Story of the Week: Hidden In Her Heart

Patricia has found that God often uses waiting as a catalyst for growth in the lives of His people, and she’s enlisted the help of a dozen Woodmen women to share their stories and hard-won life lessons birthed through waiting.

Patricia Croll will never forget the red chair in the living room during her time in Hawaii. It was her early morning escape, steaming mug of tea in hand, tip-toeing across the tile floor, desperate for the words on the pages of her Bible to spring to life.

She needed the words to seep deep into her heart — she needed God’s presence to envelop her as she walked through one of the most challenging times of her life. Each day she felt like she was slowly and wearily climbing through a swamp of doubt and wounding.

God’s word sustained her, giving her precisely what she needed, in the amount she needed. She breathed in the salty ocean air as she savored the words in her heart. Amidst uncertainty in her life, she knew God’s word wouldn’t change. He is faithful every day.

GLIMPSES OF GRACE

Bible study wasn’t always a regular practice in Patricia’s life. She encountered God from a church pew once a week during her childhood. But reading the Bible wasn’t modeled in her family.

She remembers a season when her family attended two different churches at a time. She knelt in heavy guilt during Catholic mass on Saturday nights and trembled during talk of judgement on Sunday mornings at a Baptist church.

Then Patricia watched as her mom began to grow to love God’s word as she attended a Bible study. Patricia remembers observing this shift. She knows God was planting seeds even then.

As a college student, Patricia didn’t know about grace or the gospel. In her mind, it was up to her to work to earn her way to heaven. She soon began to realize that she could never pray enough or go to mass enough to bring herself out of this pit.

Years passed and God continued to quietly lay His groundwork in Patricia’s heart. She and her husband, Scott, were now living in Virginia, and attending a Baptist church. Patricia heard a powerful message about grace that completely transformed her faith. Two women sitting in front of her invited her to join their Bible study — a simple invitation that became a powerful catalyst for change in Patricia’s heart.

HOPE THAT SUSTAINS

Patricia was carrying the weight of a struggling marriage at that time. Both she and Scott had decided they were willing to work to repair what was broken. But In quiet moments she wondered if she could fulfill the promises she’d made to God and her husband years earlier in that red brick church.

“I realized that God’s word is timely and powerful. It tells me of His purpose and impacts what I’m currently walking through,” Patricia recalls. “I couldn’t believe that words on a page could impact me in that way.”

From then on, Patricia began to pursue not just “learning the Bible,” but learning WHO God is. She started making a daily habit of waking up early to read her Bible. She realized that instead of waiting for life circumstances to make it easy to set aside time, she had to allow her life to mold around this new discipline.

Some days it was easy, some days it was hard. Yet in the years that followed, Patricia made God’s word a priority. The Lord led her on a journey of learning who He is and how He’s revealed in the Bible.

LEADING THE WAY

When Scott and Patricia moved to Colorado, she was invited to share at a Woodmen mom’s group. It felt risky to step out and teach, but Gwen Davis and Marion Johnson encouraged Patricia to move forward. Patricia had a burden on her heart — to teach young moms how to study the Bible for themselves.

As Patricia continued to hide God’s word in her heart, she felt a tremendous burden to help young women discover the life-changing power of growing in their understanding of scripture. In a world with so many sources — podcasts, books and YouTube — she wants to make sure folks realize that God’s word is THE source. Patricia hopes and prays that Woodmen women will feel equipped and empowered to read and understand the “primary source.”

Throughout her life, she has learned firsthand that the Bible is the clearest revelation of who God is. She puts it this way: “It’s not about how I feel, it’s what the Bible says, and there’s something so grounding about that.”

ON THE HORIZON

Patricia has found that God often uses waiting as a catalyst for growth in the lives of His people, and she’s enlisted the help of a dozen Woodmen women to share their stories and hard-won life lessons birthed through waiting.

Patricia and her team recently released their book, Wait Well: Cultivating a Heart Willing to Wait. And they’re excited to share more at the Wait Well women’s conference, coming up at Woodmen Heights on April 17 and 18. As with everything that Patricia does, you can be sure that God’s word will be front and center.

Her passion for the Bible is contagious. She puts it this way: “It’s the truest story of the world, it tells us how the story ends, and places our story within His grand story, which gives our lives purpose and meaning. It’s captivating, beautiful, and reveals a God that never gives up on His people.”

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