EP 126: Mission Driven Stories: Catherine Marshall

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This week we get to hear about the spiritual strength and resilience of Catherine Marshall. As a young girl, Catherine had three dreams:

1. Become an author
2. Attend Agnes Scott College
3. Marry a wonderful man and have a family

Through her diligence in the 7 Laws of Life Mission, she was able to accomplish all three in amazing ways! As graduate of Agnes Scott College, married to the most famous pastor in America and eventually a New York Times bestselling author, Catherine set her course and never relented.

 But it was her relationship with God that made it all possible. And her incredible willingness to be honest with herself and course correct when she knew she wasn’t living as she should, was the real magic of her life.

 In this podcast, you’ll hear beautiful stories of personal triumph that have inspired Audrey and many others to put God first, love themselves, and strive to fulfill God’s missions for them. It will motivate you to step into your callings and fulfill them with integrity!

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Transcript AI Generated:

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, founder of The Mission-Driven Mom and author of The Mission-Driven Life. On this podcast, we talk about all thing’s life mission. We interview great men and women who are living mission-driven lives or have important concepts and principles to share with us.

We talk about what mission-driven living looks like and how moms can be more mission-centered. We focus on natural law and true principles—how we can build principle-centered homes and lives, how we can take care of ourselves, discover who we are, and lead ourselves and others. All those great concepts and more you will find on this podcast.

I'm super excited today to be sharing with you a mission-driven story about Catherine Marshall. This is where we highlight someone in history who really well exemplifies the seven laws of life mission as they lived them. They’ve left a very positive imprint on the world through aligning themselves with these seven laws of life mission and their accompanying principles.

So I'm really excited to share some of Catherine Marshall’s greatest insights—some of her greatest battles and victories—as a woman of faith and a truly mission-driven mom.

Before we do that, if you're new to this podcast, continue listening to these new episodes, but you might want to consider going back to the beginning and listening to some of those initial podcasts where I introduce myself and my history, explain how we got to be doing what we’re doing, and walk you through those seven laws in more detail.

Those podcasts are a great companion to The Mission-Driven Life book, and you’ll hear lots of other mission-driven stories besides Catherine Marshall’s. You’ll get a lot of really nourishing content that I hope will inspire and uplift you and help you on your life’s path.

Oh, one last thing—if you have not gone and gotten your free chapters of The Mission-Driven Life, head over to themissiondrivenmom.com right now and make sure to grab those audio chapters of the book. You can listen to them, get an overview, and gain an understanding of what we’re doing here. And then, if you want to grab a hard copy of the book, it’s available there as well.

I also want to mention that I’m continuing to work on my new book, How Truth Makes Us Free, and hope to do that launch in the spring of 2026. I’m working on chapter seven of about ten or eleven chapters, and then I’ll send it over to the editor. We’ll start looking at book covers and all that good stuff.

So I’m getting excited—it’s getting real! You can look forward to that book coming out. Hopefully, it’ll be something to help you as well.

So let’s dive into Catherine Marshall. She is quite an amazing woman. She was born in the early 1900s—1914—in Greenville, Tennessee. She moved several different places during her life, and she had a Presbyterian minister for a father.

She never had much money; they struggled pretty much all her life. But she has some beautiful tributes to her mother especially, who did some pretty amazing things. She says that her mother, Leonora, was born in 1891 and raised in North Carolina, and when she was 18, she volunteered to be a teacher for Dr. Edward O. Garren’s mission, which was located in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.

That story, which I’ll mention in a little bit, was one Catherine heard about all through her childhood. She was really fascinated by this story, and eventually, one of her great dreams—she had three great dreams in her life—was to become a successful author. Well, she did do that, and Christy, I think, is the pinnacle of all her writing. It’s my very favorite book—one of my favorite books in the world—but definitely my favorite book by Catherine Marshall. It is the story of her mother and the work that she did among the Appalachian people in the Great Smoky Mountains.

