With five years of podcasting under my belt, people always ask what I’ve learned so today I'm sharing my three top takeaways from interviews with Christian women dreamers as they fight back fear to start business, launch a nonprofit, write a book, pursue a speaking career, wait on God, test out new ideas, fight the lies, battle comparison and imposter syndrome, and come out on the other side trusting God more because they’ve learned to lean on Him in the process of chasing their dreams.
198 || How You Respond to Rejection Matters More Than Your Success || Heather Thompson Day
Although she is the author of seven published books, Dr. Heather Thompson Day has faced rejection after rejection in her dream of becoming a best-selling author. Her newest book It’s Not Your Turn is the story of how God has used repeated rejections to shape her character over the years and to help her realize that who she is when she’s not in the spotlight is far more important than who she will be when she is.
197 || How to Know When God Is Speaking to Your Heart || Heather Oncken
A kind gesture by a friend inspired Heather Oncken’s dream to encourage people to be more intentional in their friendships. She knew she was supposed to do something with this inspiration. She just didn’t know what. As she prayed for clarity, God prompted her to be faithful to the needs He placed in front of her. Today she shares the hope that in all our relationships we have an opportunity to change someone’s day, someone’s week, and even someone’s life through our small, intentional gestures of love.
196 || God Meets You in the Most Unexpected Moments of Pursuing a Dream || Kat Harris
Kat Harris’s vision for women to know their beauty, identity, and value was born out of years spent asking difficult questions of God, herself, her community, and strangers on the subway. Her dream was never to write a book on sex and dating as a single Christian woman. In fact, doing so has revealed all her insecurities. But walking forward in it despite the challenges has grown her confidence in a God who gives us space to question and explore our dreams.
195 || [Solo] 3 Commitments to Make Before Spending Money to Pursue Your Dream || Merritt Onsa
Are you ready for big things to happen with your dream? Maybe you’re weighing the pros and cons of hiring a coach, or you want to invest in a course for the support and accountability that will push you out of your comfort zone, or that training program to fill in your knowledge gaps. All of these are great options but only once you have considered the three commitments that need to come first, before you invest any money in your dream.
194 || How to Glean the Best Path Forward from the Mentors in Your Life || Kelsey Chapman
Kelsey Chapman is an author, podcaster, and personal cheerleader to women building their dream life and business. She loves teaching other women how to find mentors because mentorship has had such a positive impact on her life and business. Her mentors paved the way and shared their experiences, so she didn’t have to learn all the hard lessons herself. Those relationships are what pushed Kelsey to rise up and continue making her dream a reality, even through the difficulties.
193 || Do You Believe God Will Do Great Things Through Your Dream? || Blythe Daniel
What’s your relationship like with your mom? Blythe Daniel and her mom wrote a book together to support restoration and healing in mother/daughter relationships. Theirs is one of the many resources Blythe has shepherded onto bookshelves around the world in fulfilling her mission as a literary evangelist. Part of pursuing this dream for Blythe has been remembering God’s faithfulness and His limitless nature; her story reminds us that this is true for His role in our dreams as well.
192 || Feeling Too Broken to Dream? Embrace Your Story & Trust God's Plan || Yolanda King
Do wounds from your past threaten your confidence or progress toward your God-shaped dream? Do you have trouble believing that God sees you and knows your needs? Yolanda King shares her story of childhood abuse and neglect that could have kept her stuck in fear and seeking approval from others. But God had a different plan. Today she’s helping other women overcome obstacles and trauma to create a life and career they love.
191 || Are You Tired of Feeling Like Your Work Doesn't Matter? || Michaela O’Donnell
What does it look like to pursue meaningful work in a changing world? Michaela O’Donnell helps people do just that through her programs, writing, and teaching on issues of vocation, work, and leadership. In this episode we talk about recalibrating expectations regarding the pace of change, what to do when your dreams don’t happen right away, and how to look for breadcrumbs of God's providence along the way.
189 || Making a Daily Decision to Surrender Your Dreams to God || Shelley Tyson
Shelley Tyson is passionate about seeing women fall in love with Jesus, live lives of wild abandon for Him, and pursue building homes and businesses that reflect Him for generations to come. She is a homeschool mom of four, wife to Bryan, and resides in Atlanta, GA, where she enjoys long talks with her husband, a strong cup of coffee, and playing the piano in her free time. She runs a skincare business and recently launched an online membership community.
