[00:00:00] Jim Jansen: Hey everybody, welcome to the EquipCast. So, I just sat down with Colleen Carol Campbell. Colleen is an author. Former journalist, former presidential speechwriter, a mom and a wife. We talk about our new book, The Heart of Perfection, how the saints taught me to trade my dream of perfect for God's. We talk about parenthood and how it opens up our challenges with perfection and puts us in a place where we need to run to the Lord for a new image of who we are and who He is.
We talk about the traps of busyness. If you're a parent, if you're a professional, if you're just a person of faith, you need this conversation. Colleen does an amazing job of talking about how the saints helped teach her what it meant to truly live as a daughter of the Lord. You're going to love this conversation.
Take a listen. Hey everybody, welcome to the EquipCast, a weekly podcast for the Archdiocese of Omaha. I'm your host, Jim Jansen. Now let's dive into some encouragement and inspiration to equip you to live your faith and to be fruitful in your mission, let's go Pauline,
Carol Campbell. Welcome to the EquipCast. How are you doing today? 

[00:01:16] Colleen: I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:01:18] Jim Jansen: I'm really excited. We were talking before we turned on, uh, on the mics here. We had met years and years ago, uh, when I was in Lincoln and you were a guest at the, uh, the Newman center in Lincoln's there, their big, uh, fundraising dinner.
Uh, we didn't have a lot, a lot of time. To interact, but I do, I do remember, uh, I remember that. And I was excited when I had the chance that I saw you have a new book out, the heart of perfection, how the saints taught me to trade my dream of perfect for gods. We want to talk about that, but we kind of have this little tradition, uh, on the equip cast.
We want to give people a chance just to share a little bit about their story. A little bit about their faith journey. So just to get us started, Colleen, what's your story? 

[00:02:00] Colleen: Well, I was raised by devout Catholic parents. We moved a lot. So, in Catholic schools and churches all around the country and my faith was always important to me.
But it probably didn't really become an adult, you know, piece for me until the latter years of my college time at Marquette University. Um, again, I, I never stopped going to mass. I was, uh, I always believed, but you know, you get caught up in the whirlwind of college life and parties. School and whatever.
And, uh, it was on the back burner, definitely through a lot of college. And then toward the end of my junior year and into my senior year, I really felt a hunger for God for various reasons that I go into more in my, uh, my second book, My Sisters, the Saints, a spiritual memoir. And, uh, it was through reading the lives of the saints that I really was drawn into a deeper relationship with Christ and convicted of my own need to, to be more intentional about my faith.
Also, through journeying with my father through his 12-year battle with Alzheimer's disease, uh, later my own journey through infertility. So, all of these things, it was. It's very much in company with the saints that I felt that I grew as a Christian and, and kind of came into my own in that sense. And so that, that's kind of the, I guess that's the nutshell.
And I also spent most of my career in the early years as a secular journalist and, and then gradually began writing and speaking more on more explicitly. Catholic and Christian themes, which is what I do now. 

