Here's the thing that happens when you start wanting more. You feel it in your chest before you can even name it, a pull toward something. And right behind it, guilt, like wanting it was already wrong.

You've done the gratitude journals.

You know you're blessed.

You could list a hundred things you're thankful for without breaking a sweat.

But there's still something rising up in you.

And instead of letting it breathe, you shove it back down.

You tell yourself that you should be happy with what you have.

You apologize for the ache before anyone

even asks you to. Maybe you've caught yourself mid-sentence. Maybe you've caught yourself

softening a dream so it sounds more acceptable. Or you've swallowed the thing that you actually want

because you didn't want to seem greedy or ungrateful, or heaven forbid, ambitious. We say that like it's a bad word. Because

apparently that's now a character flaw. Today we're talking about why that guilt shows up and what

your body is actually doing when desire feels dangerous and why that pull toward more might be one of

the most faithful things about you. But before we dive in,

I want to tell you. Okay, let's get started. I want to be up front about something. This isn't my

struggle. I have never really apologized for being ambitious. It's not how I'm wired. When I first

created my company, I was very ambitious. I never even stopped to

think about is this a bad thing for a Christian woman to be. I knew, because we were coming out of

bankruptcy when I was a stay-home mom, that God was calling me to build a business so I could help.

So it was never a struggle for me. I never, you know, wrung my hands and went, oh, what if I'm striving? I just went, well, this is what I need to do. This is, this is my calling in this season. It's not my struggle. When I want something, I just go after it. That's always been true about me. And I never slowed myself down in that way. But I've spent the last 20 years working with women, and I've

watched this pattern play out hundreds of times, so many times that I can almost predict it now.

I could set my watch to it if anybody still wore watches. A woman will be talking to me or sitting

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