Hi Gin,

I've been thinking about a difficult distinction lately:

What is the difference between faithfulness and striving?

From the outside, they can look remarkably similar.

Both can involve working hard.

Both can require sacrifice.

Both can ask us to persevere when something is difficult.

But I don't think they're the same.

Striving often whispers, Everything depends on me.

Faithfulness asks something different: What has actually been entrusted to me? And how am I being asked to steward it?

That question changes both outward leadership and self-leadership for me.

Faithful stewardship isn't automatically doing more. Sometimes it means courageously moving forward. Sometimes it means waiting. Sometimes it means setting a boundary.

And sometimes it means relinquishing control over an outcome we desperately want to manage.

That requires something beyond competence. It requires discernment.

Where in your life are you trying to discern the difference between faithful effort and striving?

Around the Table

My faith has been the central tenet of my life for a long time, but I've historically been more careful about how explicitly I bring it into my professional work.

Creating this community is causing me to revisit that.

The women I'm hearing from aren't asking me to separate their faith from the rest of their lives. Quite the opposite. They're asking how faith informs ambition, family, work, pressure, decision-making and the use of their gifts.

I'm asking myself how to create a space where faith isn't something we tack onto a leadership conversation. It's part of how we have the conversation in the first place.

What will each monthly topic be? Who are the speakers who will share the greatest wisdom? What is the flow that will create our greatest collective evolution?

I'm still working that out—and I'm finding that the process is stretching me too.

Until next week,

Gin