As I continue to learn to trust the Lord despite what other people may think of me, I find that each day I am learning to rest in Jesus and not in man just a little bit more. By little, I would say that each day, I step up like a tenth of a percent. The growth is just so minuscule. But it's growth.
The fear of man is a slow drift from holy dependence to human validation. It will have you performing acts of devotion that look spiritual but are rooted in insecurity. It will have you over-explaining or over-proving, hoping to stay in people's good graces -- when you have ALREADY BEEN COVERED by God's good grace.
At its core, fear of man is rebellion wearing religious clothing. Because anytime we give someone else the authority to define our worth, we've built an idol.
Gulp.
This Bible verse, really, really, really spoke to me. A bit part of anxiety is a feeling of being "unsafe" in your body. But this Bible verse shows that trust in the Lord brings you the safety your body so greatly desires.
I stumbled upon a Facebook post yesterday from Riley Gaines sharing how she does not live to please people.
Do I?
Do you know ... or do I know ... that I have the RIGHT to negotiate for my own needs, desires, and preferences in every relationship. Every single time?
Really?! Even with family? Even with close friends? I'm allowed to say: I'm sorry. That isn't working for me?
Seriously?
I am allowed to voice my opinion even if others disagree.
Seriously?
I still can't believe that is true.
Their discomfort with my opinion is not a reason that I should abandon my opinion.
Oh
my
goodness.
Woah.
I have the right to determine who has the privilege (and yes, I wrote privilege) of being in my life. Not everyone deserves access to me and my tender heart.
Woah.
Seriously.
It'll take me a long time to continue to digest all of these things.
When I began this journey of breaking free of people-pleasing, I truly felt God wanting me to be willing to say hard truths to people. To not edit my words to make man happy and instead, live for God.
I flashed back to a memory. I was a teenager and had made a state basketball team. I was playing with 11 other girls I didn’t know at all. One of them was a Christian. She could tell that she was the least talented member of the team and told me that she thought she was there to share Christ — more than play basketball.
She then started witnessing left and right. And I got super uncomfortable. As she would share about Jesus,
I found myself editing her words, trying to make the recipient less uncomfortable. My Christian teammate finally pulled me aside and asked that I stop “helping” her.
I haven’t thought about that story in decades. But I have realized, it’s how I lived my life. I shared about Jesus, but safely. Not too much pressure. Don’t point out their sins.
This week one of my good friends asked if I would be willing to share with her about behaviors in her life that might be contrary to how she wants to be living for Christ. I sat there in shock.
Here it is. Rubber meets the road. Will I speak truth?
I’ll be honest, I’m still scared. Someone may choose to abandon me or get mad at me. And my story says that is a fate worth than death.
But … Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
I spent the majority of the first decades of my life believing that suffering meant I was sinning. That I was doing something wrong. I wasn't praying right. I wasn't trusting right. I wasn't following the formula.
The truth is: THERE IS NO FORMULA except that we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind.
That's it.
But suffering?
We should expect it.
I've been thoroughly enjoying studying with an incredible group of women online. This is my third year with BSF (Bible Study Fellowship). This year, we are studying "Exile and Return" and jumping around to many different periods of exile throughout the Old Testament.
This week it was Nehemiah.
I had no idea how much I could get from a book of the Bible I'd really never given a second thought too.
A quick summary: Nehemiah, the cup-bearer to the King, approaches his throne asking if he can go and help the Israelites rebuild the wall. Despite opposition, Nehemiah fasts, prays, and ultimately puts aside his fear and trusts the Lord.
Oh to put aside my fear!
We all have fear in our life. What is your's? I have a few different general themes, but it has been in the last few months that I have fleshed out the biggest lie I have spent decades believing:
I must be strong. I must PREVENT bad things from happening. Because if a bad thing happens, I will be on my own to figure out what to do.
Lies.
All lies.
But a lie that I absolutely have built my life around.
Don't let anyone, ever, not like you. Never be unwanted! Be kind. Never be completely honest. Tell people what they want to hear because heaven-forbid someone doesn't like you. How could you possibly handle that, Wendi? Someone not liking you is ... DEATH! So prevent it. Avoid it. Run from it.