She met her husband there, actually, when she was doing this service work. Her mother was very mission-driven—her parents very mission-driven—and so that was modeled for her. When Catherine was a young girl, about nine or ten years old, she gave her life to Jesus, and after that, she tried to be a good Christian girl, following the example of her mother.

She said she never thought of them as poor because her mother’s philosophy was to find good in every circumstance and to always emulate a very consistent, positive attitude. In the Academy, we call this optimistic realism, and her mother really portrayed that. She said her mother’s real secret was an utter, confident inner attitude. Always before her was the picture of a healthy, fulfilled family.

Catherine said of her mother: “No matter how little you have, you can always give some of it away. And when you do that, you can’t feel sorry for yourself, and you can scarcely consider yourself poor.”

That was one of many lessons I learned in studying the life of Catherine Marshall. It really made even more sense to me about the principle of the tithe and philanthropy. To be generous not only helps others—I always knew it helped the person we give to—but it also helps us in ways I had never thought about. It helps us feel more affluent, to feel like we have enough for ourselves and to share. It helps us stay out of self-pity and have an attitude of gratitude because we do have enough and can share. It’s a constant reminder of those who have less than us.

This is a really beautiful principle that her mother taught her. She also volunteered in the community. They moved to this place called Radical Hill, and she wanted to change the name of the vicinity from Radical Hill to Potomac Heights. She and her volunteers refurbished an old abandoned hotel and made it a meeting place for all kinds of activities, including a Bible study and childcare classes given by herself.

This was what she was giving to the community around her. Like I talk about in the book—and we talk about in the Academy a lot—this mindset begins when we first learn to love ourselves better and to love God better. Her mother Leonora, renamed Christy in the novel, really did this. She understood what her gifts were. She volunteered for service work at a young age. She learned a lot about herself during that mission work she did as a young woman, and eventually, she learned to love humanity.

She put her life on a foundation of true principles by loving truth—that’s Law Four—and then she learned to love humanity and became a servant leader. When she was 19 and volunteered to go up into the mountains to teach the backwoods people, she learned how to give herself to God.

If you read the book Christy (which I highly recommend—and we do in the Academy), you see her personal growth. You see how she gives herself to God, learns to understand what faith is, and learns to take care of herself properly, etc.

By the time she’s a mother of growing children, she not only has a home centered on principles and faith; she also knows how to give in meaningful ways to the community. She sees the problems around her and, like I say in the book, she offers principled solutions to real-world problems.

These were real-world problems—probably you and I would both rather live in a place called Potomac Heights than Radical Hill! She built this community center, and it became a hub. Eventually, the welfare board that had been helping her run this work had to tell her there weren’t enough funds to even pay her. She didn’t mind—she continued doing it for free. And through Leonora’s inspiration, the work continued and the community was renewed.

So beautiful.

By the time Catherine Marshall was 12, 13, 14, she had a pretty clear vision of her future—of the kind of woman she wanted to become and what she wanted her life to look like.

Her first and most cherished goal, like I said before, was to become an author. She wasn’t sure what she was going to write, but she knew she loved to write, and that felt like the right calling or vocation for her. She also really wanted to attend Agnes Scott College.

I relate to her for a lot of reasons, but also because I’m right in the throes of having children who are applying to college. Two of my youngest knew the colleges they wanted to attend, and it was just in their hearts so strongly. Neither of them has been accepted to those schools yet, but I know it’s possible for them if they still cherish that dream—just like Catherine did.

I’m going to tell you a story in a minute about how that happened for her. She genuinely wanted to attend Agnes Scott College. For whatever reason, that was just on her heart and really important to her. She also wanted to marry a wonderful man and have a family.

She had cherished these dreams, gone through high school, and done the work to get herself accepted to Agnes Scott College. But it was expensive—more expensive than her family could afford. As college drew close, she became more and more discouraged that she wouldn’t have the money to pay for it.

Of course, this was a time in history when there weren’t government grants being handed out. If you wanted a college education, you had to come up with the money. And I do think that helped build character for many people who were required to do that.

