Thriving in Christ | Burnout, Stress, Leadership, Faith & High Performance

Many Christian women professionals and servant leaders live with a quiet, constant tension → “I know what would help me… but I don’t have the bandwidth.” You long for prayer rhythms, movement, rest, or gentler mornings - yet even good intentions feel heavy. This is not because you don’t care. It’s because your nervous system is already carrying too much. When life is full of responsibility, pressu...

As Christian professional women, we work really hard to build our careers. Then, after some time, something tells us to switch careers or pivot in our direction of life. This could be to stay at home with the kids, to care for a loved one, or a completely different opportunity. This is not easy and can not only bring about confusion, but struggle and pain too. This week, I interviewed Kim Patten,...

As we step into January, I want to pause with you - not to add more goals, but to ask some deeper questions: - How can you implement successfully rhythms and habits that sustain you so that you can keep on going? - How can you stay on course, not just in your work, family and church life, but in your personal renewal and spiritual life? - And how can you keep your Renewal Intentions set at the beg...

In this Thriving in Christ episode, I had the joy of interviewing Esther Yunkin, a registered nurse and Hashimoto’s specialist, on how chronic stress can quietly lead to burnout and autoimmune issues in high-performing Christian women. Together, we reveal how many women continue serving and striving until their bodies signal distress, long before they recognize the warning signs. Esther encourages...

As a new year approaches, many Christian professional women feel called to set intentions, yet traditional resolutions often lead to frustration and burnout (by as early as February or March), rather than renewal. If this happened to you, you are not alone! When energy fades, or prayers feel dry, it’s not a personal failure - it’s a sign that goals rooted only in performance need deeper alignment...

In this Renewal Conversation, I speak with Lissa Figgins about moving beyond burnout by learning to steward time as a gift from God. Lissa shares how her own journey - from striving and exhaustion to faith-centered clarity - taught her that time, like manna, is meant to be received daily with trust and intention. Lissa invites women to see time as something to steward for God’s purposes, instead o...

Here is an important topic to discuss as you gather with friends and family in the upcoming week: the depth and power of Beliefs. You know what it’s like to carry a vision: to set goals, lead others and move projects forward before outcomes are guaranteed. But even strong women of faith, like you, can feel the tension between believing and the reality of what you see, and this sometimes feels like...

In this week's Renewal Conversation, I had the joy of interviewing Jane Kourtis, who is an attorney of 23 years, a faithful leader, mother and grandmother. Her journey in Christ was shaped from childhood as the daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest, where the beauty of hymnology, liturgy, and the five-sense experience of worship formed her spiritual foundation. Her ministry leadership extends, among...

You make hard calls all day — decisions that shape people’s futures, teams, organizations, and your family. Everyone looks to you for clarity, composure, and care. Yet sometimes, when the meetings end and the quiet sets in, there’s a question beneath the surface: who holds you while you hold everything else? In this episode, we will focus on who is supporting you and the healing power of connectio...

Many Christian women professionals and servant leaders feel the tension between the responsibilities they carry and the longing to remain grounded in Christ while serving across cultures, communities, and complex spaces. In a world where leadership often feels loud, fast, and constantly demanding, faithful leadership can look surprisingly different—quiet, discerning, and deeply rooted in God’s pre...

Christian women professionals and leaders often measure worth by productivity, titles, or impact — even spiritual service becomes performance. Beneath excellence lies quiet exhaustion and fear: “Am I enough?” or “What if they find out I’m not as strong as I look?” Our culture is focused on results and productivity, but God is inviting us to conform to HIM and not to the world. Today - we will take...

Even the strongest Christian women professionals and servant leaders carry stories of hard seasons—moments that stretched them, humbled them, or left them quietly wondering how God could bring renewal out of what felt broken. In today’s episode, we explore how post-traumatic growth is not just a psychological concept but a personal and sacred journey where Christ meets us with compassion, wisdom,...

