WOF:    Ezekiel is not the most, shall we say, easily digested book of the Bible.  In fact, many people avoid it like the plague.  Why did you decide to write a book on Ezekiel?

PATSY:  It really wasn’t around the book of Ezekiel, it was around the story of those dried-up old bones ― because I so often feel like I’m just a pile of dried-up old bones.  But the story goes on with such resurrection hope that God speaks a word and those bones begin to clatter and join together and rise up and become a great army.  I think there’s just something about that whole visual, that you’ve got dried-up old bones in a valley and suddenly they come to life – that speaks of our lives when we’re in some of the worst places or the driest seasons and suddenly we feel this touch of God.  We feel this encounter with his Word.   We feel something that wasn’t there before that allows us to kind of pull together and rise up and then march on.

WOF:    What does it mean to live “in the valley”?

PATSY:  I really think it’s daily living.  Most of us aren’t living on a mountaintop shouting “Glory hallelujah!”  We’re putting on our clothes, driving out in the traffic, minding the children, taking care of responsibilities, whether that’s in an office or our home.  There is a tedium that goes in all that.  It can even dull our senses, especially if you get in such a pattern it becomes a rut.

Then you add to that the complications of relationships, where there are misunderstandings, where there are hurt feelings, where there’s prejudice, where there’s friction . . . and then the devastating aspects of abandonment and the painful process of divorce.  The lonely place of widowhood.  There are just so many complications that come with relationships ― and yet not to be in relationship is not to live up to our design.  God meant for us to be interactive, in community. 

Sometimes I think, “That’s it!  I’m done with people.  This is too hard. I’m just tired of it all.”  Then I have to back up and realize God designed me to be in community with others and with Him. 

Life is just really, really hard. But in the midst of it all, in the midst of that valley there are places that are sweet, where the water from the well is particularly cool.  Where you sit alongside another and for a few moments you are known.  There is such liberty in being able to unveil your heart to another person.  There’s such relief in it.  The other night I was in conversation with someone who was able to say things, to put feelings into words and know she was safe to do that.  She wept afterwards, that she could be known and still loved, still received and heard.  All of that is so important to us but it doesn’t happen all the time.

And the next moment you’re totally misunderstood.  People are not hearin’ ya and they’re not gettin’ ya!  That’s why I say none of us volunteer for the valley but we live there nonetheless.  If we look and we listen we will find sweet places in the valley where we learn things that we would never have learned from a mountaintop perspective.

WOF:    That valley thing is hard work!  What’s that about?  Why don’t we get to relax more?

PATSY:  A hammock usually fits better between two trees in the valley than it does in the rocky places of the mountaintop, but we don’t get to stay in it long.  We pass by it more frequently than we get in it.  But when we do get in it, isn’t that a sweet little place?

WOF:    In Dancing Bones, you talk about how we should “sing when our heart is aching” and “dance when we are soul weary.”  Why is that important ― and how is it possible?

PATSY:  I have found that when hurtful and hard things have come into my life and really broken my heart, I can drown in my own misery.  It is not that we do not have to feel what has happened to us because that’s an important part of our education, our divine instruction.  He uses that to deepen us, which then enriches not only our own inner life, it adds to the dimension of our ability to touch other people with truth.

For me, I have found that when I can purpose to sing and do a dance step ― and that dance step might be putting one foot in front of the other ― it keeps me in the journey. It keeps me interactive.  These two things become vitally important if I am to survive the damage that heartbreak has brought me.  If I sit down too long in my sorrow it is very, very difficult to get back up again.  So I have to purpose in my mind to believe that God is at work even in the midst of some of the worst things I could have conceived. If I purpose to sing when I’m hurt or when I’m angry or when I’m afraid, it tends to change my perspective.  It helps me to survive. 

There was a song that a pastor’s wife taught me years and years and years ago.  She would play on her piano and sing, “I’ve got one more valley, one more hill, maybe one more trial, one more tear, one more curve in the road.  Maybe one more mile to go, I’ll lay down my heavy load when I get home.”  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sung that one.  The dimension that’s added to it when you’re in the midst of going one more mile and laying down your heavy load when you get home . . . you suddenly realize, ooh, this is a new song in this place I’m in.

I can’t sing, but I lift my voice when I’m going through my house or driving my car or even in my mind (if I’m in a crowded place where it would be inappropriate to offend the public).

WOF:    It’s interesting that you say we should rethink the way we look at people.  Do you think that is especially true of the people who are closest to us?

PATSY:  Yes, because we’ve already made so many decisions about them.  Sometimes we don’t give them space and grace to grow in new ways because we’ve already decided, “Oh that’s not you.  You’re not like that.”   We close the door on their potentiality.

I had that done to me a great deal as a new, growing Christian years ago.  I was so damaged and so broken for so long no one could see me in any other place but that.  So I was overlooked for things that I was more than capable of doing and (they would have been surprised to know) even gifted to do, had they been willing to risk allowing me to step out of my brokenness.  They weren’t meaning to do that; I have learned since then that I, at times, have done that to others.  I’ve gone, “Oh no.  She couldn’t possibly do that,” only to impede their progress.  It’s a very human thing to do; that’s why rethinking people on a regular basis and asking God to give us eyes and vision beyond our own is really . . . smart.

I think it’s that we are so habitual in everything we do.  Thinking one way, doing things one way . . . I said to myself this morning when I was walking through my house, “I should sit at the snack bar.  I’ve had this little house now for how long? And I’ve never sat at that snack bar.” And I thought, “No, I always do it the same way.  That’s an old lady.”  So I’m sitting at the snack bar!  It makes you look at things a different way.

WOF:    You’re now halfway through the Amazing Freedom conference year.  What has been the highlight for you so far?

PATSY:  You know what has been particularly sweet to my spirit has been the ministry that’s gone forth from the others to me.  Whether it has been singing or their messages, whether it’s been a guest or a full-time Porch Pal.  We all need to be ministered to.