More lies!!
What if instead I believed: I can handle it?
I did a double-session of EMDR this last week. The day after, I had that moment of clarity I have longed for as my brain attempts to make new meanings and create new pathways. My counselor Kim has been telling me this for two years, but suddenly, I sort of believed it:
I CAN DO HARD THINGS!
God's purposes are greater than the work he gives us to do! He may give us a task solely to face the obstacles that come along with it. His true purpose is to transform us -- but that can be costly. What area of costly faith are you facing right now? What related fears might you need to bring before God? Are you willing to ask him to align your heart?
Carrying our cross puts to death our personal desires, wishes, conveniences, and wants in favor of God's will. I want people to like me. I never want to hurt or upset anyone. But in the end, am I more worried about what someone else thinks of me? Or am I more worried about what God thinks of me.
Yes, Jesus. It is time. I am forty-eight years old. It is time for me to FINALLY say, "Jesus, YOU are the most important thing in my life. ONLY YOU."
Oh, he's been asking me to do this my whole life, and I would think, "I mostly got it." I cannot tell you how many times I would quietly feel God telling me not to worry what someone thought. Or I would have a friend say, "Wendi, what they think shouldn't bother you this much?" And I would nod and sort of agree, but then I would go into "fix-it-mode." Fix-it, Wendi! No way you can sit in this. You can't handle that. FIX!
But I didn't. Not truly. Not ever. In the end, my fear of man was ALWAYS stronger than my devotion to the Lord.
What about you? It may not be people-pleasing. What is the thing in your life that sits in front of Jesus? I ask you. I beg of you. See my story. Don't require the Lord to bring you to a place of ultimate low before you willingly say, "I put you FIRST!"
God will actually move the heart of others to complete his purpose for us. Woah. This means that he may actually harden someone's heart to be upset at me in order to complete his purpose. This means that he may have someone fire you to make sure your job isn't your security. He may cause the loss in your life to bring about the ultimate surrender.
I never used to believe this. I believed that good things were from God and bad things were from Satan. However, the Bible doesn't say this at all. While we know Satan is real, and he absolutely brings adversity against us, we also know that God will discipline us.
Hebrews 12:10–11: “God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
James 1:2–4: “Consider it pure joy… whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance."
Romans 5:3–4: “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Deuteronomy 8:2: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness… to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart.”
Peter 1:6-7: “Though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith… may result in praise, glory and honor.”
Honestly, just writing those scriptures out makes me have a bit of a stomachache. I don't want this to be true. And I want so badly to go back in time and learn this before I had to face the last two years of my life. Before God had to wake me up to the lie I had built my entire life around.
Wendi believed she could power her way through anything. She could perseverate long enough to solve any situation. She could help people eliminate pain. She could fix hard situations. She didn't want to sit in pain with people. She wanted to make their pain GO AWAY because she had no idea what to do with pain. It didn't fit into her formula. Pain was BAD.
Oh, but what if PAIN was actually good? What if it grew you?
God doesn't act on our time. Serving and following Jesus is costly because of our desires which will ultimately conflict with His will. Obstacles are opportunities for transformation! Instead of falling into despair, can you fall into prayer instead?!
HE ALLOWS DIFFICULTIES IN OUR LIFE!
Oh, how I wish this wasn't true because then I could just rebuke Satan and pray away the difficulty. Instead, I now see that sometimes, the difficulty is from the Lord. He is saying, "I need you to see me. I need you to put me first. I need you to change the direction of your life because I need you."
I have no doubt that the Lord is calling me to a new place. A different place. A place where He is my #1. I wish so badly that I could have discovered this two decades ago. Why do I have to be nearing 50? Why couldn't I have seen this at 30?
Honestly, I don't know. Maybe I simply was not ready. Maybe I pushed Him away.
But He has my attention now because I am simply unable to function without leaning on Him. This depression/anxiety/collapse is too big for me. I have not been able to just power through. (Trust me! I have tried!)