Are you feeling tired at the end of the week? Are there a lot of things going on in your life? Do you need to take a pause and regenerate with Christ at the center? Wrapping up the year while we prepare for Christmas can be challenging and can bring much stress. But we know that God is everywhere, filling all things, including in times of stress. And where there is God, there is HOPE. Today I invi...

How do we handle thoughts and emotions so we can stay centered in God? And are there simple steps we can take to access the peace that surpasses all understanding? Thoughts and emotions come and go, and the reality is that they are difficult to control in the long run. What we CAN control, however, is how we respond to them. In today's episode of "Answering Your Questions - Part 2," we walk throug...

Today, we are bringing to a close the MINI SERIES on Internal Family Systems (IFS), by discussing the Steps for the HEALING JOURNEY, with Christ at the helm. Through the might of the IFS psychological methodology, along with the work of the gentle spirit of God at work within us, healing is possible. It's possible, when we meet the different parts of ourselves with the same compassion that Christ...

Oftentimes, whether at work or at home, as a parent, a spouse, friend or co-worker, we feel like we need to perform a certain way, to please others, or perhaps, be perfect. Thoughts like these constantly occupy our consciousness, perhaps distracting us, when all we really want is to complete the task at hand. This is exhausting! So then, how do we establish a sense of peace with all of the "noisy...

I hope you are well! Here is Part 6 (out of 7) of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Christianity series, which addresses polarities. This is relevant in our lives as it is common to feel that there is an internal war, as we carry on with our responsibilities. We might be smiling on the outside, but stressed inside, and in time, this can lead to burnout. Polarities is a term used in IFS to expl...

What does it take to move past doubt - doubt in ourselves, in others, or situations we are in? Is there a different mindset that can help us overcome this doubt? And what does it mean to see beauty as a characteristic and a resourceful state of being, as a way to get to know God? These are thoughts and questions that Thomaida Hudanish and I talk about in this week's Renewal Conversation. Thomaida...

As we keep growing both professionally and personally in Christ, we become better versions of ourselves and we see the transformation. Nonetheless, life happens, and we might get triggered, respond in ways that we are not proud of, and then start wondering "What did I do wrong?", "Why can't I fix this?" or "Why can't I do this?" and we feel we go backwards or in circles instead of forward. In real...

In this week's Renewal Conversation, I had the joy of talking with Debbie Caudle, who is a marriage therapist and relationship coach with a passion for helping Christian couples repair what’s broken, rediscover what matters, and rebuild marriages with purpose. Through her signature Marriage in Bloom recovery program, Debbie equips women (and couples) to face the hard stuff: conflict that neve...

What happens when an unwanted fire erupts in someone's home? The firefighters are called and they respond quickly to help put out the fire before it spreads. Similarly, when we have internal fires (pain, suffering, sadness, shame), they need to be put out; therefore, we have internal parts that show up quickly to distract and soothe our mind and body - the Firefighter part. As described in IFS (In...

Have you wondered what it truly means to trust God? It can actually look like many different things, such as co-creating with God, taking steps in faith, being comfortable with the unknown, following an open door, or simply believing that He can and will show up for you. This week, I had the joy of interviewing Lisa Anderson, the director of Boundless program for young adults at Focus on the Famil...

In Hebrews, St. Paul tells us this: "And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith." - Hebrews 12:1 (NIV). As Christian professional women & servant leaders, we lead in many capacities, which brings a great amount of responsibility, and therefore, to keep ourselves moving forward, we call upon our "Manager Parts" as de...

This week, I had a Renewal Conversation with Dr. Laurette Willis. She is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, who is known as the Christian Weight Loss Coach and founder of Weightloss Without Willpower (3 W's), where she uses psychological knowledge to help women lose weight without dieting. She is also the founder of Praise Movement Ministry (an alternative to Yoga). She is passionate about empoweri...

We could be at work, at home, with friends, or on social media, and all of a sudden, someone says something, and we are triggered. What was once a peaceful state turns into worry, frustration, or self-doubt. Sometimes we can think through a situation and return to our center, but at other times, the emotions and thoughts linger in the back of our consciousness, draining us. What do we do? And...