5 Life Lessons God Wrote Into My Life Through Leadership

Michael and I sat in white folding chairs on top of the large outdoor dais at Jasna Góra. We were sitting with a small group of other English-speaking visitors from around the world. We all wore little headsets where a Polish translator was translating the Mass into English for us. Far below us on the famous monastery’s great sloping lawn were more than 20,000 people in Domestic Church from all over Europe. The crowd stretched all the way to the distant tree line. Across from where Michael and I sat, at least 200 priests, bishops, and a cardinal or two were seated in their own sea of white folding chairs to concelebrate the Mass.

It was September of 2023, and Michael and I had traveled to Częstochowa to represent the U.S. for the 50th Jubilee celebration of Domestic Church, the marriage and family branch of the Polish Light-Life Movement. Michael and I were (and still are) the Domestic Church National Couple for the United States.

A single diocese in Poland could easily have more Domestic Church couples in it than we had at that point in our entire country, and yet everyone we met that day treated us like celebrities.

Imposter Syndrome followed me like a shadow that day through Mass and all the other special events we attended.

Were Michael and I doing a good job? Did we really belong here? How did we even get here, on this international trip, representing an entire country?! Did Mike and I possess the skills, the ability, and maybe even the prayer life to do a good job leading this movement?

After Mass, Michael and I had the opportunity to visit the chapel at Jasna Gora that houses Our Lady of Częstochowa. The walls of the chapel glittered with jewels, rosaries, and other treasures left by pilgrims who brought Our Lady gifts for favors received by her intercession.

As I gazed up at that dark, strange, and strangely beautiful old painting, I asked Our Lady for a favor, too.

And for a heartbeat, the noise inside me and around me quieted.

And I knew that just standing there, in this foreign country, representing my far-away country, doing my small part to facilitate this marriage movement for 600 American couples…that was where God wanted me. And that was enough for Him.

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I am no stranger to leadership. It’s been a call woven throughout my life since my early twenties. Even after all these years, though, leadership isn’t comfortable for me. I’d rather let someone else run the show.

Because leadership is not the place to be if you want everyone to feel great about you, and you to feel great about everyone else.

Because it’s a constant challenge to hear God’s voice in moments of conflict or anxiety. And a constant challenge to remember to listen for His voice in the first place.

Only the Lord knows if I’ve been a good leader. Only the Lord knows the true extent that leadership has refined my particular soul.

And yet, I can see ways that lessons I’ve learned through leadership have applied to the rest of my life. (Certainly my parenting, to start.)

I’m incredibly grateful for that.

Maybe you’re called to leadership right now, or will be called to it in the future. Either way, I hope that one of these 7 hard-hitting truths may prepare your heart or smooth your way.

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1. You’re right—you have no idea if you are actually doing a good job.

We wonder if we’re doing a good job with everything from raising our children to managing our clients to leading a national marriage movement.

All of us wrestle with whether we are enough.

But what, exactly, constitutes “a good job”? Zero conflicts or problems? Lots of gratitude and accolades by the people we’re serving? Lots of gratitude and accolades by the people serving alongside us?

And who is the judge of whether or not we’re doing a good job? Us? Others? God?

Hint: It’s not us.

Leaders have to let go, in a sense.

We have to trust that He’s working things out, that He’ll give us what we need, that He’ll send the right people to help, that if and when He needs us to step down or make a change, He’ll make that clear.

We have to trust that even if everything is falling apart, He is big enough and good enough to be making everything fall together, if we think we’re still where He’s calling us.

In the economy of His unfathomable divine mercy, our trust opens up oceans of grace in the most impossible situations.

I’ve seen it.

2. Somebody else is praying about how to deal with you.

As Christians leaders, many of us pray for wisdom about how to deal with difficult people and situations.

But somewhere, somebody in your life is having a hard time dealing with you. They’re having to forgive you, be patient with you, maybe even pre-plan how they’ll handle a conversation with you.

