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We've got some good news for you: It's not your job to make everyone happy! Have you ever said "yes" when you knew you should have said "no"? Maybe you've gotten caught in the trap of people-pleasing.
For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Kaley Olson: Well, hello, friends. And welcome back to the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host Kaley Olson, and I'm here with my cohost, Meredith Brock.
Meredith Brock: Well, Hey, Kaley. Today, we have our friend, Karen Ehman on the show, and we are so excited about the teaching that she has; because Karen is going to share a teaching on busting out of the prison of people pleasing. Now, now, now, I think some of us hear, "People pleasing," and immediately identify with it, and then there's others like myself that are like, "Nah, that ain't for me. I don't have an issue with that," but y'all, I'm here to tell you, Karen takes a biblical approach of really understanding the root of people pleasing versus the desire to please God, and it is so powerful. I can't wait for you to hear it.
Kaley Olson: Yes, so powerful, and I do want to mention really quick, Karen does share some words that are the Greek and the Hebrew version of the words, and so if you visit the show notes for this episode at proverbs31.org/listen, we have a transcript available for you, and so if you want to go back and know exactly what she says, you can download that transcript for free, and all the information is there. So just a small plug for that.
Meredith Brock: Love that.
Kaley Olson: I know, I know, just helping the people out, but before we dive into our teaching for today, I want to give a quick shout out to any women's event planners listening. First of all, hello, you are the real MVPs here, because Meredith and I know what it takes to pull off an event, and there is so much behind the scenes that you do that goes unseen. So kudos to you. Thank you all for what you do, but I also want to say that Proverbs 31 Ministries wants to be part of your next event.
We have a team of 12 women on our event speaker team who can travel across the country, and speak on a wide variety of topics to fit your audience, and so since we are releasing this in early January, that means you can get ahead and book your speaker early on. One thing less to do on your list. So to find out more, you can go to Proverbs31.org/speakers. And now here's our conversation with our friend Karen.
Meredith Brock: Well, we are so excited to have our friend, Karen Ehman, on the show with us today. Karen, you have been part of the Proverbs 31 family for quite some time. I think you actually might have been with us, you're like in the top five of longest with the ministry, right?
Karen Ehman: I think so. Yeah.
Meredith Brock: It's true. Well… and so for some of us, this might be the first time you've ever heard Karen on the podcast. So I really quickly want to introduce her to you. Karen is a national speaker. She speaks all over the country. She has written multiple books, but not just any books. We're talking about a New York Times bestselling author here, and I have had the privilege of knowing Karen for a few years, and y'all, I am just here to tell you, she is an absolutely beautiful soul.
She cares so much about her people, and she doesn't do it in a, "I'm going to send you a text message just randomly in the middle of the day," which is nice, if you're one of those people, which I happen to be. I applaud you, but Karen always takes it to the next level. I'll never forget when I had my first child, she sent a little gift basket, and sent a gift card for takeout, so I didn't have to worry about a meal. And she is just one of the most thoughtful people that I know, and she shows it in her actions. So I'm just excited for her to be here on the show today, and to get to talk a little bit about what's on her heart.
Kaley Olson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Karen, we're so excited you're here, and you're here today to talk with us about the subject matter of your latest book, When Making Others Happy is Making You Miserable, AKA, what we all know as people pleasing. And Karen, I don't know a soul who doesn't struggle with this in some way at all, right? But I know in a culture where we're constantly trying to keep up and are afraid of letting others down, this message is so desperately needed. And so I can't wait to hear what you have to share with us today, and so the floor is yours, my friend.
Karen Ehman: Well, thank you both so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Well, I'm thinking it was about four years ago now on a sunny afternoon, I hung up the phone from talking to my college best friend, and I grabbed my box of tissues and my phone, and I headed out to the back of our property, where we have a little strip of woods. There's a fire pit there and some chairs, and I normally love sitting there listening to the bird’s chirp, and we have a big family of black squirrels that love to chase each other around the tree and up and down the trees, and I usually love being there to just relax or read my Bible or read a book, or just do nothing, and take a break for my day. But that day, I sat in a lawn chair, and I balled my eyes out, and it sent the squirrels scurrying, and the birds flying away, because I think they were scared of my incessant sobbing.