[00:03:28] Jim Jansen: Colleen, I have to ask, this may be kind of an odd question for one Catholic to ask another, but how did you, how did you first get into the lives of the saints?
Because I just, you know, the image of you as a junior or senior in college, drawing closer to the Lord from the lives of the saints, like, I don't think that's the typical pattern. Like, how'd you get, how did you discover the saints? 
[00:03:50] Colleen: Yeah, they're, they're so amazing. That's part of why I wrote My Sisters the Saints, because I think they have so much to speak to.
To us today, including college students, but we tend to see them as Plaster of Paris statues and not real people. And, um, you know, I had the benefit of parents who were very into the saints. My parents were always reading and discussing, uh, they love the Carmelites, especially Therese, Teresa, John of the cross.
And, you know, they'd be up late into the night talking about this theology. And most of it, of course, was over my head, but I did get the sense from them that these were real people whose words of wisdom and life experience to me. Now, I can't say that I was actually thinking that way through high school and early college, but it was there for me.
I actually felt this kind of deep hunger, kind of an emptiness toward the end of my college years, when I was seeing that there just wasn't much in the world that was, you Interesting to me anymore. I'd kind of done the things that were supposed to make you happy and are starting to feel kind of empty.
And my parents were daily communicants. So, I knew the first step was probably to be going to mass more often. And, um, and as I did that, uh, then I came home for a Christmas break. And my father gave me the life of Teresa of Avila by Marcella Claire. You can still find it on Amazon. I wrote about it in my, in my sisters, the saints, uh, my 14-year-old daughter recently read it and loved it.
And it just brought her alive like a real person. And I loved her personality. She was feisty, smart, independent. She was a bit of a partier. She was the party. And she, she really didn't get her act together spiritually until she was about 40. So, I, I could relate to this woman and that kind of set me on the journey.
And from there, you know, then it was Therese and, and different ones who kind of seemed to come into my life just when I needed them and the lessons they had to teach me and that's continued to this day. So that's why my last few books have centered on the saints. And as I raised my kids and we just returned from a pilgrimage to Italy for two weeks, it's very much centered on.
Visiting the places where the saints lived and walked in their tombs and, and helping the kids see that these are real people who struggled the way we struggle and they have something to say to us and their whole desire in heaven is to lead us closer to Christ, which they really have for me. 

[00:05:58] Jim Jansen: Gosh, that's fantastic.
I want to go there, but I feel like I have a little bit more context, maybe than the rest of our listeners do now. You know, you mentioned that you served, you worked as a secular journalist, and so you were a writer before you started to write about the saints and write and speak a little bit more on, on prayer.
But you were, I mean, extraordinarily successful in your professional career. I mean, being able to, you know, of course, journalism, but then being able to work as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. How did you first get involved in politics? I mean, where does that, where did that start? Was that a, like, you know, they, they would, like, Teresa of Avila, and then, like, politics, or did it just come from mom and dad?
Where did that start? 

[00:06:43] Colleen: Well, I, you know, I did grow up reading, like, Newsweek, and, you know, things like that. I just, like, I loved politics from a young age, but I got a degree in English at Marquette University. I actually entered wanting to be an actress. That was my big passion in high school. I was acting in college plays.
I was really serious about it. And then I saw the grunt work you would have to go through in college, and I figured I'd probably wind up waiting tables like so many other aspiring actresses. So, I shifted to focusing on journalism, which was my other interest at Marquette and so kind of, you know, did, did the whole campus edited the magazine and freelance for the newspaper there in Milwaukee, all of that.
So, I got into newspaper journalism, first the Memphis Commercial Appeal, then the St. Louis Post Dispatch, then I did an expose on some kind of really dysfunctional, uh, public school system in St. Louis in the city. And, and anyway, that one thing led to another, I was on the editorial board then at age 24.
So, I was surrounded by all these well-meaning baby boomer, secular humanists who didn't quite understand how my mind worked. And at the same time, I was not. I wasn't particularly political at that point. I was just, I was just trying to integrate my Catholic faith with my convictions about social justice and my desire to do good in the world, and I was just trying to understand how the faith related to all these issues, because I could see it wasn't a clear left or right thing necessarily, but yet I could also see that my colleagues for as good as Hearted as they were, it seemed to me they were pretty far off base when it came to, for instance, the dignity of the unborn human being, that kind of thing.
And so anyway, so I'm just the kind of person, I guess I'm a bit of a contrarian being around people who all think one way makes me tend to want to ask what other ways there are to think. And so, if anything, that probably contributed to my, you know, the chain, my change of thinking and my desire to go deeper into how my faith affects my work.
And from there, I won a journalism fellowship that allowed me to spend a year traveling the country, interviewing young people who were having similar experiences, who were coming back to a more robust practice of their Catholic or, or Protestant, in some cases, faith after having either drifted away or not been raised with it.
So that was my first book, The New Faithful, which I spoke about at the dinner, I think, where I met you. And then from there, uh, Bush’s speechwriter read the book and liked it. And, and anyway, it got passed around the white house and I was invited out there. And so, they asked me to apply for this job, to write his speeches on things like judicial appointments, pro-life, uh, faith based.
And so that was an exciting year, but I was engaged to my husband at the time. So, uh, and he was in medical school in St. Louis. So, uh, after much, you know, kind of consternation trying to figure out how to handle that, I, I left the white house after a year and came back to St. Louis and that's when I began taking more of a turn in my work.
I worked for a think tank in D. C., still had a column in the secular St. Louis newspaper for many years, so still did a lot of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC type spots, but I also began eventually to host my own television and radio shows on EWTN and start speaking and writing more explicitly about the faith, and that led to my next few books.