My counselor keeps saying to me: You have to stop trying to make meaning out of every dip and low spot. You just have to ride the waves.
But I didn't know how to do that because for me, everything was a problem to be solved. If I can think enough, I can solve the problem. I can figure it out. I, Wendi, can get out of this situation.
Just like Nehemiah went with fear before the King ... What area of costly faith are you facing right now? What related fears might you need to bring before God? What do you need to surrender to Him?
For Wendi there are many areas, but the biggest one is my fear of man.
Lord Jesus, I surrender. I absolutely give up. I have tried it my way. I have tried to live for you while continuing to put what other people think and feel first. I can talk my way out of it. I can get them to like me. I can convince them that I am a good person. I can apologize profusely. I can beg. I can grovel. Anything to not sit in discomfort.
Or I can say: not my will Lord Jesus, but your will be done.
If that means someone decides to shut me out of their life forever? So be it. Because in the end, JESUS is my audience of 1. Outside of my Heavenly Father and my husband and children, anyone else must take a back seat to HIM! And, even of course, those humans are behind God in priority in my life. They must be!
God's activity in our life inspires believers to follow Him despite the cost. When opposition to God's will arises, it gives us opportunity to trust in the Lord.
Dear Jesus, please help me to fully trust you!
May I be like the sheep in our pastures -- trusting the Lord to give them their next food. Not worried about anything except the thing right in front of them. Dear Jesus, allow me to be like a sheep. Allow me to reside and trust you FULLY.
The two videos below will be discussed further in my post so read-on to see what the heck they have to do with people-pleasing!
I can't share all the stories on this journey. I don't want to hurt people or share other's people "stuff."
But here is a story I can share.
I manage my friends, Shane and Linda's AirB&B. They live in Germany. And I try to handle everything here for them. In exchange, I can use their place a few weeks a year for free. It's super helpful since we don't have a very big house and really don't have a good place to put guests.
We currently have 73 (seventy-three!) 5-star reviews! We haven't had a single review under 5-stars in the three years they have been hosting.
Pretty good track record I would say.
Today we had a guest check-out, and when she left her message to us, she seemed fairly disgruntled. Her complaints seemed overboard and a bit picky. She also said she didn't want to tell me during her week-long stay because she didn't want to be bothered by me coming in to fix things. So she doesn't say anything is wrong while she is here. And then when she checks out, she tells me all the things she didn't like.
(Mind you, we had another guest who checked out right before her who didn't mention any of the things that she is mentioning.)
I can instantly feel, inside my body, dysregulation. Now this is a word I didn't even really understand prior to February of 2024 when my body shut down on me and I didn't know why and an amazing counselor helped me uncover the chronic anxiety I was living with. Two decades of migraines were gone in a matter of weeks as I stopped trying to "hold it together" and instead started "letting it all fall apart."
This means, that prior to February of 2024, when events like this occurred, I rarely even felt dysregulation.
How is that possible? How did I not feel something that is now devouring my body?
Three reasons:
1. I numbed the sensations with anti-depressants because I could not function without them.(And please note, this is not a slam on anyone who is using medicine. I used it for a very long time and do not think I could have functioned without it at the time.)
2. When dysregulation would start to come in, I had massive strategies of coping in place to get through the sensations quickly. These included: frantically apologize, profusely groveling, do everything I could to fix the situation, etc. I also would stay very busy. Be the nicest person I could be. Don't stop and sit and think. Keep moving. Keep doing.
3.I had no idea how to get rid of the emotions so I shoved them all down and stored them in my body!
All right so now I have removed those things from my life. I am not using medications. And I am not allowing myself to behave the way I have in the past. And, I am not storing sensations in my body. I am allowing the sensations to GET OUT.
(This has been a two-year process of learning. It sounds really simple. But it is super hard to learn and actually implement. It's been harder than anything I have ever done in my life.)
Now, pay attention here. I knew that Shane and Linda would not judge me for this lady's disgruntled review. They have repeatedly made that clear. They are expecting, at some point, to get a review that isn't stellar. (We can't see this lady's review yet, but I am guessing it won't be 5-stars.) I also knew that we have had 73 good reviews! There is no way to maintain perfection forever. I know that as well.