And what had happened that sent me into this emotional despair was something actually, guys, I've done dozens of time. OK. Let's be honest. Hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times in my life, it was something really simple. I had said, "Yes," to a request from a friend that I knew I wanted to say, "No," to. I was going through a lot of stress in my life then. My father had just passed away, but we had just moved to a new town to be closer to my father, and so I was still unpacking boxes, getting to know my new community, my new church and there was a lot going on in my life, but I still was failing to be forthright with people and say, "No," to things. And so my plate was so full. It was about ready to bust.
And I sat there in that chair, bawling my eyes out, realizing that I was trapped in a prison of people pleasing, and something had to change. So I took my phone. I hopped on Bible Gateway. It's a great place to search for verses, and I typed in the search bar these two words, "Please," and, "People," and 23 verses popped up. Now, not all of them were about people pleasing. Some of them just had those two words in the verse, but the 22 out of 23, that 22 entry, it really caught my eye.
It was a verse in Galatians. Now, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the early church in Galatia, which is now modern-day Turkey, sometime between 53 and 57 AD, and they were experiencing some pressure from a group of people, who were known as the Judaizers— who said that you had to still follow the Old Testament in order to be saved. And then part of this letter to the Galatians, Paul was correcting this notion, and reminding them that the true gospel of Jesus, it offers us salvation by trusting Him alone.
So early on in the book, in Galatians 1:10, he tosses out a really important question. He says this, "Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ." (NIV) That's Galatians 1:10. You see, even the early church dealt with this interpersonal tension in their lives, just like we do today. And I think we would do well to ponder that question that Paul tossed out when we feel trapped in a tug-of-war between following God and succumbing to pressure from people.
The Old Testament also talks about pleasing others. It calls it the fear of man. In Proverbs 29:25 it says this, "The fear of man [or of humans] will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe." (NIV) Now, in the language that the Old Testament was originally written in, the Hebrew language, the word that's translated snare in English is the word moqesh. It's spelled M-O-Q-E-S-H, if you want to wow your friends that you know a Hebrew word. Moqesh, and it refers to a trapping device for prey, but it also conveys the concept of bait or lure, something that entices, reels in and then drags its victim away. The fear of man is a snare. It's a trap.
Well, is there a relationship in your life where your heartstrings are constantly tugged? Maybe you never want to upset a certain person, because so much of their life is filled with sadness, and you really aren't interested in adding more disappointment to their plate? Or is there someone you dread ever disappointing or upsetting, so you constantly take the bait and give in just to please them? Or perhaps, you, like me that day, you simply have trouble saying, "No," to others, so you constantly say, "Yes." You give in to go along, and now you find your plate or your Google Calendar way too full with no white space in sight.
Well, if any of these describe you, or maybe you can think of another scenario where you're tempted to please someone constantly, then you, my friend, like I was, you've been caught in a moqesh. Now, let's revisit that Galatians verse again, where Paul says, "Am I trying to please God or people?" The Greek word, which is what the New Testament was written in, the Greek word for please is the word aresko, and its spelled A-R-E-S-K-O, aresko. And at its core, it means this, "To agree to satisfy another in order to win their approval, affection or attention." You want their approval. You want their affection or you want their attention. So you meet their expectations. You willingly give in, and you satisfy them.
Well, you see, our problem is that we elevate the fear of others over the fear of God. OK, remember Proverbs 29:25, that the fear of man is a snare? Well, that talks about fear, and actually, in the Old Testament, there are two words used for fear. One is charadah, and it's spelled C-H-A-R-A-D-A-H, charadah, and the other is yirah. Yirah, and it's spelled Y-I-R-A-H. Now, charadah means to react with immense anxiety or to tremble with great dread. Basically, you're shaken in your boots, but yirah is defined as something different. It's responding with extreme awe and thoughtful reverence.
