Secrets of a Faith Well Lived by Christopher Coppernoll

Author:Christopher Coppernoll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Publishing
Published: 1984-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

For years Patsy Clairmont suffered with the anxiety disorder agoraphobia—the fear of open spaces. When you consider all that Patsy has accomplished in her career, it’s remarkable to think how restrictive this disorder once was for her. She discusses what it was like living with agoraphobia and how she found freedom from being housebound.

Patsy Clairmont

The difference between agoraphobia and, let’s say, arachnophobia—the fear of spiders—is that with arachnophobia you have one fear. It may be intense, it may be huge, it may dominate your life, but it’s one fear. When you are an agoraphobic, however, you have collected many fears. You are a cluster of fears. If you look up agoraphobia in the dictionary, you read that it’s the fear of open places, open spaces. But the way it manifests itself in your life is that you allow many different things to become intimidating.

When people exhibit an extreme emotion, that emotion is usually their hiding place from the thing they’re most afraid of. For instance, people who are extremely full of fear are usually very, very angry people. But it is too scary for them to touch all that volatile anger, so they end up refuging in their fear. That’s their hiding place. They feel safer and more in control in their fear than in their bigger, deeper issue of anger. As for me, I refuged in fear. I was afraid of everything. I wasn’t purposing to hide from my anger and not resolve it; I wasn’t aware that that’s what I was doing.

My fears were unreasonable. They didn’t make sense. For instance, I was afraid of getting in an elevator, but I would put my children in one. I knew beyond a doubt they would be safe, but it was not safe for me. That’s not reasonable. Why would it be safe for them and not me? I had a tremendous fear of storms, heights, and doctors, and yet I was calling my doctor for help all the time. My fears just didn’t make sense because they were not authentic fear. They were the acting out, the refuge place. The deeper issue was that I had a lot of anger that came out of woundedness and hurt, and that needed to be addressed before the Lord.

How did I get well? One baby step at a time. I would love to tell people that I just went to bed one night and rose up righteous the next morning. I would love to make it easier for them. But the truth is I had to pick up one foot and place it in front of the other when I did not feel like doing it. I had to start with the littlest details of life.

I remember crying out to the Lord, saying I wanted to do great things for Him. And I remember the unfolding of a thought inside of me from the Lord: “Go make your bed.” I couldn’t figure that out. I thought, What does making my bed have

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