The High Cost of “Being Good”: How Christian Women Can Rewrite the Story Holding Them Back
Hello LV&Co readers, December has a way of magnifying everything – our joy, our longing, and our pressure to “be good.” The holidays can pull on our urge to keep the peace, smooth the edges, make every one feel special, and hold it all together. Yet this season also invites us into deeper truth, shining light on the places we’ve felt lost or hidden. That’s why today’s question feels especially meaningful.
Today’s Question: “For so long I’ve defined myself by being a good wife and keeping the peace at home. But now that I’m trying to grow, I feel lost, like I don’t even know who I am anymore. How do I find myself again without feeling like I’m betraying everything I’ve worked for?”
Susan’s Response: Thank you for this question; many women will see themselves in it. We don’t talk often enough about what “good” really means. In whatever role you resonate with- wife, daughter, sister, friend- the word good often becomes a measuring stick we can never live up to.
Many women carry a story that says:
“A good wife keeps the peace.”
“A good Christian doesn’t challenge authority.”
“A good woman sacrifices herself.”
“A good girl goes along to get along.”
These phrases can feel noble because they’re cloaked in language like submission, serving, selflessness, or respect. But in unhealthy systems, they're often twisted. They pressure women to silence themselves, tolerate what wounds them, and measure their worth by how much they give and how little they need.
If you’ve lived under this narrative for years, growth can feel like betrayal or even rebellion. But here’s the deeper truth: you may not be betraying anything God asked of you. You may simply be challenging distorted, worldly definitions of “good” that kept you from living in biblical truth.
These distortions likely started long before your wedding day. If you grew up as the “good girl”, the compliant one, the peacekeeper, the helper, then it makes perfect sense that personal growth now feels unsettling. For many women, being “good” meant:
- Don’t rock the boat.
- Don’t make anyone uncomfortable.
- Don’t confront.
- Don’t say no.
- Don’t need anything.
In many families and Christian communities, compliance is praised. Defiance, even healthy, righteous defiance, is often labeled as wrong.
The truth is, much of what Christian women were taught to call good is cultural, not biblical. Culture is not the Christian standard. Isaiah 5:20 reminds us: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” What the world praises as good is often harmful. Obedience to God may even appear as defiance in a traditional sense, but it’s a holy kind of resistance.
Throughout Scripture, God’s people are called to resist distortions, unjust expectations, and false definitions of good. Living according to God’s design sometimes means challenging cultural or traditional ideas. This is not biblical rebellion; it’s faithfulness to God’s design.
So, when you begin to grow and challenge the old narrative, the one that told you to keep the peace at all costs in order to be “good”, you’re not betraying yourself or your faith. You may actually be living more faithfully than ever.
If your identity was built on compliance, growth can feel like losing yourself. But your identity is not in keeping the peace, being agreeable, or regulating someone else’s emotions. You haven’t lost yourself. Instead, you’ve outgrown a role based identity that was never meant to carry you.
Finding yourself again begins with remembering who God says you are, not who others need you to be. In Christ, you are beloved, chosen, empowered, and called to truth and courage. Your growth is not a betrayal of your past, it is alignment with your Creator and your future.
When you’ve been conditioned to meet everyone else’s needs, your own voice becomes faint.
Finding yourself again and rewriting your identity around being before doing looks like:
- Noticing what you feel instead of overriding it
- Naming what you value instead of hiding it
- Letting curiosity return where fear once lived
- Exploring desires, interests, longings, strengths
- Allowing your preferences, boundaries, and convictions to matter again
Ask reflective questions like:
- What makes me come alive?
- What drains my soul?
- Who am I in Christ when no one is requiring anything from me?
- What have I always wanted but talked myself out of?
- Who am I becoming as I step into truth and courage?
Compliance can keep dysfunction intact and relationships superficial. Saying no is not mean. Setting boundaries is not unloving. Speaking truth is not disrespectful. And choosing health is not selfish. When you begin to honor your voice, your worth, and the Holy Spirit’s work in you, it may feel like betrayal, but it’s actually freedom. All loving relationships need freedom in order to thrive.
You can find yourself again by challenging the old story and choosing a new one that aligns with truth. If this is resonating with you, join LV&Co on December 4th for a special workshop entitled, Change Your Story, Change Your Life: Moving from Breakdown to Breakthrough.