So let me give you an example, actually from real life, from something in nature that'll kind of help to explain these two different words. Our youngest son, Spencer, loves to hike and backpack. One summer recently, he spent the entire summer backpacking through 14 different national parks. He encountered a lot of things, a lot of beauty, and a lot of wildlife, who some of them kind of wanted to have him perhaps for their lunch. Thankfully, nothing happened. He only had one close encounter with a mountain lion, but think of you going through a national park and hiking.
You might round a corner and see a mountain lion or a bear, and you're going to tremble with fear, right? Charadah, charadah, or you might round the corner, and you see a beautiful canyon or the ocean, and you are in extreme awe of it, yirah. You're not afraid that the ocean is going to come after you, right? But you know it has great power with its crashing waves, so you treat it with respect. You interact properly with it, knowing it's way more powerful than you.
Well, you've probably already guessed it when it comes to the fear of God and the fear of man, which Hebrew word applies to God? It's yirah, that extreme awe and thoughtful reverence, but the one that applies to man is charadah, where we're trembling. We have anxiety or dreading. You see, the fear of God it's a healthy fear. I used to hear that phrase, "The fear of God," and think, "Well, I'm not afraid of God," but it's more of that reverence, revering Him enough to obey His command, treating Him with the utmost respect.
There's nothing about the fear of God that insinuates being scared of what He might do to you, or shuttering and cowering at the thought of possibly ticking Him off so severely that He's going to trigger something horrible in your life. It's the fear of humans that produces anxiety in our minds, dread in our hearts and maybe even trembling in our bodies. It's that unhealthy apprehension that causes us to be at the mercy of the person of whom we're frightened, but when we have that proper reverence of God, it won't cause us emotional distress or physical distress. It will lead us to a place of quiet confidence when we learn to obey His commands, even at those times where doing so might upset other people, because those two things are going to come in conflict.
We might be afraid of upsetting someone, causing them sadness, or maybe even offending them, and we let that fear rule instead of placing the fear of God foremost in our minds. So what does this look like practically? Well, let's say, you know that God's Word says not to lie, not to even tell a half truth, which as I often tell my children is still a whole lie, but somebody asked you to take on a responsibility, and you fear disappointing them, or maybe you fear they're being some sort of awkwardness in your friendship, if you don't say, "Yes."
So even though the truth, you're supposed to tell the truth, the true answer is, "No," you tell an untruth, and you answer the opposite. You say, "Yes." You have just placed the fear of humans over the fear of God, but all the while God stands ready to help us. He says in His Word in Ephesians 4:15 that, we are to “…speak the truth in love…" Those two things might seem kind of opposite, and what I have noticed is that what happens, depending on our personalities, is we tend to do one half of that verse and not the other. Either we lean toward barking out the truth in an unloving manner, or we go the opposite way, and we think the only loving thing to do is to not tell the truth at all, but those two things can learn to hold hands.
God can help us to tuck a hard truth in an envelope of kindness, to speak the truth in love, to say, "No," and not fear that awkwardness. Just tell the truth when we're asked our opinion. We can learn to place that fear of God, that reverence, that wanting to do what He calls us to do, over the fear of other people, and their opinions, and their expectations. Well, I want you to kind of head back with me out to the chair and my fire pit that afternoon. I really was so distraught. For probably three days, I went out there with my Bible. I cried out to the Lord. I prayed. I searched scripture, and at the end of those three days, I really felt God calling me to what I have labeled a season of “necessary and no.”
And what that means is this. For three months— that entire summer — for the next three months, I was to do only what was necessary for my home, my family, and my job, my ministry, and I was to say, "No," to everything else, no matter how hard it was, no matter how awkward it felt. No watching someone else's children. No solving other people's problems. No, "hey, quick, send me that link you were talking about." No signing up for simple things like making cookies or for the children's program at church. No things that were just so constant. Now, of course I did if someone needed a link, I would do it, but it used to be that I had to do it right then, because I wanted them to like me.
