Emulating Wise, Professional Women of Integrity

Ann Voskamp wrote the foreword to Desperate. 

I’m telling you not because I think it’s completely wonderful (it is!), but because she wrote it while sitting in the ER. After I received her foreword, I called Sally and said, “I don’t think I could have done what she did, writing this beautiful, thoughtful forward while sitting in the ER with a nasty bronchial infection. Heck, I can’t write if I have a cold!”

Sally replied,

“Ann is a professional.”

And I lost my words.

I always have a million “good” reasons not to follow-through with something I said I would do. I’ve gotten too busy, or I’m sick, or I just don’t want to do it anymore.  The word “professionalism” has never entered my mind. Wow.

Ann is an expert at her work. She not only has a gift, but she chooses to keep at it. Sally is this way as well, and so I have before me two wise women who refine their gifts day in and day out, and who keep their word. I want to join their ranks. I want to live out of integrity, because really, that’s what a professional is, someone who has integrity. They are an expert because they choose what to do and what they will be able to do, and then they do it. And they do it well, because they know their strengths and their limitations.

What I also know about those two women is that they choose to be “professional” in their homes first. They have spent hours and hours investing in their families, and I would say they are experts with their family puzzle (as Sally calls it). They have not offered crumbs, but feasts of their time and energy. I am grateful for their example.

I don’t want to be Sally or Ann or anyone else, but I do think it is prudent to emulate wise women.

Professional women.

Women of integrity.

What kind of woman do you want to be? 

Find wise women to learn from; watch them, invite them to coffee, get to know them. They are a gift.