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Do you know that it is not selfish to take care of you and your own needs? That is something that is super important, especially in the Christian lifestyle. So many Christian women struggle with it because they feel like they're not being self-sacrificing or they feel they should be this way, or they should be that way, but that doesn't involve putting their own thoughts, opinions, and needs into stuff. That is just not true. Here's the thing: How can we love other people as we would want them to love us and do unto others as you would have them do unto you if there is no you that is treated well? The way we go around treating ourselves as Christian women is sometimes worse than we would treat an enemy. Now, if you just chuckled at that, and you know what I mean, then this is for you.

You have to have a self. God, Himself, gave you a self, and that self being stewarded well, is not selfish. It's worship. It is absolutely worship to take care of the body and the being that the Lord granted you with at birth. Before birth, actually, I believe at conception that the Lord came in and made you. When he breathed life into you, you into existence, everything was already there. God was there. You were there, and your potential was there. How your body works was there. We need to know that it's okay to be us. You are not some extra secondhand thought that God had. You are absolutely important and known by God before you had one day of life.

So why? Why do you think that you shouldn't have a voice, a choice, needs, or desires or use your gifts or that you're not worth anything? Please, please, please hear me. This is so important. You must begin with you and God. You cannot change anything in your external world for the long haul in a good direction if you are not honest with yourself, you are depleted, you are resentful, you are exhausted, and you are just running on fumes; you have to reverse engineer it. Well, not really reverse engineer it. Reverse it. Forget the engineering part. You have to reverse it. You need to change up the priority. It needs to start with you and God. You've heard me say this before: you start in that inner circle with God and then branch out from there.

Branching out from there means things like self-care, and that means setting up boundaries as to what is acceptable treatment of you and what isn't. That means making choices that are stewarding well what's been given to you. That includes taking time to heal the stuff that's going on inside. That might be emotions that are hurting you repeatedly over years that you're still having trouble getting on top of, and you just keep hoping and praying it away, but it's still there and you need help with it. That could be your thoughts needing to be reframed in light of scripture and truth and more helpful ways of thinking. That could be taking time to simply have a nourishing breakfast and some good hydration and some time with the Lord. There are so many ways that you can steward yourself time with other people who are uplifting and that you can pour into as well.

Or maybe you just need to be poured into and you're going to pour into them when you get a chance. It's okay to be where you are. You've heard me say that before, too. You have so much power. Do not give it away. That's something that happens so often, is we say, I'll get to it another day, or I'm not as important as somebody else, or I don't need to worry about this right now. God will just take care of it. God will take care of things. But sometimes, many times, He's already given you the power to take care of the stewardship that He gave Adam in the garden. Right? To work the land. That was before the fall, that Adam was here to do something. God has put you here to do something and to do something well. You need to have your tools: your body, your mind, your emotions, your relationships, your supports, and your purpose all working together at least most of the time to really get some good traction.

So, if there are things that are getting in your way that are not giving you that good traction. Then that's an area to step up and say, I need to do something different. When people do that, sometimes they get overwhelmed and they try to figure out, well, what is that next step up or what would be the best way? Then that negative thought starts coming in. Stuff like, oh, well, you can't do that because of this or, well, no, that's not going to work because of this. That is that stuff called stinking thinking. There is a way to problem solve. No matter what you are going through, there is a way to do it in a way that works well for you. Even if the situation is unpleasant that you're going through, the way that you handle it can be beneficial and work well for you. And if that gets overwhelming for you, you might get that stress paralyzation that I've talked about, and we don't want you to have to get to that place.

I want you to understand that there is help available and you don't necessarily have to go to therapy. If you've been on the fence about, should I do therapy? It's kind of scary. I can't find a therapist. I don't know where to go. I highly recommend therapy. In my day job, I am a therapist. Yet, if that's not your first step, if that's not what you need right now, or if you need something more, get real with yourself. What do you need? Do you need to go join a gym? Do you need to just start walking with a buddy? Do you need to reach out and make a new friend and take them to lunch? Do you need to spend time in Bible study and prayer? Do you need time to connect with others and learn more so that you can grow and take the first steps? Whatever it is, just get real about it and then put forth that action. Be a good steward. Do what you need to with what's in your hand now and do. Don't get overwhelmed by the big picture. You don't have to have everything working all the time and all at once, but you can optimize things as you realize, hey, this is an area that I could use some improvement in.