I needed to learn to say, "No," to some things or, "Not right now," to some things. And it might seem extreme, but you have to realize that when this happened, I was thinking back, and it had been a quarter century in my life of over serving, and of saying, "Yes," to things, of always making cookies for the toddlers, and never taking a break, of always saying, "yes, I'll help you with this project," and never saying, "It doesn't really fit in my schedule right now. I really don't have the bandwidth."
And I was actually starting to have some physical manifestations of stress, because probably of the move, and the death of my father, and all of this saying, "Yes," to too many things. My mind was racing, and it just wouldn't shut off at night. I was having trouble sleeping, and my left eye would not stop twitching. It would twitch every day, sometimes for an hour, sometimes just for two minutes, but it would not go away. And I really needed that season of necessary and "No," to completely clear my plate, and then go back to God and place back on my plate only the things He was calling me to do, and not those things I was doing just because I was trying to please somebody, or I didn't want to disappoint them or upset them.
And I knew what was next. I knew I needed to contact some people. I'd love to say everyone took it well. Most people were OK with it. Some of them were a little bummed, because I wasn't helping them with their project or whatever it was. I didn't just completely drop out. I gave them a couple weeks notice, or I helped them find somebody else to do the task. A few people I never heard from again. Honestly, when I said, "Hey, I can't do this thing anymore. I'll help you find a replacement," or, "For the next three months, I can't help you with anything," they just kind of disappeared off the landscape of friendships in my life. And I had to ask myself, "Were they really my true friends or were they just hanging out with me because I was a yes girl, and they knew I would help them with all their stuff?"
And my true friends, they were a blessing. I mean, it just makes me want to cry. Especially my best friend from college that I was speaking on the phone to that day. They were like, "We care more about your mental health, and your capacity and your limitations. We don't want to add to your stress." And especially my best friend, she said, "I'm going to check in on you once a week. I care about your mental health." And she had just been through a season with someone in her life who had to drop out of work because of the stress of saying, "Yes," too much, and so she completely understood. And I learned an important lesson, you guys. It's that I can still say, "Yes," to a friendship while saying, "No," to a request from a friend, because I used to think you couldn't.
I used to think you always had to say, "Yes," to your friends. I mean, they're your friends, right? They can count on you. You don't want there to be awkwardness going forward. But I realized I can still say, "Yes," to the friendship. I can still say, "Hey, I'll brainstorm with you about who you might ask, but I'm not your girl. I'll be praying about this." You can check in with them. You can continue to grow and maintain the friendship, and send them those little gift baskets, send them a little card in the mail, but you don't have to say, "Yes," every single time they ask you to still say, "Yes," to the friendship.
Well, this season, it was really pivotal in my journey to stop living my life based on the opinions and expectations of others, and instead live it based on God's agenda for me. And in my life, I'm kind of weird. I like to have these little one sentence sermons. I kind of preach to myself at times where I feel myself going in a wrong direction, especially with people pleasing. And so I have a couple of these I wanted to just share today, these little one sentence sermons that I preach to myself.
And the first one is this, "Everyone's happiness is not your assignment." It's not. It's God's job to bring joy to people. It's not your assignment to make everybody happy, because then you know what happens? Then we got to keep everybody happy, and it's not sustainable. The second one is this, "The more deliberate you want to be with your time, and the greater your desire to please God with schedule, the more people you must be willing to disappoint." You're going to disappoint people when you truly take the request to God, and determine if they're your call, and if they're not your call, and you have to be willing to disappoint people, but if they're your true friends, they're going to understand.