But she was hundreds of dollars short. One night, her mother came to her room and found her weeping because she was so discouraged that this dream was never going to come true—that she would never be able to attend this college.

Her mother said to her: “Catherine, I know it’s right for you to go to college. Every problem has a solution. Let’s ask God to tell us how to bring this dream to reality.”

What took place next was truly life-changing for Catherine.

Right then and there, her mother encouraged them both to kneel and pray. I don’t know if they said vocal prayers together first, but as the clock ticked, they remained on their knees, eventually saying individual quiet prayers. One of the ways Catherine described it was that her mother was admitting her to the “inner sanctum of her prayer closet.”

So they’re there praying, and Catherine’s really trying to have a spiritual experience and connect with God.

This is from her journal:

“As I prayed, as time went on, as we continued to pray for I don’t know how long, finally the truth struck me. For most of my life, I had been selfish. I had been working toward selfish purposes. I had given so little of myself to God. I had not really taken much part in Mother’s work to transform Radical Hill to Potomac Heights. With a sinking heart, I remembered all the times I had seen members of the church coming up the front walk, and I would flee up the back stairs to my room where I could be alone to read and not have to give myself to others in the sharing of their problems. Scene after scene flashed across my mind’s eye—the times I had resented my brother and sister, the many occasions when my parents had gone without something they needed so we children could have new clothing, piano lessons, books, or sports equipment. I felt more unworthy than ever, and my going to college would call for yet more sacrifices from my parents. I stole a look at my mother. She was praying intensely, but soundlessly, with her lips moving. Then, closing my eyes, I silently prayed the most honest prayer of my life to that point. “Lord, I have been selfish. I have taken everything from You, from Your Church, and from my parents—and given little of myself in return. Forgive me for this, Lord. Perhaps I don’t deserve to go to a college like Agnes Scott.”  A deep sob in my throat made me pause. I knew what I had to do.”

She goes on:

“And Lord, I turn this dream over to You. I give it up. It’s in Your hands. You decide.”

And something really beautiful happened after that, she said.

“I was learning the price of a relationship with God—and it’s dropping all of our masks and pretense. We must come to Him with stark honesty, as we are—or not at all. My honesty brought me relief. It washed away the guilt. It strengthened my faith.”

And I have to say, from a personal standpoint, I have had this experience many times—even recently—when I’ve wanted certain problems or personal issues I was experiencing to go away. When I wanted to feel differently about myself or other people, I’ve had to go through my own self-evaluation.

I’ve had to look honestly at what’s really driving me and to truly repent—to tell God I’m sorry—because so much of it is wrapped up in my ego and how I want to present myself to the world. My self-image, what people say and think about me—I want to be able to control that. And really, that’s not handing it over to Him.

Remembering and recognizing that nobody else’s perceptions matter besides the Lord’s—and that I’ve got to put my ego aside if I really want to be close to Him, if I really want the peace I’m seeking, if I truly want to engage in my relationships in healthier, better ways—it can’t be about any of that.

So I really, really related here. And there are a couple of other stories I’m going to tell you today where I deeply related to what Catherine was going through. I could see in my own life how necessary it was for me to again hand it over—to live that principle of willingness that I talk about in my book and in the Academy.

We have to hand it over to God and stop trying to control everything else. We can only control ourselves—and that’s it. When we really accept that truth and get serious about finding the tools, principles, and skills to manage and lead ourselves better, we find that everything goes better in our lives.

Living these principles is so beautiful—and of course, she had a beautiful result from this story.

Not long after this, their petition was answered. Leonora received a letter from the federal government offering her a salary to write the history of the county. The money was more than enough to pay Catherine’s tuition.

Catherine stood in awe of the God of her mother—the God who forgave her selfish attitude and graciously supplied what she needed to attend college.

So this was really her first major spiritual experience—where she saw the kinds of things God could do for her personally. It awakened her to how important her relationship with God was, how she could nurture it, and what it was going to require of her.

