Photo by Oladimeji Odunsi on Unsplash
I’ve been privy to quite a few high-visibility women over the years, both professionally and personally. What started as my own chase for success and accomplishment eventually became a fascination with successful women: their lives, their relationships, what success gave them, and what it cost them.
After years of watching, working with, and being close to women with significant influence, I’ve come to believe something: Success isn’t safe.
The Hidden Work of Visibility
There is the work everyone sees: the career, the business, the platform, the leadership, the thing she is known for.
And then there is the other work nobody sees: discerning motives, managing expectations, wondering who genuinely loves her and who loves her access, trying to keep her heart pure through influence and the disappointment of people.
Because success changes relationships. A new friendship can come with a quiet question: Would she want to know me if I couldn’t do anything for her?
So yes, we need discernment and boundaries. Some high-visibility women have experienced levels of betrayal most people will never understand. But there’s another side to this conversation.
Success Gives You Power
There is something we don’t talk about nearly enough, especially among Christian women.
Success gives you power.
We prefer softer words like influence and impact. Power feels a little too bold in Christian women’s spaces. But that’s what it is.
Money, authority, access, expertise, resources, and a platform all carry power. The power to open a door or close one. To bring someone into the room or leave them outside of it.
Power isn’t inherently bad. But the more power you have, the easier it becomes to create a life where almost everyone needs something from you. And the easier it becomes to avoid people who don’t always agree with you.
Success can give you enough power to stop doing some of the very things that helped develop you in the first place. You stop listening. You stop submitting. That’s when success can become dangerous.
When Your Success Stops Being Safe
Can you value someone who doesn’t have the money, influence, or access you need? Can you recognize another woman’s brilliance without experiencing it as a threat to your own? Can someone tell you a hard truth and remain close to you?
If we’re not careful, we can become so skilled at discerning everyone else’s motives that we stop examining our own. We’ll call suspicion discernment. We’ll call isolation boundaries. We’ll call correction dishonor. We’ll call disagreement jealousy.
Without realizing it, our power can become the place where our pain shows up.
It makes me think of Miriam from the Bible. She wasn’t an insignificant woman. She was a leader and a woman God had used. Yet her criticism of Moses, her brother, put her in opposition to the very leadership and assignment God had established.
You can be gifted and still get out of order.
You can carry influence and still behave counter to the very message you’re called to speak.
Your giftedness cannot outpace your heart.
Success doesn’t exempt us from heart work; it demands it.
The Woman Carrying It
I’ve spent enough time around highly successful women that success itself doesn’t particularly fascinate me anymore. But one woman remains in a league of her own.
She’s pioneered an entire space, built successful businesses, written books read around the world and carries a level of influence most people will never experience. But those aren’t the things I remember most.
I remember that she invited me into a room I would have NEVER experienced on my own. There was nothing in it for her. She simply opened the door.
I remember that she knew I didn’t like chocolate chip cookies. The next time there were cookies, she made sure there was something different for me. Small thing. Except it isn’t. When thousands of people want something from you, noticing one person matters.
I watched her remain tethered to God’s Word as her foundation and God’s people as her counsel. Her power remained submitted.
And I watched what drove her. She wasn’t chasing money and then asking God to bless it. She built what the Lord compelled her to create. And the money followed.
Purpose came before profit. God was the compass. Money wasn’t.
And despite an extraordinary life, she still delighted in ordinary things: board games, a good Amazon deal and the latest good news from another woman.
I had spent years fascinated by successful women, but proximity taught me to pay attention to something else: not just what a woman has built, but who she became while building it.
After Success
We spend a lot of time teaching women how to become successful: build the business, grow the platform, make the money, get into the room. But I’m increasingly interested in what happens to the woman once she gets there.
Character still matters. Our submission to God still matters.
So build the thing. Make your money, sis. Walk into the rooms God opens. Carry the influence.
But don’t become so focused on what God is building through you that you stop paying attention to what He’s building in you.
Because success isn’t safe. It will expose you. It will test your relationships. It will reveal how you carry power.
And eventually, it will ask a question your accomplishments, accolades and money can’t answer:
Who are you after success?