And then the third one, well, it's kind of the flip side of people pleasing, because often we think of people pleasing as just saying, "Yes," to people when we shouldn't. But another problem we have is that we don't say, "Yes," to God when He's calling us to do something because we fear the opinions of others, or that we'll not be approved of by them. And so we tend to not say, "Yes," to God, because we fear their disapproval. Well, here's the little one sentence sermon to preach to yourself about that. It's this, "You do not need that person's permission to do God's will."
If God is truly calling you to do something and someone else might not approve, oh well. You don't need their permission to do God's will. Remember, you cannot please everyone. You're not pizza. Now, I was going to say coffee or an avocado, but I do have a few friends that don't like coffee, and somebody I know doesn't like avocado, but I think everybody likes some sort of pizza, but you can't please everyone. You're not pizza. We've got to learn to place the proper fear of God above the unhealthy fear of man. It's the only way we will ever bust out of the prison of people pleasing, and learn confidently live our lives.
Kaley Olson: Wow, Karen. That was so practical and so helpful. I loved the three little mini sermons at the end, and so I know I'm going to have to go back and write those down and put them on sticky notes for myself in seasons that I find myself needing to kind of back off a little bit and say, "No," to things. But I have two questions. Karen, I have one for you, and, Meredith, I have one for you, so get ready.
Meredith Brock: Oh, boy.
Kaley Olson: Oh, I know, I know. Here I'm doing it this time. Normally you're the one who comes with the questions. But first, Karen, you're a very well-spoken gal. And so, I can imagine that when you went to your friends, it was probably a lot easier for you to kind of come up with something to say that honored them, and honored the relationship while letting them down gently, but I feel like sometimes I can be one of those people that if I'm approaching a conversation like this, I won't hold firm, and I'll eventually still say, "Yes," when my intention was to let them down gently and say, "No."
I'm sure that other people might find themselves in that situation too. And so, I want to know from you, how did you gently say, "No," when you felt like you needed to go back and say, "No”? What was some of the language that you used in those emails or those conversations that you had with your friend or other commitments?
Karen Ehman: Well, I find that mama was right, that honesty is the best policy, and I just learned to say out loud what I was honestly thinking instead of going one extreme, and just barking out, "No, I can't help you," or the other one, which is what I tend to do, is over explain, give them every excuse why I can't do it. Now it's like my mouth is falling down the stairs, and then I've just given them a bunch of targets to shoot at, because they could probably take down all my excuses for me, and allow me to still say, "Yes." I learned to just really be really honest and say things like, "You know what? I'm so nervous about the answer I'm going to give you because everything within me wants to say, 'Yes,' because I treasure our friendship. I don't want there to be awkwardness going forward, but I've really thought about it, looked at my schedule, prayed about it and as much as I don't want to, I'm going to have to say, "No."
Or to say things like, "I really know that you need some help, and I'm with you on that, and I want this to be successful, but I have to be honest and say, if I say, ‘Yes,’ to this, you're going to be not very happy that I did, because I simply cannot give this project the focus and attention it deserves right now. I just can't." So just be honest and tell your hesitations, but don't over explain and give a dozen excuses.
Kaley Olson: That's really helpful, and I think too, what you said at the end of your teaching about how friendships aren't always based on what you do for another person, sometimes you're a friend in a season who needs to receive. And I feel like being honest and upfront will only strengthen the friendship in the long run, instead of saying, "Yes," and not being honest, which can then breed resentment or frustration with your friend when it was really you who should have said, "No," in the first place. So that was really helpful. OK, Meredith, are you ready? I have a question for you.
Meredith Brock: I don't know.
Kaley Olson: OK. Well, I want to talk about the working world really quickly, because I know we've got people who are listening, who they have their everyday lives, and then there's people who listen, who live their everyday lives, but on top of this, they work, and they're saying, "Oh, this is cool for my friendships, but I have a job, and I have demands, and I have to say, 'Yes,' to my boss." And I know that you as our team leader have been really honest with us in certain seasons where you've had to say, "I can't get to this right now because of all this stuff.” And so I want to know how have you learned to honor your working relationships and the responsibilities that you see are most or the highest priority, while letting some other things go that you're just going to have to let some people down, based on what they need from you?