If that area that you could use some improvement in is the area of self-care, I want to invite you to join the membership community. The membership community is a place where you can get support for reaching your personal goals. Whether you're ready for counseling or you're not, and you just want some tools and skills and coaching, this is a good thing. If you are in counseling, this is a good thing to come alongside it. That can also help strengthen the skills that you need as you go through the processing of the things that you need to. Or this can be a wonderful next step after therapy is concluded. This membership community can be a helpful companion to you, and you can use it the way that you want to use it. If you just want to get the monthly materials and access to the training vault, go for it, and you join us on a weekly Monday meeting call. If you want to ask me questions, you get coaching access to me through posting in the community. I will answer your questions. I will give you direction. If you ask for it, I will give you some help so that you can decide what's best for you to reach your goals. I'm not going to counsel you. We're not going to do anything to make you go past your level of comfort. We're going to push you a little bit outside of your comfort zone as far as what you are doing now, but not to a place where this has to be uncomfortable.

This is an excellent first step. If you've been thinking, I need help and you keep putting it off because yourself keeps getting pushed to the back burner, I want you to really understand that you are important. You are important. Everything in your life is affected by how well you treat yourself and how well you take care of the things God's entrusted to you; every relationship, every thought, every action, every goal is impacted by what you do with your thoughts, feelings, actions, choices, and your relationships. As I said, it all comes back to how you steward what begins with you and what begins with you began with God, so the two of you make an invincible team. There is good stuff there.

Please don't neglect it. This isn't because I'm trying to get some sale of the membership community. I would love for you to join the membership community, but this is because I see it all too often, Christian women who don't actually take time for themselves. There was a time where I didn't take care of myself in the sense that I would just not even buy myself clothes. I'd just wear my husband's old shirt, tie it up in a knot at the bottom, and say, okay, that's good enough, you know, or I'd wear the same thing all the time. I mean, yes, it'd be clean and washed, but I never expanded anything. Take care of myself or I didn't do the extra things like get a piece of jewelry that would make me feel good and confident in presenting myself professionally. These are things that, why not?

It's not a sin to do things that make you happy. They're not sin to do things that are necessary just for survival and self-care. They're not sin to be good stewards of what God's entrusted to you. When you have a well-developed self, you go out into the world well developed and well impactful, if that's even a word. You can be impactful because you have a solid base from which you're launching.

If you ever thought that something was just way too big of a goal, that you just couldn't get there like you thought, is it even worth starting to try because there's so much I don't know, and I just don't know what to do first. I get this stress paralyzation and I'm just kind of, well, stuck here not making any progress and not really feeling very fulfilled. But it is what it is. And then I go to sleep, wake up tomorrow hoping for something different, and the next thing you know, I've repeated that, and I've never gotten anywhere else. If that's you, I know that that's how we as humans are, right? I know that that's how it is.

I have been there, too, and I am there in other areas of my life, but I am going to share with you an area that I am actually successful in as far as this goes. That is my podcast! So, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you are a regular listener, thank you so much because you have been a help in what I'm about to share with you. We are about to have 200,000 downloads. 200,000 downloads! It sounds like a big number, and it is a big thing that I am thrilled that God has allowed to take place. And yet, I didn't do that. God did that, and yes, I did something, but I didn't do 200,000 downloads. I picked up my phone and having a voice recorder and speaking into it consistently. That's all I did. Then after I did that, I put in the music at the beginning or put in the notes and put it into the podcast host. After I did that, I let my assistant have the information so she could do a blog post. These are things that I just did consistently over time, one thing at a time, that led to the 200,000.

Now that's been an amazing journey, but it started with me at some point going, oh, I think God gave me a little bit of a feeling that I should podcast. It was April of the pandemic, so about four years ago, and I went, let's purchase this course and I'll take it. This was somebody I trusted who I was already doing business coaching with in another area, and I was like, okay, let's try this. So, I purchased his course and then with nothing else to do during the pandemic, I went ahead and completed the course and then decided, hey, maybe I should buy a microphone. 

Okay, and how do I get this tech set up? Then this microphone. Oh, my goodness. I'm kind of scared to record. I shared this yesterday in the membership community about how it's this one thing done consistently, but when I first started, I was terrified to even record just sitting in my dining room. I remember sitting on my dining room carpet so that I would have good acoustics and trying this out, and I wasn't even going to share it anywhere. I was so nervous. I was like, oh, I could just play around with this, kind of have this feel good and try to just have fun, like when I was a kid with a microphone. But somehow being an adult, considering putting my thoughts and my voice out there didn't feel quite as light and fun as a kid who just, oh, a microphone. Let me try and sing, or, you know, do one of those things where you kind of make loud echo noises into the microphone, see how loud it can get. Those were things that I used to do, but when I realized that this would be used for a purpose and that it would go out there and the people, whether I knew them or didn't know them, might hear me. It made the stakes a lot higher, or so it seemed. In reality, yes, I've gotten feedback from putting these out there. But in reality, where I record these is usually alone, most of the time alone with my phone. And that's nothing scary. It's simply a phone and myself, and I think, and I talk, and I believe the Holy Spirit is leading and guiding me.