Throughout her life, she was always trying to dig deeper into this relationship—and it’s amazing. I’m not going to tell you all the stories, but I’m going to recommend a couple of books you can read if you want to know more about her.

What we find with Catherine Marshall—as with so many other mission-driven individuals—is that she’s backed up against a wall and realizes that she has more personal power than she thinks she does. And much of that power lies in giving herself up to God—giving herself up to principles and truths she’s been ignoring or denying.

I’ll tell you one of those stories in just a minute. But first, to fill in the blanks of her story: she went off to college, and not far from there was a man named Peter Marshall, who was the pastor of a church. He was from Scotland—I talked about this a little bit in a previous podcast—and he was incredible.

If you haven’t watched A Man Called Peter or read the book, it’s very worth your time. The movie is especially good—it covers this entire period of Catherine’s life. I’m going to touch briefly on what happens during her marriage to Peter Marshall, but you can have a beautiful experience watching that film and learning more about their story.

You’ll learn about his life, how he got to that point, and you’ll see their courtship and marriage. I’m going to spend more time on what happened before and after that time period so you can go watch the movie for their shared experiences.

Basically, he was the pastor, and she felt drawn to him. He was about ten or twelve years older than her. By the time she was a sophomore or junior, she was attending his church pretty regularly. She was noticing him; he was noticing her—but he was incredibly busy as a pastor, traveling and speaking, and having a lot of success.

He had been an immigrant from Scotland, like I said, and was called to the ministry. He’d even had his life miraculously saved—really incredible experiences. He kind of dated her a little bit, but then she wouldn’t hear from him for long periods, so she thought he wasn’t interested. She’d try to get over him and be mad at him, but eventually they connected, and after she graduated from college, they were married.

They had a very united, beautiful relationship. He was very good to her, and she was very good to him. He took her feelings and thoughts into account all the time. Even though she was younger, he respected her wishes and involved her in decisions. They felt very unified.

They were only able to have one child together—a son, named for his father. There was a really incredible experience that Catherine had after Peter Jr. was two or three years old. She became very ill with tuberculosis and languished for two or three years.

She tried everything. She had an incredible spiritual journey—confined to bed most of that time and not getting better. She went through these spiritual steps of drawing closer to God, really getting herself to that point—and this happens so often—where she was willing to let God’s will be done.

There were multiple times in her life when that theme rang so loudly. If you want to understand that principle better, again, read some of these books, listen to the mission-driven stories I share here, learn about it in my book—and if you really want to dive deep, you can join us in the Academy.

But she goes through this whole experience—beautifully portrayed in the movie—where she eventually gives it to God and says, “I will be an invalid all my life if that’s Your will.” And it’s at that point she turns a corner. She begins to heal, and within six months, she’s up and about.

It’s really a beautiful story.

A couple of years after that—maybe just two or three years later—Peter, her husband, began having heart issues. He eventually had a heart attack. Though he recovered and seemed to be doing better, he died quite suddenly in his mid-forties.

When Peter died, she was just 34 years old. She was a young widow, a single mother. She kept a lot of journals, so we have many of her words. She also spoke and wrote quite a bit.

In one of her writings, she talked about the divine comfort she was given after Peter’s death:

“Peter Marshall’s death from a heart attack at 46 was a devastating blow. ‘Why?’ I asked the Lord. ‘Why take a man who loves You so much, who is in the prime of his life, whose impact on people for You is so great?’ In the midst of grief, I had a million whys. One of them was answered. Instead, into my anguished emotions there crept one morning a strange, all-pervading peace. Through and around me flowed love as I had never before experienced it. It was as if Someone who loved me very much were wrapping me round and round with His infinite care and protection. I knelt there, marveling at what was happening. I had done nothing, said nothing to bring it about. I understood no more than before the reason for my young husband’s death. I only knew that, in some transcendent way, it was deeply and eternally all right.”

She had this beautiful experience after he died, which gave her great peace. But then she was left to raise their son on her own.