Meredith Brock: Yeah. Great question, Kaley. Interesting question, and I'm hoping I can encapsulate my general thinking on this. First, I would want to say, I think it's really important to say when you're thinking about not being a people pleaser at work. It's important for us to know jobs look so different. The job of running an organization looks dramatically different than being a teacher.
Kaley Olson: Yep.
Meredith Brock: There's just those two differences. Or let's say being a grocery store clerk. Those jobs look very, very different, but I think the bottom line is in professionalism, you need your boss to define your priorities for you, and then when the speed of the day or the velocity of tasks coming at you seems like it's pushing beyond your personal capacity to fulfill, you need to go back to your boss and say, "OK. Hey, we agreed upon priorities for me, but it appears as though things are shifting, because new things are coming along, or you're asking me to do new things. Can you redefine my priorities for me?"
And I think what I see oftentimes— especially I'm 40 years old now, and so I've been in the workforce for a little bit, and I think what I see oftentimes in these really young, hungry 20-year-olds that come into the workforce is they want to prove themselves. They want to increase their capacity and their leadership, and they are just, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." And you can do that for certain seasons of your life and still stay pretty healthy, and then the season of your life changes, and you get married, and all of a sudden it's much... You can't be working as late as you used to, and you have to reassess those priorities with your boss, and it's really easy to get into a relationship I think oftentimes, especially if you're working in ministry or in a startup where your heart is really attached to your profession, where you believe really strongly in the mission and the vision of what you're doing.
It's really, really easy to get into a people pleasing relationship with your boss, and even with your coworkers, because all of a sudden, you're willing to put yourself and your health, like Karen was saying. She had put herself and her health on the line in order to keep other people happy. That is so easy to happen when you believe in what you're doing professionally, but it will bankrupt you. And the big buzzword, you will burn out. You will. And so keeping a pulse on whether, just like Karen said, how full is your plate, and are you doing this to please God or please others?
Now, I will say, all of this with a caveat. We all have to remember, you do make an exchange with your employer, and that is they give you cash money for you to do what they tell you to do. So you do have to fulfill the responsibilities of your job, and it's just really evaluating in what order. Help me prioritize those, and really look to your boss to help you do that. And then being able to release and being able to say, "You know what? This is beyond my capacity to fulfill." I mean, you've walked with me through this a lot of times, Kaley, as I've gone through different seasons at Proverbs of where I'm like, "You know what? I really want to be able to do that for you guys, but it's not realistic right now, because this other department needs my attention."
And we have to be willing… Karen, I love how you really circle it back to the fear of God. That's what it really comes down to. Am I more afraid? Do I believe that the Lord will lead and carry this ministry better than I will? I sure hope so. I sure hope so. Because otherwise y'all, I will run myself ragged, and to the place where I can't. Just like you were saying, Karen, then I come home from work, and I can't be the mom, and wife and friend that God has called me to, because I was far more afraid of not pleasing people or failing in the public eye than believing that God is capable to work on my behalf when I am resting.
Kaley Olson: Yeah. That's so good.
Meredith Brock: OK. So, Karen, I have a question for you now. Are you ready?
Karen Ehman: OK. I'm ready.
Meredith Brock: OK. So here's a pattern that I feel like I see oftentimes, especially in, I would say, I have a lot of interactions with young 20 year old girls, and I love it. It's my favorite thing, but I think I see this a lot. I see this pretty regularly, and that is when someone has developed a pattern of people pleasing, like maybe they've done this the majority of their life, it works well for them, because it keeps their people happy. They feel good about themselves, but they hit that breaking point, like you did in your backyard that day.