So what are these feelings in my body? Adrenaline running through my arms and legs and neck and face. I'm getting hot. My heart is beating faster. My body is saying very clearly, "WE ARE NOT SAFE! PLEASE SAVE OUR LIFE!"
I am the impala in the opening video. I am being chased. I am being killed. I am being eaten.
Only, I am safe. Even if Shane and Linda were mad, that would not kill me. A terrible review would not kill me. And yet my body is reacting as if there is a bear about to eat my child.
Why am I responding this way?
Because at some point in my past, I created this strategy to keep the dysregulation at bay, and this was the way I learned to live.
And now? Now? And what must I do in response NOW that I now better?
Here's where this healing journey gets SO SO HARD.
I MUST DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Oh I sent a very short and sweet response to the guest. And I let Shane and Linda know where things stood because they own the home and deserve that. But I cannot grovel. I cannot apologize for something I did not do wrong. I must simply allow the discomfort to be there, and I must sit in the discomfort.
Arggggghhhhhh!!!!
This concept was completely foreign to me. Most likely, sometime in my very young childhood years, I begin to put into place the practice that kept me alive for four decades. I read the room. I watched people's faces very carefully. I needed everyone to be happy and everyone to get along and no one to be mad at me.
Why?
Well, because I did not know what to do with my own emotion. I had no idea what to do if I felt scared or lonely or sad or sick and so I needed to not feel any of those things. And if I could avoid feeling these emotions, then I could be okay.
The impala and the polar bear in the opening videos knew better than me. Once that crap (adrenaline) gets into your body, get it out! Shake it out! Don't let it stay there. You can't just get up and pretend it didn't happen. YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE TIME TO RECOVER!
This evening, my youngest child got very dysregulated when we got home from helping load up trucks for the ballet company. She was exhausted, and she couldn't figure out how to get all of her things in the house in one trip. (I suggested two trips, but at this point, she was already quite upset and nothing was going to be welcome as a suggestion.)
I encouraged her to go up to her room and calm down a little bit, and while she was in her room, I heard her scream at the top of her lungs.
And you know what I did?
I went into her room calmly and peacefully and told her I was PROUD OF HER. "That's great that you figured out a way to get the icky stuff that you feel inside to come out on the outside without hurting someone else or yourself," I told her.
"Well," she said, "I think I should try to find another way because now I have a sore throat."
We laughed together. But this is something that I didn't understand before this journey occurred. These emotions we feel, from the time we are young, are SUPER important. It is our body's way (God's way!) of helping us clear out the sad and uncomfortable and distressing emotions that are stuck inside of us.
This means that your child NEEDS TO CRY WHEN THEY ARE SAD.
This means that you as the adults NEEDS TO CRY WHEN YOU ARE SAD.
You need to yell when you are angry (not at someone else, but safely and in private.) Or if you don't feel like yelling, you need to figure out another way to get that anger out. If you don't dear parent, it will come out at your child.
Side note: A child should NEVER be yelled at by their parent. EVER! I didn't yell at my kids a lot (but I still definitely did) until about a year before my breakdown. Suddenly I was yelling all the time. At them. At John. At the dogs. The anger inside of me was ridiculous! Where was all this anger coming from?
It was coming from FORTY-SIX YEARS of being shoved down inside of myself instead of coming out!
GET IT OUT!
Be an impala.
Be a polar bear.
Learn to FEEL your emotions. Sadness? Grief? Anger? Frustration? You are allowed to feel it.
Here is the truth: If you are dealing with anxiety right now, it is because you have emotion shoved down inside of you. You have not listened to your body. You have repressed your emotion. And it has to find a way out somewhere. Somehow.
If you are battling anxiety, you only have three choices:
1. Take medication to cover it up.
2. Numb it/ignore with social media, food, busyness, etc.
3. Limp your way through it -- battling it on a daily or weekly basis.
4. Go back and FEEL THE EMOTIONS that lead to the anxiety in the first place.
In my opinion, #4 is the only way to do this properly. And it will be the hardest thing you ever have to do.