That's what I desire That's how I want to help you. But that's it; it's not a big deal thing. I will tell you that no matter who has built anything of any substance, they've done it one step at a time. Now, as they've done it, they may have hired other people or asked other people to do things one step at a time, and then they've built systems and they've leveraged things. That happens. But in reality, all we have is the present moment and we have the one step that we are taking consistently that is going to give us the biggest results.

Last week, I repeated this story three different times with three different of my private counseling clients, and these are people with different circumstances, but it was applicable for all three of them because we were talking about how this whole big broad picture of what they're trying to achieve really comes down to what is the thing right now that you will do consistently until it pays off and maybe add to as well.

So, what I started doing consistently was recording the podcast and putting it up weekly. Regularly. I actually did it more often than that because I was so abysmal at doing it weekly. I felt God was saying to do it daily, so for a while I put it up daily because I needed to get in the habits, and I wanted to obey God. So that's what I did. That consistency made it easier to dial back when it was time to do that. But I want you to know that it was something that I had to struggle with.

First, I had to struggle with the insecurity. Then, I had to struggle with the tech and the launch plan. Then, I had to struggle with the consistency. Then, I had to struggle with what now, what next, and how to? I just want to share with you that the whole big picture of where things are right now, four years later, I never thought I'd be here in four years talking to hundreds of people with each episode and having people tell me, thank you for doing what you're doing and how it's helped them in life in some way and also hearing about what God's doing in people's lives.

Once again, all because I put an app on my phone (because I gave up the actual physical microphone, in case you're wondering, long ago). I just use this app on my phone because I like to record while I'm thinking and, in my car, in my quiet space. That's what I do most of the time. That's how I'm consistent. It's the same thing. It's one small thing that will, over time, culminate in a new history. I wasn't consistent until I was.

Now I'm a consistent podcaster. When you look back on what you've done, one step at a time with consistency and what that leads to, you will see the power of one thing at a time. It's how I got my master's degree. One course at a time. I really did it. I stretched it out, made a two-year program, four years, because I was raising my kids who were very young at the time, and I was homeschooling while my husband worked. That's what I did. The kids went to school and then when I had time I went to school. So, one course at a time until eventually I graduated. Then it was 1 hour towards practicum or internship, well before graduation, 1 hour towards practicum and internship at a time. After graduation, 1 hour towards some extra pay for a stay-at-home mom. After that happened for a while, then it was 1 hour towards supervised licensure by having supervision. So, it was 3000 hours for supervision. Everything that got me to this point was painstakingly one step at a time. You might think, why would you want to take all of those steps? Because frankly, I am still building. I barely crack the starting line on what I believe God has for mental health for Christian women.

Yet, it is so far along from what I could have imagined. That's how God is. He's got a lot of good stuff for you that you can't even think or imagine, and yet He has it there and He will show you, but He may not show you the whole big picture with every single little step at a time. That's probably good, because if I had known how much work was going to go into everything for building a podcast, content membership, community, getting coaching, learning how to continue to grow and develop the business aspect of things, I may have just said, Lord, thank you so much for thinking of me, but I'm not sure that I have enough energy and I'm kind of tired. I know you love me. Anyhow, peace out, right? And that's not exactly going to get anywhere, especially when there are people that need you. Right? People need you. It's not like I thought that, oh, people need to hear my voice. I thought, everybody will be fine. The world will go on just fine. But God said, you're the one that I'm asking to do this piece of helping my people, and you're the one that I am trusting with this. Will you be obedient? Will you do it? And I said yes to the call. And He's working it. He's doing it. I'm not responsible for the outcome. I'm responsible for my stewardship of what He's called me to do.

So, whatever that is, that seems too big for you to do on your own, that's okay. God is there with you. Whatever steps you need to take, even if you don't feel equipped or they make you nervous or they're not something that you think really matters, God's directing you. It's worth it. Take that step. Just show up with the one thing God's entrusting to your care right now and then repeat as often as necessary until you get the result or until you build onto that. Whatever God's leading, He can be trusted. When we all do that in our own uniquely gifted ways, we help everyone in the kingdom of God.

We get fulfilled because we're doing what God uniquely made us to be and do, to serve Him and to help others. And you know what? There is so much joy and peace that comes from that. There are others who benefit because of it. I believe it makes God smile. So please don't discount yourself like I almost discounted myself. Please realize that what you have to offer somebody is likely praying for. They are likely out there praying for an answer to something that God has provided you as the provision of that answer for. That's His provision. His plan is through you to use what He's given you, what he's entrusted to you, and to steward it well.

So what's that thing you need to steward? Well, today? Is it your parenting? Is it your job? Is it your internship or your coursework at school? Whatever it is, God, if He's asking you, to steward it, He believes it's important and he's given you that call and only you can fulfill it the way that He has made for you to fulfill it.