My greatest red flag is not that I give bad advice. It’s that I give good advice, sometimes painfully good advice, to other people. I can diagnose patterns. I can name motives. I can see consequences a mile away. I can say the right thing at the right time with unsettling accuracy. The problem is not discernment. The problem is direction.

Because advice is remarkably easy to hear when it belongs to someone else. It is far harder to receive when it turns around and looks back at you. Harder still when it arrives through the mouth of another person. Somehow, wisdom sounds clearer when it isn’t asking me to obey it. And so I have learned this about myself: I am far more comfortable being insightful than being interrupted. Far more practiced at instruction than submission. Which is how a person can speak truth fluently and still avoid being changed by it.

This is not a charming quirk. It is a problem. That problem is what produced the lessons that follow. I call them my “top five” only because restraint felt wiser than honesty. So before I offer my lessons, let me be clear: this is not written for you. This is confession for me. (James 5:16)

I should also confess something else, while I am here. I believe I have excellent theology. If I didn’t, I would change it. (I trust you hear the smile in that sentence.)

The trouble is not that my theology collapsed. It didn’t. The trouble is that my theology remained intact while my motives quietly went uninspected, leading to the “do as I say, not as I do” space. Over time, a gap formed, wide enough to notice, narrow enough to ignore. A distance between what I said I believed and what I defaulted to when pressed. Between who I presented myself to be and who I was when no one was listening. Not two different people, exactly, but one version was carefully edited to manage the emotions and expectations of those around me. For the record, this strategy was rarely effective.

Why do we do this? Because we want to be liked. And because being disliked as a constructed version of ourselves feels, strangely, safer than being rejected as the real one. That is where this year led me. Not into new doctrine, but into uncomfortable proximity with my own motives.

And so, with no attempt at tidying it up, we begin there.

Lesson One: If everyone likes you, you’re doing something wrong.

I am not going to sugarcoat this: if everyone likes you, you are doing absolutely nothing for the Kingdom of God. Nothing.

That is not permission to be cruel, careless, or needlessly abrasive. But it is an unavoidable reality. Truth creates friction. Faithfulness disrupts comfort. If every relationship remains undisturbed, it is not because you are unusually gracious; it is because you are unusually quiet.

If every relationship remains undisturbed, it is not because you are unusually gracious; it is because you are unusually quiet.

This year forced a hard decision I had been postponing for a long time. Did I want to be liked, or did I want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant”? I had to admit that I wanted both and I was willing to do an embarrassing amount of nonsense to keep the first.

The follow-up phone calls to clarify what I “really meant.”
The mental replaying of conversations.
The hours spent worrying myself sick over whether someone was upset with me.

It was exhausting. And worse, it was unproductive. Yes, people might like you. But what does that actually produce? Approval is not fruit. Agreement is not transformation. Being palatable is not the same thing as being faithful. What this craving for universal approval did instead was push me into something just as unhealthy: over-vulnerability. Too much honesty, offered too quickly, not as courage but as currency. I wasn’t being transparent; I was trying to manage reactions. I wasn’t seeking unity; I was bargaining for acceptance.

And none of it brought peace. I was selling my soul for pennies, and eventually something had to give. So I became deliberate about my company. I sought out people who filled my cup rather than drained it. People I didn’t rehearse conversations with after leaving. People whose presence didn’t require management. I put them on my calendar, and I kept them there. These were Christians who pointed me back to the point: to glorify God and make heaven crowded.

It is remarkable how little space remains for insecurity when your mind is occupied with the Word of God and His glory. When your attention is fixed there, concern over reputation begins to starve. There simply isn’t much room left for it. I should add a caveat, not as an excuse, but as honesty. I am not perfect at this. I still stumble. I still catch myself reaching for approval when I should be reaching for obedience. There are hiccups. Old habits don’t die quietly.

But they are dying, and that matters. Growth does not require perfection; it requires repentance and direction. I am not where I was, and that is not nothing. It is evidence that something has, in fact, changed.

Lesson Two: I wanted resolve without repentance.

This is the one that makes me uncomfortable to write. Which probably means it is the one that needs to be written.

I hate conflict, not because I avoid it, but because I despise leaving things unresolved. I want tension finished, settled, wrapped up, and put away. I confront quickly. I apologize quickly. I forgive quickly. I move on quickly. In many ways, I do believe this is a gift God has given me. But repentance is a different kind of work. Repentance does not rush. It does not hurry toward closure. It does not skip the ache in favor of efficiency.

What I wanted, what I often chose, was resolve without repentance. I wanted to move forward without sitting still long enough to grieve, confess, or actually change.
“God, let’s fix it and move on,” became my unspoken prayer. But sometimes moving on is the very thing that keeps us unhealed. There are moments when we must sit in the weight of our sin long enough for it to teach us something, just long enough to remind us how holy God is, and how casually we treat that holiness. Repentance felt slow. It felt inefficient. It felt deeply uncomfortable.

But it was the only thing that healed. Resolve without repentance is like putting a bandage over an infected wound without cleaning it. It looks responsible. It feels productive. But it only delays the inevitable and often makes the damage worse. So I am learning to sit in what is uncomfortable. To face the very things that strain my fellowship with God, rather than rushing past them. Not to wallow, and not to self-condemn, but to remain long enough for truth to do its work.

And on the other side of that honesty, I find grace. Not the cheap kind that excuses, but the glorious kind that restores.