And they say, "OK, can't do this anymore. I need to change. I need to change this pattern." And what I often see where the breakdown happens is they go, their sister calls them and says, "Oh my gosh, Karen. I'm in a bind. I forgot to get a babysitter for tonight, and I am supposed to lead this Bible study. Can I just drop my kids off at your house?" And Karen, who's going through a season of not being a people pleaser says, "You know what, Janet? I can't do it this time. I'm so sorry."
And Janet gets really upset, but says, "OK, I guess I'll figure something out. Thanks a lot, Karen." She hangs up the phone. Karen, immediately, what do you feel in that moment, Karen? What do you feel?
Karen Ehman: Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
Meredith Brock: Oh, yes. Oh my gosh. So much guilt. It's like a big weighted blanket, right? What in the world? Because oftentimes I think that's that little window where you're really being challenged. Are you going to stick with this or not? What do you do with the guilt when you're finally saying, "I'm not going to do this anymore?”
Karen Ehman: Well, I had several years where I felt exactly what you were saying. I felt that guilt. I had a couple friends who were going through awful, unwanted divorces, and often they needed me to watch their kids, or often they just wanted to vent and talk to me, and I always felt this guilt like this is a horrible situation they're going through, of course I need to take time for them. But you know what I realized? Is that by me kind of playing God, and thinking I could be their savior all the time, and I could listen to them all the time, and I could understand them all the time and give them counsel all the time, I was putting myself in the place of God, and I was preventing them from running to God, the place they should have been headed in the first place.
Meredith Brock: Wow.
Karen Ehman: So I've had to tell myself, "I'm not the savior here, and I'm not going to feel guilty," because, hello, as a sweet little old lady in my Sunday school class when I was a young adult used to say, "This don't surprise God none. Let's all pray." She used to say that. I'm like, "If my friend has a true need, they do need their kids watched, this isn't going to surprise God. He knew." But not every need is my call. Every need is not necessarily my call. Somebody is called to do it, but if it's not me, I can't feel guilty about it. God's still God. I'm not.
Kaley Olson: That's good.
Meredith Brock: Wow. Karen, that is powerful, because I do think that that's exactly where people run to is, "I have to do this because this person has no other option." When now you have placed yourself as a barrier between them and God.
Karen Ehman: Mm-hmm.
Meredith Brock: Wow. Powerful, Karen.
Kaley Olson: Yes. So good.
Meredith Brock: This has been so incredibly helpful. Thank you for coming on the show today. We really, really appreciate it. If this teaching has been helpful for you today, we want to point you to Karen's newest book titled When Making Others Happy is Making You Miserable. It's available on our bookstore at P31bookstore.com, and we've linked it for you in the show notes, and, friends, we know you can shop anywhere, but we really appreciate it when you shop with Proverbs 31 online, because your purchases help us continue to do ministry.
Kaley Olson: Absolutely. And also, y'all need to connect with Karen on Instagram at @KarenEhman, or over on her website at Karenehman.com. Just a little plug for Karen's Instagram. You never know what she's going to post, things like recipes just kind of sneak up on the Instagram, and they always make me happy, because that's one of the ways that Karen serves people and loves people. But that's just, I mean, she's just so fun like that, encouragement, recipes, food, Bible stuff. It's all great.
Karen Ehman: Yes.
Kaley Olson: So y'all will follow her, and then her website, hop over to Karenehman.com, where she shares valuable information, like long form content, and things like blog posts and things like that that you want to get connected to.
Meredith Brock: Yes, and lastly, we wanted to mention at the top of the episode that Karen is a nationally pursued speaker, but she's also part of our Proverbs 31 Ministries speaker team, and we've got a group of highly recommended speakers on our website at Proverbs31.org/speakers. So for anyone listening who's involved in women's ministry planning your next gathering, a gala, a fundraiser, whatever, don't forget to check out our event speakers. They are fantastic, and are available for booking today.
Kaley Olson: Yes, absolutely. Well, guys, thank you so much for joining us today at Proverbs 31 Ministries. We believe when you know the truth of God's word and live out that truth, it changes everything.