There are things about us that annoy or challenge others, and we don’t know all of them. We can’t even control all of them. And then there’s the fact that sometimes people have a problem with us because of their own issues.

As St. Josemaria famously wrote, we have to remember that we aren’t a shiny gold coin that everybody likes.

“It is inevitable that you should feel the rub of other people’s characters against your own. After all, you are not a gold coin that everyone likes. Besides, without that friction produced by contact with others, how would you ever lose those corners, those edges and projections — the imperfections and defects — of your character, and acquire the smooth and regular finish, the firm flexibility of charity, of perfection? If your character and the characters of those who live with you were soft and sweet like sponge-cake you would never become a saint.” (St. Josemaria Escriva in The Way, #20)

We can’t underestimate the value of humility. We need it at work, in our organizations, and maybe especially in our families.

Sponge-cakes don’t make saints, after all. :)

3. You cannot make everyone happy.

Red beans and rice is the one meal in my house that all 8 of us like—about 95% of the time. But if marriage and family life hadn’t already taught me the lesson that you actually cannot make everyone happy, all the time, leadership sure has.

I’ve learned that linking my peace of mind to pleasing everyone around me doesn’t serve me.

We’ve all got different resources, capacity, backgrounds, temperaments, ways of seeing things. We’ve all got different realities we go home to, and different things that trigger our defenses. One hundred people will show you one hundred different ways to wash the dishes.

In the end, leaning into built-in authority structure helps. The military gets this. Religious orders definitely get this.

Whether the buck stops with us, or whether it’s time to let someone in authority over us make a final decision, we can find peace there.

4. Work from peace, not anxiety

The fruit of work done from peace is always superior to that done in anxiety.

I’ve had to work hard on this one.

From experience—working from anxiety feels rushed. We get tunnel vision quickly. Our blood pressure rises. We answer emails too quickly, send stress texts too quickly, think badly of others too quickly. We work as if everything depends on us, instead of God.

Working from peace means we’ve paused long enough to put some space between our emotions and our actions. We have re-aligned and in a sense resubmitted the work to the Lord. At the very least, we calmed our mind a little so we can think more clearly.

In practice, this looks like saying a prayer before I answer a text, write an email, or join a Zoom meeting. I say the Hail Mary and take a couple of deep breaths. Basically, I squeeze a holy pause between that anxious “I’ve got to do something right now” thought and actually taking a step to handle something on my plate.

It makes such a difference before, during, and after I handle something as leader.

In fact, I am 100% positive there are certain people I work with regularly who could tell you right off the bat if I said my Hail Mary or not before sending them an email. :)

5. Just show up.

Cancel culture and quiet quitting are an epidemic in our time. I’ve fallen into that trap myself a couple of times for sure. I’ve also seen the damage it does to organizations and relationships.

We have to show up. We may be unprepared, or exhausted, or ill qualified. We have to do it anyway. Because you never know when we are an essential stepping stone in God’s plans for someone else or something else.

St. Teresa of Calcutta famously said that God doesn’t call us to be successful—He calls us to be faithful.

Half the battle is showing up.

To work. To Zoom meetings. To making dinner.

St. Ignatius Loyola taught that we should always keep the course we prayerfully discerned when in consolation. If we are genuinely seeking the Lord’s will and discerned with Him to do something, then we should not quit or change course when things get hard. I’ve leaned hard on this teaching to stick with so much in my life—from marriage to ministry to potty training my toddlers.

There is such grace unlocked by the act of showing up, of keeping your commitment, of trusting God.

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Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men.

—Colossians 3:23

This little Scripture has realigned me countless times with the Lord in every part of my life.

It reminds me that I cannot know what God is doing with my obedience in that moment. Whether I’m patiently caring for a sick child in the night or answering an email, God is there, and He is doing something wonderful with my Yes.

And when I sit face to face with Him one day, my hope is that He will tell me that I have been a good and faithful servant—that I have done a good job, that I have done well.