Date: August 26, 2026 Podcast Show Notes: Debbie Dufek interviewed by Nancy Haack, Part Two Story Highlights: The conversation Debbie Dufek and her friend Nancy Haack began last week deepens in this second half, moving from the daily rhythm of trusting God into the tender, lifelong work of surrendering the things we love most. On The Women Behind the Words, Debbie is usually the one asking the questions, and it is a gift to hear her answer them, tracing what a life of following God's lead has actually cost, taught, and given her over the years. Debbie opens by challenging a fear many of us carry, that handing our dreams to God means losing them. If a godly hope first came from Him, she says, then giving it back is not surrender to loss but an open door for Him to do exceedingly, abundantly above all we could ask or think. She describes a practice she returns to nearly every day, lifting up open, empty hands full of the very things that could crush her, her children who are not yet walking with the Lord, her husband's brain injury, the hopes she has not yet seen answered, and praying simply, "Lord, take this. I don't want what You don't want for me." That trust opens into one of the episode's richest threads, the difference between controlling the people we love and stewarding them. Debbie speaks honestly as a self described fiery mother who once repeated her convictions to her children three times in a single hour, until a teaching convicted her that God asks us to share our stand once, maybe twice, and then step back. She and Nancy talk about what it means to steward God's love, kindness, and hope in a home instead of leading with worry and fear, and Debbie models a humility many parents wrestle with, returning to her grown children and her little ones alike to ask forgiveness when she has spoken in haste. To ask forgiveness and to offer it freely, they agree, may be one of the most lasting inheritances a mother can leave. With the perspective of a long life of faith, the two women name what matters less as the years pass and what matters more. For Nancy, what has fallen away is the weight of what people think. For Debbie, what remains is a longing to live for an audience of One. She reflects on keeping short accounts, refusing to let the sun go down on anger, and slowly learning to see herself through God's eyes rather than measuring her worth against the noise of Instagram and Facebook. When the Lord takes the lead, she says, His voice grows louder than the static of the world, and that changes the way we walk. Some of the most moving moments come as Debbie speaks about two of the hardest disciplines of faith, waiting and silence. Leaning on the promise that those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength and rise up on wings like eagles, she shares a picture a pastor once gave her during a season when God felt quiet: in the silence, our roots are going down deep. Nancy points to Joseph, whose long wait held pruning, preparation, and a prospering hand even inside a prison. Debbie recalls her own thirty year wait between God's call to write and the release of her first book, years spent homeschooling five of her seven children and caring for aging parents in her home, and she says now she is grateful she was made to wait, certain she was not ready any sooner. She also shares how ordinary seasons quietly prepared her for what God had ahead. She remembers kneeling at a window at Shiloh Christian Retreat Center four years before her family moved there, sensing God whisper that she was home, and the deep character work He did in her heart in the waiting. Most unforgettable is her account of a difficult man at the retreat center she simply could not bring herself to love, until a Keith Green song broke something open and filled her with a compassion that was not her own, for a man God went on to heal, deliver, and restore to his wife. Only God, she says, does that kind of work. The episode draws to a close on the passion that drives everything Debbie does, helping women believe their own stories matter. Tracing the fracture in her own foundation back to the death of her father when she was fifteen, and the hope she found watching Jesus transform her brother's life, she insists that no one is too broken and no one too ordinary for God to use their story. She encourages a daily practice of gratitude, telling the Lord over and over how thankful she is simply to belong to Him. And to everyone who feels overlooked, tired, or afraid, she offers a promise she has staked her life on: you are not neglected, you are not marginal in God's eyes, you are dearly loved, and He sees you exactly where you are. Her closing invitation is quiet and freeing, to stop laboring for God and begin living with Him, working side by side with the One who has never once looked away. About Our Guest: Debbie Dufek is an inspirational storyteller at heart, along with being an author, conference and retreat speaker, certified writing and speaking coach, and the creator and host of The Women Behind the Words podcast. Everything she does grows from a single conviction, that every person's story matters to God and can carry His hope to someone else. She has spent decades encouraging women to live deliberately for what matters to Jesus, whether from a stage, in a Bible study, or across a kitchen table. Debbie is the author of Holy Interruptions: When God Taps You on the Shoulder, published by Bold Vision Books in 2022, and her newest release, Lord, Take the Lead: Where God Brings Clarity, Peace, and Purpose, published by Shepherd's Pen Press in 2026. She makes her home in upstate New York with her husband Bob, still her sweetheart after fifty years, at the center of a lively, ever growing family of seven children, twenty-two grandchildren, and a rising number of great-grandchildren, some of them as far away as Switzerland. Book Spotlight: Lord, Take the Lead: Where God Brings Clarity, Peace, and Purpose So much of the conversation in this episode, the open hands, the waiting, the letting go of control, is the beating heart of Debbie's newest book. Lord, Take the Lead is her invitation to trade striving for surrender, to stop working anxiously for God and learn instead to walk with Him through every ordinary and extraordinary season. Drawing on the My Business Meeting with God practice that first reshaped her own days, Debbie weaves together honest stories, Scripture, and gentle, livable wisdom for the woman who feels she is carrying too much alone. Here you will find encouragement for holding your dreams loosely, stewarding the people you love without controlling them, and trusting God's timing even when He seems silent. It is not a call to do more. It is a hope filled path toward peace, clarity, and the quiet freedom of following where God leads. Lord, Take the Lead is available now on Amazon. Connect with Debbie: Debbie would love to walk alongside you. You can find her ministry, her writing, and her heart for storytelling at debbiedufek.com, or reach out to her personally at deb@debbiedufek.com. She shares everyday encouragement and glimpses of family life on Instagram at @deb.dufek and on Facebook at Debbie Cone Dufek, and a new episode of The Women Behind the Words arrives every week on Podbean. Closing Thought: If you take one thing from Debbie's story, let it be this: you are not overlooked. In a world that measures worth by noise and applause and the passing opinions of others, she points steadily to the only voice that lasts, the God who calls us His own, sees us in our waiting, and keeps working long after the platform grows quiet. Whatever season you are in, He is not finished with you. He is still shaping, still leading, and still inviting you to lay down the striving and simply walk the rest of the way with Him.