She began to struggle financially, and she began sharing more about Peter’s life. That eventually led to her writing A Man Called Peter. The book became an instant success—it was a New York Times bestseller—and was quickly made into the 1955 movie I mentioned earlier (which you can still stream online).

That brought in revenue and peace of mind. It was beautiful that she was finally doing the writing she had always wanted to do and finding success at it. That brought both financial stability and personal fulfillment.

She began having daily devotionals with God and spending quiet time with Him. During this period, Peter Jr. was really struggling. As a teenager and young adult, he became quite rebellious.

At 14, he started smoking. He was reading and watching bad things, getting into trouble with the law with his friends, and living a reckless college life. Having grown up with such a spiritually strong father, he didn’t deal well with the loss, and Catherine struggled to connect with him.

These were difficult years. During her daily devotionals, the Lord would counsel her—sometimes giving her very practical advice. She wrote in her journal that God said things like:

“Don’t be afraid for young Peter. No harm will come to him. You still have not completely released Peter to Me. Fear usually comes from guilt.”

And then more practical guidance, like:

“Here’s what to do with TV and movies. Here’s how to teach tidiness, responsibility for his own clothes, money and allowances.”

She felt God helping her. She was striving to live by principles—to establish her home and life on truth. She kept returning to those foundational laws so she could live the leadership laws better.

Here she was—called to be a single mom, called to be an author—trying to love herself, her son, and humanity. She was struggling, but she kept trying to learn how.

One of the things that crept in during these years was loneliness. That loneliness led to self-pity, and that self-pity led to a negative outlook on life. When she looked out at the world, she saw the bad.

For a long time, she didn’t even want to date again because she felt it would be a betrayal to Peter. Eventually, she felt more peace about it and began to date. She fell in love with a man named Howard, but he wasn’t a spiritual person at all—and that became a big barrier in their relationship.

Eventually, she had an experience where she came to see what she was doing wrong.

This was something that she wrote in her journal:

“I had a revelation today that there has to be someone else for me into whose life I can pour everything—since this is what my whole being cries out for. It is sure, as sure as the fulfillment of the tides of the ocean, that love will come again somewhere.

There is a man whose life needs this lavish giving, whose personality and career will bloom and blossom under it.”

So she realized she wanted to give herself to someone else. And one of the lessons she learned during this whole period of life—where she was single for a dozen or more years—was that God helps to sculpt and change us through family life.

It is one of the greatest schools of our time on Earth, and it’s through these family relationships that He helps us become who we can become. But she didn’t have someone to give herself to, and by the time Peter went off to school, she was even more lonely.

She was trying to figure out how to find someone, but when things didn’t work out with Howard, she became even lonelier and more discouraged. Eventually, she had an experience that helped her understand what she had been doing wrong.

She wrote this in her journal:

“For this past year, I have felt defeated and frustrated—and this certainly is not as God wishes it. Here are some of the ways I have allowed my loneliness to defeat me.”

She talked about how the savor had gone out of her life. “This is wrong,” she said. “The zest has gone out of everything.”

She just felt down and depressed, negative about most aspects of her life. She wrote:

“There has been a growing coldness in my heart toward other people. Visiting the sick has been a chore. There hasn’t been any joy in it. There’s been an increasing preoccupation with self.”

She sought more satisfaction in material things than spiritual things. She had been more irritable about the daily grind of life.

She wrote:

“I’ve known that God wanted me to wake up earlier and spend an hour with Him, but I haven’t been consistent in doing it.”

She hadn’t been engaged in self-mastery as she once had been. She had been giving in to little passions that were leading to bigger ones.

So this self-evaluation—like I mentioned earlier—was again really replenishing. And it actually is. I know I bring up Alcoholics Anonymous a lot, but it’s such a beautiful example of the spiritual journey we all have to be on.

For those alcoholics, it’s the daily inventory—staying out of self-pity, forgiving instead of resenting. And it’s recognizing that while self-evaluation might seem painful or difficult, it’s actually freeing.

