unlovely, ungracious thoughts, refuse those thoughts. That's based on the casting down of imaginations in every high thing that would exalt itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Jesus Christ and you refuse those things you know you shouldn't be thinking on and then you replace it because if you don't replace it with something you're a vulnerable space cadet. You got all that empty space and the enemy would love to come and tap dance around in there so you have to replace it with something and this is based on Philippians chapter 4. Think on those things that are good and true and pure and lovely and just and of good report and if they have any virtue and if they have any praise to think on those things so you've refused it you've replaced it now you have to repeat that process again and again because the enemy will come back and say are you available now to think about this and you'll have to continue to do that as a discipline and you will find that your mind becomes stronger. You are not as easily harassed with thoughts that you know are right from the enemy himself so that becomes really important. Also if I might add another R that has already been mentioned by my friend Andy it is reading. Ladies that was one of the redemptive ways that God not only gave me boundaries for my thought life but gave me the education I didn't have and so what I found is that when he gave me such a voracious appetite for books I read all my friends books that they owned and then when I got through and they weren't keeping up with things and replenishing their libraries I then opened a small bookstore in my home to supply my habit because now my habit had become that I was hungry for hope and I wanted to see how other people kept their lives together in their marriages together and how they nurtured their children and how they celebrated each other and how to do friendship and on and on and on and books were available so I would read all the books to my little bookstore before I sold them. It was a way that helped me to continue to grow and continuing to grow is important. I remember a young woman I was talking to she was struggling in her marriage and I said honey have I got some books for you she said no no I don't read neither does my husband I said can you read yes yes of course we can read we're well educated then why wouldn't you read well she said we don't like other people's opinions interfering in our relationship I said something needs to interfere you're having a hard time here and she said well we we don't read books now I'm not saying this is the reason they ended up getting a divorce that they didn't read a book but I am saying that if your heart isn't teachable enough to open up to truth then you'll stay stuck and the next marriage for failed as well and then the next one I just want to say to you if you're a non-reader the way you can become one is to do books on tape join a book club with people you like so you look forward to seeing them even though you didn't want to read the book and then you get into discussions and it helps you I found it is very important to place myself around people who are ahead of me so that I can learn from them and I ask them what are you reading these days I'm always checking with my porch pals what's up now what's on the reading list how's it benefiting you is it a book that will nurture and help us to grow or just entertain and delight us so I encourage you to be readers but not only did I need boundaries on my emotions and I needed to harness my thoughts but I needed as I talked about earlier I needed to minimize my word count if you find that every time someone takes a breath you jump in it could be you have more words than are necessary for anybody to hear and you might want to back off you might want to go on on a little word diet and there's a way you can do that you can practice start by going one hour a day during the day while everyone's awake one hour a day without any words at all not saying a word it'll do a couple of things for you it will cause great mystery to break out in your home that will be one of the things but it will begin to help you to get some control and some boundaries on your words people often will say to me um how did your husband ever put up with you during those years and I thought well that is a good question so I went to him and I said unless when I was at my worst in my agoraphobia how did you put up with that and he said well didn't seem like that big a deal to me I said really that really was a big deal so I couldn't imagine why it wasn't a big deal for him until one day as I was thinking about it it came to me that he grew up with an alcoholic abusive father and I don't mean he was crabby I mean he was violent he threw knives at the children he shot guns at them I mean it was terrible and he beat their mother which for those children was probably the most damaging thing that happened you listen to me if any of you are in here and are being abused and think it's only about you I still watch my husband shudder and tear up and become emotional at the thought that as a child he could do nothing he could do nothing to rescue his mom he wanted to it was in his heart and what happened was he grew up and became a a caretaker he he wanted to rescue every woman who was in trouble and then he met me he thought this will last a lifetime and so we married and that was uh 48 years ago in July shouldn't have worked shouldn't have worked we are all broken people hello we are all broken people we have all had broken hearts and broken dreams but what keeps me going and celebrating is the fact that when I offer all those fragments all those shards up to the Lord and hold them up to his light their beautiful patterns begin to develop god bless you ladies god bless you she is such a delightful person patsy claremont speaking at a women of faith event on focus on the family she is delightful john and her story is just one more example of the fact that as patsy likes to say god uses cracked pots which was the title of her first best-selling book published by focus on the family and you know only god can take a woman from being housebound literally bedridden and turn her into someone who can travel and speak to thousands of women in large arenas only god can do that and let me remind you god works through our staff here at focus on the family to help people in need like patsy was in those early days of her marriage here's just one example from our counseling team a woman in crisis called for help and her husband had been killed in a boating accident the previous day and she was overwhelmed with the decisions that had to be made the counselor offered ideas for how to respond to family members who had conflicting opinions about the funeral arrangements the woman also had many questions about eternal life and the counselor provided words of comfort from the bible and prayed with her i am um i i just can't imagine the pain she was going through what a hard situation i am so glad she called us though like you're overwhelmed with everything right um and i have to thank the lord and you our donors for making it possible for our highly trained team of counselors to be here to provide that kind of support to folks that need it it's because of it's because of donors like you that we're able to offer our counseling services free of charge if you have a heart for people with these kinds of needs can i encourage you to become a monthly partner of focus on the family that's really the best way to help us even out our budget and keep this outreach thriving and when you make a monthly pledge of any amount i'd like to send you a copy of patsy claremont's book called you are more than you know face your fears grow stronger and if you can't make a monthly commitment we know times have been difficult for many families affected by the coronavirus pandemic we can still send you that book for a one-time donation of any amount yeah and patsy's book will show how to go from a fear-based life to faith-based freedom and so get your copy when you call 800-a-family 800-232-6459 or check the link for further details by the way when you're online be sure to look for a free pdf that we have patsy has provided this it's called 10 steps to soothe your soul when you're feeling anxious next time on this broadcast a brave mom who chose to carry her terminally ill baby to term against her doctor's advice you'll hear her story and the lessons she learned about god's love she was the greatest gift god ever gave because through loving her god showed me his own heart she was god's gift to us because she taught us how to love somebody who needs our love on behalf of jim daley and the entire team here thanks for listening to this focus on the family podcast please take a moment and give us a rating and share about this episode with a friend i'm john fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in christ