Because basically what I am doing is going back and feeling the grief and the fear and the sadness and the anger that I never let myself feel before. I'm feeling it now. It's in your body right now folks.
I'm two years into feeling it. And it's getting better. I'm crying less. I'm grieving less. I'm getting angry (in my close by myself) less. The emotions have been coming out.
Be an impala.
Be a polar bear.
AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE teach your children how to do these things! I had no idea, and I'm teaching them now. I thought if they cried or were emotional or angry or frustrated they needed to "stop it!"
No, they need to EXPRESS IT!!!!!! (Properly. Not rudely. Not at other people. But their emotions ARE WELCOME ALL THE TIME!)
Okay, that's all I got right now. This post is not my best writing. It's a little all over the place. But it's a lot of things I can't wait to help teach other people. I can't wait to let me good friend sit across from me and scream their lungs out about something from their past that was really hard for them. I can't wait to let them cry in my arms. I can't wait to hear it all.
God designed us as emotional beings. He designed us for community with others. And he designed us to share these feelings with others.
Please check out the Samson Society!A good friend of ours from Florida began this organization and holy cow the things they are sharing!
Most people think a “people pleaser” is just someone who’s overly nice or eager to help. But the truth is often deeper and more complicated.
People pleasers aren’t primarily trying to make others happy. Most of the time, they’re trying to avoid their own feelings of shame—the uncomfortable, gut-level fear that comes when they disappoint someone or fall short of expectations. The real goal isn’t approval or connection; it’s control over how others see them, because if they can predict or shape others’ reactions, they feel safer.
This pattern usually starts in childhood, when showing our true feelings might have been unsafe or when love and acceptance felt conditional. Over time, pleasing others becomes a coping mechanism, a way to protect ourselves from rejection, criticism, or shame.
The problem is, people-pleasing keeps us stuck. We sacrifice our needs, our desires, and even our identity just to avoid discomfort. The more we try to control how others see us, the more trapped we feel and the shame we’re avoiding keeps quietly running the show.
Healing starts with noticing when you’re people-pleasing, asking “Why am I doing this?” and learning to sit with the discomfort of your own feelings. Setting boundaries, saying no, and being authentic are scary at first, but every small step weakens shame’s hold and strengthens your sense of self.
Your worth isn’t dependent on how others see you. It’s already inside you. People-pleasing might have kept you safe in the past, but it doesn’t have to define your future.
Oh boy, has this "dip" been a learning experience. I hate to think that more are coming in my future, but I am beginning to understand that I spent decades not really feeling. Now I am feeling and that means PAIN. And that pain means GROWTH.
I'm growing.
My anxiety tells me numerous things:
You aren't good enough.
You need to hustle to prove yourself.
You need to fear man.
Someone not liking you will KILL you.
If there isn't complete harmony, you can't be at peace.
Pleasing man is WAY more important than God.
Don't speak truth. Someone might not like it!
Don't risk someone upset at you.
But my anxiety was trained to do this. And it was trained WRONG. Here's what I am learning to tell it instead:
I am safe.
People won't harm me.
God is the most important.
I can do hard things.
God's truth is the most important thing.
I won't die.
I am worthy.
I am worthy of more than people's crumbs.
I am a really cool person!
Lot's of learning to reprogram my brain to believe these things. My wiring tells me otherwise. EMDR and working through the new things I am learning are telling me otherwise!
"For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of
God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please
men, I would not be a servant of Christ." Galatians 1:10
How can I be more bold to confess the truth of God to others despite of what they may think or say?
Man's approval is fickle. There will always be someone you are not pleasing. It is clearly impossible to please everyone all the time. It's also exhausting!
Please God is loving him with all your might, soul, and strength. What about whole-hearted love of others that isn't concerned with their approval?
His yoke is easy!
God of truth and light. You are good and you are worthy of all my praise. I confess that I sometimes put other people before you. I aim to be likable more than I aim to be godly. Help me to bold in sharing your gospel. Do not let me fear the disapproval or even HATRED of other people.