Get more information and register for this free workshop at https://leslievernick.com/joinworkshop.
Be Well!
Beloved reader, How have you experienced the tension between “being good” and being true. What helped you navigate that tension?
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I’d like to add………most of us really need to drop the “find myself again” narrative. Many of us never knew who that was because as small children we were taught our feelings and wants and needs did not matter. Which is why we end up in marriages that tell us the same thing. You really don’t want to find yourself again because that just means getting back to “who you once were pre marriage” but likely that person wasn’t your authentic self either. Reframe the perspective to “finding who God intends for me to be.” And if we are on that path, it’s likely not going to look anything like we used to be, but so much greater. I know this for fact in my own life. I definitely don’t want to go back to who I once was. Not at any point in my life. Except maybe a newborn. Let God make you a new creation. Someone you have never seen in yourself before. All things new.! That’s what Gods in the business of doing.
So true! Thanks for all you do.
Right now I’m taking on the church leadership & they says Hebrews 13:7 I must obey them.
That be suffocating & take away my relationship with God.
He’s walked me though so much & to follow God over men is my choice!
Thanks again so timely for e to read!
Agree, Beverly! Growing up with abuse I learned how to hide and protect myself, not know or discover myself. That, followed by 40 years in an abusive marriage, led to a self image that was very warped.
Thank God He revealed Himself to me at an early age. But it took me a long time after leaving my marriage to understand who I am “in Christ” and leave behind who I was “in the world”.
Leslie and Susan and others at LV&Co greatly helped me discover the “me in Christ”. Everything I thought I knew about myself has been turned upside down- in a good way! Freedom, joy and peace have gradually replaced captivity, depression and anxiety. LV & Co taught me how to stop negative self talk and so much more…thank you God and Susan!
I resonate with this question; thank you for addressing it. I also echo Beverly’s comment. I felt very lost in terms of my own thoughts and feelings. It took me a long time to learn who I really was and to even have the courage to try. It started with learning that it was ok to be angry (yet not sin) and to insist (gently yet firmly) on some personal boundaries, to make space for learning and healing.
I lost none of the good I’d worked for, because my unhealthy way of dealing with my unhealthy compliance had already done that! I had already betrayed my good goals and betrayed God in the process. But He has a way of redeeming things, and He forgives and restores, and frees us from toxic rule-following.
I learned to untwist so many twisted teachings about what Scripture says (reading it for myself, in whole passages and with study tools really helped). I saw all the places I’d allowed other people to take the place of God in my life. I stepped out into the freedom of His grace and out of the prison of people-pleasing, into a clarity and peace I never thought possible!
Wow Susan!…. “Culture is not the Christian standard”. Powerful truth. Unpopular truth. Maybe even distained truth. Nonetheless, still truth. Thank you for narrating succinctly what many women may be contemplating. For the women out here taking the plunge into your hard reality, keep going. A few years ago I was at the beginning of this journey to break free, and while the journey is painfully difficult, it is so worth the peace, joy, and freedom! God bless every woman here and the LV team!
Thank you for such clarity in a time of such confusion! The mention of cost takes me to the years of childhood when the covert message from my mother was “keep a man at all cost”! Bless her heart she never got the counseling that we now have access to… her marriage to the man that she let adopt my brother & me, was so abusive to all of us. Yes, we learn bad things early in life that we need not return to. God is blessing so many of us through the messages & sharing coming from LV & Co! Appreciate & thankful for all of you!
For me, it was easier learning the difference between “nice” and “good”. As Believers I think we are called to be good, but we often, especially as women, interpret that as being ‘nice’, which is usually what opens us up to being used, taken advantage of and pleasing everyone but ourselves. This is not who God made us and called us to be.
It’s also the difference between peace keepers and peacemakers . Peace keepers are ‘nice’ people because they sadly lose their identity to keep everyone else happy. Peacemakers are good and Biblical because they are willing to face conflict even if it’s uncomfortable to bring about truth and reconciliation if possible.
Excellent, Susan.
I used to think it was important to talk about the freeing truths I’ve learned and recently realized no one in my circles is interested nor asking for my input!
Kind of an epiphany. Reminds me of JADE: Don’t spend energy to justify, argue, defend, explain with people who aren’t listening and don’t care.