As moms, we sometimes think that if we’re really honest with ourselves, we’ll feel even more depleted and worse than before. But actually, it’s so liberating—if we do it honestly, not in a self-pitying way like, “Oh, I’m so subhuman, I could never be different; life is awful; I can’t change.”

Rather, in a spirit of curiosity: What have I been doing that’s actually holding me back? What are my perceptions, my attitudes, my habits that are keeping me stuck?

And how can I gain new skills and tools for being different?

This is what Catherine beautifully demonstrates—over and over again—and it’s so renewing, so empowering.

This is why we’ve built the Academy the way we have. Because some of the hardest work we have to do is this work of self-leadership.

We need to engage in self-care—really taking care of ourselves by meeting our real needs, as I talk about in the book and in the Academy. Then we engage in self-leadership—this kind of self-evaluation, this personal inventory we take on an ongoing basis.

And then we move into self-discovery—that beautiful reminder that we are divinely fashioned, uniquely made, bringing unique gifts and talents into the world that we must develop and use.

Cycling through those stages in the Academy is very nourishing.

So I encourage you: follow up this personal inventory and the peace that comes from God by recognizing your gifts—and then go out and develop and use those gifts for good.

That’s how this beautiful rhythm works.

One more story I want to share with you before we finish up.

After all of this happened—and after she was honest about what loneliness was doing to her—she had already recognized her deep desire to pour her life into someone.

There was a man named Len, whose wife was an alcoholic who never recovered. They tried everything, stayed together for a long time, but eventually she had to be institutionalized.

When that happened, he wanted to move forward in his life. While he and his children still maintained some contact with her, he was left to raise three children alone.

He knew of Catherine Marshall because he worked in the publishing industry and she was a well-known author. They had met once and interacted a little.

At one point, after rebelling against God for a time—living carelessly for months or maybe a year, which was very detrimental to his family—Len finally came to himself. He realized, This isn’t who I want to be.

He went to God and said, “Okay, I want to do this, but I need help.” And Catherine Marshall’s name came to his mind in prayer.

He sought opportunities to see her. They didn’t live near each other, but he found excuses to travel where she was and spend time with her. Eventually, it became clear that he was trying to court her.

They did fall in love, but she was hesitant. His children were still at home, she was in her mid-forties, and taking on early motherhood again—with one child under ten and teenagers besides—felt daunting.

She didn’t want to do it. But again, she went back to God. She was willing to accept His will in her life, and it ended up being a huge blessing for her—and for them.

She learned many lessons, and they grew together. His children came to see her as their mother, and they loved her deeply. Beautiful things came from that union.

The last story I want to tell you as we finish up the mission-driven life of Catherine Marshall brings us full circle.

Her son Peter got married, and it turned out that he and his wife shared a genetic combination that gave their children a 50% chance of inheriting a rare, fatal disease.

Their first child was healthy, but their second was born with the disease and died within a few months. When they were expecting their third—a little girl—they knew the risk.

When she was born, she too had the disease.

Peter Jr., and especially Catherine, decided they would intervene—that somehow God would perform a miracle and save this baby’s life. They were determined.

Catherine did what she knew best: she turned to intercessory prayer. She had led many prayer groups before, so she gathered a dozen devoted friends and they prayed around the clock for a week.

They did everything medically possible and spiritually possible.

By this time, Peter Jr. had experienced a personal conversion, had come back to God and to Christianity, and was even serving as a pastor. He and his wife were happily married and devoted to faith.

But despite their prayers and efforts, the baby’s life was not spared. She died within a few months.

This loss sent Catherine into one of the deepest depressions of her life. Once again, something happened she couldn’t control—something she didn’t want—and she believed she had done everything right. She couldn’t understand why God hadn’t intervened.

For months she languished—depressed, sleepless, anxious, and withdrawn. Her husband Len couldn’t reach her.

Finally, after several months, two of her close friends came to see her. They came to lovingly confront her. She had been in seclusion, and they knew it was time.

Now, this isn’t how we often handle things today. In our modern world, we sometimes forget that peace can still come even when we don’t understand.