Lesson Three: I Didn’t Fear Sin, I Feared Irrelevance

I shared one of my biggest red flags with you at the beginning of this blog, but now I will expose my greatest weakness. My biggest sin is that I want to be important… to a sinful degree.

I want the kind of power and respect that makes people listen when I speak. I want influence that carries weight. I want my words to matter beyond the room I am standing in. Naming that does not make me proud. It makes me honest. So when God called me into full-time ministry in a small town, and asked me to focus on individuals rather than a large platform, the grief was immediate and undignified. There was ugly crying and real resistance. I had previously held important jobs with important people, doing important things. When that season ended, I was presented with an opportunity to step into an even larger ministry that was nationally visible, widely respected, and well-funded. I made it to the final rounds of interviews. My husband agreed I should take the job; it made sense.

And yet.

God placed a persistent, unwelcome conviction in my heart that this was not the work He had for me. The doors were open. The logic was sound. The influence was obvious. And still, I knew. I wish I could say I responded with joy. I didn’t. I loved God, but I was not a happy camper. I argued. I reasoned. I tried to make obedience look irresponsible. But somehow, by grace I still don’t fully understand, I walked away.

And with that decision, something else became clear: I was no longer important, not in the way I wanted to be. The phone stopped ringing. No one asked for my opinion on national-level changes. The obscurity I had worked so hard to escape suddenly felt more threatening than disobedience. Influence had felt like safety. Accountability felt small. Quiet felt unbearable.

Small-town ministry only sharpened the ache. Here, church attendance is optional. Bible study is negotiable. Texts come in saying, “We won’t be there tonight because of the rain.” Those are the days I briefly wonder if the other offer is still on the table. Surely God would understand, right? But this is the lesson God has not let me avoid: being needed replaced being faithful and I simply could not handle it.

I have had to learn, slowly, reluctantly, that obedience is not measured by urgency in others. I am not called to do ministry for those who feel no urgency to obey God. I am called to be faithful where He has placed me. And that is enough. Kicking and screaming, I have learned this: being a faithful member of a local body looks far more like the New Testament church than any amount of national influence or recognition I could have gained. Faithfulness is quieter than ambition. Smaller than ego. And far more costly. But it is where God is so it is where I am.

Lesson Four: I blamed the shallow ministry because depth would have required obedience.

I remember when I first started The Bold Movement in 2018, I built it on a weak foundation. The ministry was born out of a frustration I knew well: most women’s ministries felt shallow and overly emotional. And, to be fair, that observation wasn’t entirely wrong. But the lesson it took me years to learn was this, those ministries were never responsible for my spiritual maturity.

They were tools. Not substitutes. For a long time, I blamed my lack of depth, my theological insecurity, and my spiritual immaturity on women’s ministries, books, and even pastors. I played the victim. I told myself I was underfed, underserved, and under-equipped. But the truth was far less flattering. I had access. I had time. I had the internet. I could reach almost any book, lecture, or resource imaginable. The problem was not availability. The problem was me.

I was lazy. I wanted someone else to do the work of formation for me while I enjoyed the benefits. I wanted depth without discipline, growth without effort, maturity without responsibility. I didn’t see this clearly until I found myself on the other side of it.

So I want to say this plainly, and publicly. To the women’s ministries I once resented and blamed: I am sorry. I expected you to mature me. That was never your job.

Women began expecting my resources, my teaching, and our time together to be enough to grow them apart from their own ownership. And when growth didn’t happen, the blame shifted. The material was too much. Or not enough. Too deep. Too academic. Too demanding. Too inconvenient.

I was frustrated. Discouraged. Hurt. And then it dawned on me: I was watching myself. I had done the exact same thing. So I want to say this plainly, and publicly. To the women’s ministries I once resented and blamed: I am sorry. I expected you to mature me. That was never your job.

Formation cannot be outsourced. No ministry, no book, no curriculum can replace repentance, Scripture, obedience, and sustained attention to God. Those tools matter. They help. But they cannot carry what only responsibility can. That lesson cost me time, humility, and a great deal of pride. But it finally gave me something far more valuable: ownership.

Lesson Five: When In Doubt, Dance.

After all the confession, the reckoning, the repentance, and the slow learning to let God be God again, this is what remains true for me:

Whether you are in the middle of an anxiety attack, a season of stress, a moment of joy, a stretch of sadness, or anywhere in between… dance.

Not because everything is fixed. Not because life is easy. But because your body remembers what your mind forgets: that you are alive, held, and not alone.

Dance when your heart is heavy, because movement breaks the spell of despair. Dance when you are joyful, because gratitude needs a body. Dance when you don’t have words, because sometimes worship begins before language returns. Faith, at its most honest, is not always neat or impressive. Sometimes it looks like stubborn joy. Sometimes it looks like defiant hope. Sometimes it looks like dancing in the kitchen when everything in you wants to sit on the floor.

So yes, whatever season you are in, whatever emotion you are carrying, whatever truth you are still learning to believe…

Dance.

TL/DR

I give good advice but don’t always follow it, and 2025 exposed the gap between my theology and my motives. Being liked exhausted me; repentance, not resolution, actually healed me. I learned I feared irrelevance more than sin and confused being needed with being faithful. I stopped blaming shallow ministry and took responsibility for my own formation. And when words fail, worship sometimes looks like dancing.