(I mean, it doesn't suck, because it's good I'm growing. But it does suck because that growth hurts A LOT.)
This one is people-pleasing.
And it isn't just people-pleasing, but the idea that somehow, I am capable of controlling people.
If I hustle hard enough, they'll like me.
If I repair hard enough, they'll forgive me.
If I keep my mouth shut and never speak truth, then I can't say anything wrong.
If I don't tell them what I really think, we will be okay.
I've lived my life this way. With an intimate few I've dove in. I've given them access to my truth thoughts and spoke without edits.
But if you aren't in that intimate circle?
If you are one step removed?
Then I've lived in PANIC.
And honestly, I've done a pretty good job keeping everyone liking me.
There are a few people I've lost. A few relationships I couldn't salvage. But our military/moving lifestyle allowed me to remove myself from it. And I medicated the feelings away with an anti-depressant.
And that worked.
Until it didn't.
I canNOT keep everyone happy.
Someone will, no matter what I do, get mad at me.
The control I thought I had is fake. It doesn't exist.
I must, instead, find my worth in Jesus alone. He must be enough. Sure, I can also entrust my heart to some very close humans that I don't think will hurt me. But even those humans are ... human. And pain could ensue.
That reality has smacked me upside the face. God is FORCING me to look this in the face and finally, after 48-years, put it behind me.
He's asking me: "Wendi, will you continue to fear man to such a degree that you don't speak words of truth? Or will you speak the words and trust the outcome to me? Trust that I am God."
He's saying: "Wendi, you are a human. You will make mistakes. It is inevitable. Someone will not like you. Are you okay letting that someone's opinion just float away and instead live for me?"
The answer is: I am not.
I currently am willing ... but my body can't follow suit.
And so, I'm tearing it apart. Layer by layer.
In 2024 I spent six months battling my past and my hurts and I survived. I, naively, thought that all of that was behind me. I did it! I'm victorious! I'll never feel that way again.
Ummm ....
Here I am.
I am not as low. But I am low. It was something Kim told me would happen. It's how healing worked. I thought the rings of healing were what I was traveling through in the eight months of depression I faced in 2024. But, alas, that was ONE RING of the journey. I'm now on ring two.
Egads ...
I want Wendi back. I miss the Wendi of the end of 2024 and first half of 2025 that was healing but getting it and sort of frolicking in her freedom.
I continue to work HARD on my mental health. Sometimes the journey feels impossible. Will I ever, successfully, get through this. My Aunt told me she'd rather have a root canal without novocaine and then be felt-up by Captain Hook. This made me laugh, but it really is accurate. Trying to work my way through depression and anxiety is HARD.
So this handout that my friend Stebbs gave me today really resonated with me. In 2024, I was just trying to find my way out of depression and anxiety. But now, I'm not just doing that. I'm actually trying to fix some things that are broken.
PEOPLE PLEASING is the thing that God is working on me with right now. Who do I live for? Am I afraid to speak truth to people? Do I compromise to keep the peace?
The answer to all of these things is "YES!" This is how I lived. I lived in desperation to never have someone be upset at me or not like at me. When you really discuss that, you realize how impossible that attempt actually is. It's impossible. Not everyone will like me. And people will get upset with me. Especially if I am living like I am not which is speaking truth instead of pushing things under the rug.
So here I am: trying to live in that. Trying to allow myself to release things that God has asked me to release. His yoke is EASY! Really? Then why do I feel things are so heavy? Because I don't allow myself to not carry all that extra!
Emotional weight of things I can't control? YES, I HAVE BEEN CARRYING THAT!
The tendency to shrink to make others more comfortable? OH YES.
The need to over-explain boundaries? OHHHHH BOY.
The fear of being misunderstood. YEP YEP YEP.
Wendi is working to not live that way anymore. And you want to know the main reason? Because my CHILDREN deserve to not live with me teaching these things to them. I want them to have the freedom that I am having to work for. I am working HARD to allow them to not be slaves to whether or not people are happy with you.