Catherine didn’t have a genetic disorder causing her depression—this was circumstantial grief, deep and understandable. Her friends had given her time to grieve, but after months of isolation, they felt led to intervene.

They asked her about her anger toward God. She insisted she wasn’t angry—because she knew it would do no good. But they told her that God wanted her to stop wallowing in self-pity, to confess the sin of rebellion, and to repent.

It was a powerful moment.

Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with seeking professional help or medication when needed. But sometimes, as Catherine demonstrated throughout her life, deep peace also requires honest self-examination and alignment with truth.

She explained to her friends that confession and repentance hadn’t helped. She said:

“I’ve already done this again and again. I honestly have. It’s the complete lack of response that confounds me. I’ve never lived in this kind of vacuum before.
I talk, I pray—nothing. For most of my life, I’ve felt God’s presence, heard His voice, received thoughts that I knew came from Him. No more. He’s gone out of my life.”

She told them she had been so caught up in the battle for her granddaughter Amy’s life that she could hardly think straight.

Through this experience, she eventually realized that she had been acting on her will—not necessarily God’s.

She wrote:

“I’ve always tried to be 100% in everything I do, and always before, God honored my efforts. Why not this time?”

And that realization was profound.

It helped her see what she had been missing: she had to accept life as it was, to stop fighting against it.

This is something we talk about often—in the book and in the Academy—that there are things we can control and things we cannot.

When we can’t control something, we have to truly let go.

I realized I had been hanging on to expectations—things I wanted to happen—and that was, in its own way, rebellion.

Catherine wrote something that finally made it clear:

“We must completely and profoundly accept the circumstances which God allows. If He can do anything, He can change circumstances—and if He chooses not to, then it is our job to accept them.”

That doesn’t mean accepting defeat. It means accepting reality so deeply that we are no longer in rebellion—and then we can bloom right where we are.

Her friend Virginia pinpointed it:

“Catherine, what lies at the root of your anguish is your insistence on understanding. You want answers. You want to know why.”

And that’s the key difference.

When her husband Peter died years before, she didn’t know why—but she accepted it and found peace.

She wrote:

“I am beginning to see it all now. The instant we are in a state of rebellion, we have not only lost our contentment and joy—we have also declared personal war on God. If God is truly God, then He is Lord and ruler of circumstances.
So if we are rebellious against the circumstances He has allowed, then we are, in practical fact, rebelling against Him.
No wonder God withdrew His presence from me. My spirit of rebellion shut the door in His face. It was saying, ‘I will do it my own way. I will be the boss of my own life.’”

From that point on, she began rising at six again, spending that hour with God in prayer and scripture each morning. She felt renewal.

Not long after, her health began to decline again. The damage from her earlier tuberculosis worsened, and she eventually passed away.

But the lessons she left us with are powerful.

Accepting the circumstances God allows doesn’t mean we stop growing. It means we stop using them as excuses not to grow.

We stop saying, “I can’t change because of my kids, my husband, my finances, my health, my past…”

We profoundly accept what we cannot control—so that God can show us how to grow within those circumstances.

And when we do that, peace and purpose return.

That’s what Catherine’s life showed me—and why her story has meant so much to me personally.

Her willingness to do this personal inventory all throughout her life—to accept the circumstances God allowed, and then seek truth and apply the principles of human growth and potential—led her to constantly move forward, forgive, develop, and give.

She answered calls to write, to pray, to serve, to lead, to love—and she did it all as a servant leader.

She truly inspires me.

I hope something in her story has lifted you today. I hope it’s reminded you of a principle you can begin to practice—and inspired you to live more intentionally by the seven laws of life mission.

May you find deeper meaning, chase your potential while bringing your family along with you, and have a positive impact in the world through your unique gifts.

You are divinely fashioned. God loves you dearly. He will use you if you are willing—and He will heal you if you will let His will be done in your life.

Thank you for joining me today. I’m so grateful we could spend this time together. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I’ll see you next time.