188 || Mama, You Have Permission to Pursue Your Dreams || Amanda Bennett
Motherhood can be all-consuming, especially if you’re in that stage of caring for small children. Amanda Bennett of the Gotcha Mama Podcast shares about her difficult transition as a first-time mom and how that experience motivated her dream of supporting new moms who may be struggling alone like she was. Her message is one of grace and freedom in Christ as well as resisting the temptation to make everything perfect before you begin to pursue your dream.
187 || Are You Suffering? How to Trust God Even in Your Pain || Ashley Opliger
**Trigger Warning** When you are hurting, it can be difficult to believe that God would use your pain for good. In early 2014, Ashley Opliger was struggling with her faith, worrying about her unborn child, and wondering why she was not seeing answers to her constant prayers. Ultimately, her baby girl, Bridget, was stillborn at 24 weeks gestation.
183 || Why You Need to Give Yourself Permission to Fail || Hannah Brencher
Failure is where we grow and learn; it shapes our future decisions and is a reminder of the choices we want to make differently next time. Few people wish to experience failure but attempting to avoid it means missing out on essential opportunities for growth that only come from taking risks, getting it wrong, and picking yourself up to learn and try anew. This week, Hannah Brencher shares a message of hope-filled reminders to keep seeking light in the darkest places of our lives, even amid failure.
179 || A New Way of Understanding Forgiveness That Will Set You Free || Toni Hebel
You often hear about dreams that were birthed out of someone’s deepest struggles, and Toni Hebel’s God-shaped dream is no different. Hers is a story of significant hurt and yet God has used it for good. He has called Toni and her husband, Bruce, into ministry teaching people how and why we must forgive even the deepest wounds all because of the blood that was already paid on the cross through Jesus Christ.
178 || Faithfulness is the Way to Freedom and Joy in Christ || Caroline Cobb
Caroline Cobb is a mom and a wife who has a passion to tell the stories of scripture through singing and songwriting. When she started writing her own songs, it was just a hobby; but a challenge from her husband and a looming thirtieth birthday turned her passion project into a profession. Her newest album A Seed, A Sunrise explores the longing of Advent, the joy of Christmas, and the anticipation of Jesus’s return, and builds on previous storytelling albums highlighting the message of scripture.
171 || How to Keep Your Perspective Even Through a Season of Grief || Joanna Meyer
Joanna Meyer serves the Denver Institute for Faith & Work as Director of Public Engagement and oversees the Women & Vocation Initiative. Joanna brings her story with vulnerability and openness regarding the loss of a personal dream, and she shares how God has continued to provide opportunities to develop her voice and vision for her vocational dream as well as clarity in how to steward a path that includes unanswered prayers.
170 || How to Find Beauty in the Ashes of Your Broken Past || Lisa Vanderveen
Lisa Vanderveen has a burden to bring transformation to women with past abortions or sexual heartbreak. Her God-shaped dream is the result of her own healing over the last few years, releasing 30-year-old hurts and embracing her calling as a practitioner of the healing modality that blessed her so much. Lisa is in the early stages of working on life coach certification to help her clients complete their own transformation by embracing their God-given calling.
Hello Season Eight!!
This quick little episode is a preview of what you can expect in this new season and how I want to support you as you pursue your God-shaped dream. I’ve found some real clarity on my own dream since I published my last episode in June. But whether you’re new to the show or you’ve been here all along, I can’t wait to meet and connect with you.
155 || Being the Woman God Created You to Be || Stephanie Pletka
Stephanie Pletka’s superpower is encouraging other women. She desires to support the busy, overwhelmed mom who feels held hostage by other people’s expectations of her. In this final interview of Season Seven, I hope you’ll laugh at Stephanie’s honest storytelling, be encouraged by her grace-filled presence, throw off all the ridiculous expectations and give yourself permission to be the woman God created you to be.
154 || Writing a Vision Statement for Your Dream || Merritt Onsa
This episode is all about why you need to write a vision statement for your dream, how to do it, and how I’m willing to help you get this done. These steps have helped me so much in my dreaming process because they have forced me to get really honest about the dream, my role in it, God’s role in it, and how I want to share it with the world. Now I’m able to be more precise in defining what the dream actually is and helped me communicate it more eloquently to others.