[00:09:51] Jim Jansen: Okay. So, I want to connect. I mean, it's just, it's, it's hilarious. You're saying, Oh, there's all my books being passed around the white house. Like there's not, you know, not a whole lot of people who can, who can say that you're having all of this professional success. And I remember, I think you said something, you know, even in, in college, you, you had all of the things I'm assuming success was one of those that are supposed to make you happy.
Yet there was still this deeper longing. That's maybe a really good jumping out, uh, jumping off place into your new book, The Heart of Perfection, right? How the Saints Taught Me to Trade My Dream of Perfect for Gods. Talk to us a little bit about, I mean, again, jump off from your own journey if you want, but just how kind of the pace and busyness of our lives, uh, seems like it's one of the main themes, how that seems to affect our spiritual lives.

[00:10:41] Colleen: Yeah, I, I think there's so many, so many directions, I guess I could, could go with that, but I can just say for me, for writing this book, so I wrote this second book of a spiritual memoir, basically tracing my journey, especially through my father's battle with Alzheimer's disease and my own journey through infertility, those two things kind of really reoriented me not only towards focusing on and learning from the saints and going deeper into my Catholic faith, but just seeing how What this world prizes as most important isn't, you know, and especially when you face the death of a parent at a relatively young age, you face the prospect that you may not be a parent yourself, even though that's something you always thought would be a given you, you just start to question, you know, what, what is it that matters and, you know, you can know it intellectually, but there's something about going through suffering or watching another going through suffering that does kind of sharpen your focus.
And so, the perfectionism book came. Out of really becoming a parent myself. So. After praying four or five years for children, then we had four, four kids in four years, basically, and God answered our prayers, and it was wonderful to have them. But I quickly saw that I was importing into parenthood and, and home life, all of these, you know, habits that had made me successful out in the world, but they were, if anything, kind of a liability.
In parenting or at the very least less than helpful, and I started to dig deeper into them and recognize that there were deep spiritual roots to the way that I was looking at the world, and I started to recognize that somewhere down deep, even though you wouldn't have caught me saying this out loud, I really thought I needed to earn God's love.
I needed to measure up. More was expected of me than could be expected of others. And I had to be really hard on myself. And then, of course, when you're hard on yourself, then you tend to be critical of others. And I could just see that there was a disconnect between the image of God as unconditionally loving and then the image of God that was somewhere floating in my psyche saying, you know, get moving, produce something, um, accomplish something, um, you know, shine all the time.
And, uh. Yeah. And that was just, uh, that was kind of a revelation to me. That just wasn't something I had noticed before. So, as I began digging through scripture, praying about this, talking about it with confessors and spiritual directors, and revisiting the lives of the saints, who I thought had encouraged me in this direction, hey, weren't they all about excelling for God?
You know, be, be perfect. I mean, that's their thing, right? Way of perfection. 

[00:13:15] Jim Jansen: Yeah, right. Yeah. 

[00:13:16] Colleen: So, so then I kind of went back through scripture and I started rereading those verses about perfection. Then I went back to some of my favorite saints like to rest and began rereading what they were writing about perfection and holiness.
And I began to see it in a very different life and think, I think I've been getting things. It's really backward in a lot of ways. I mean, I had a good cursory understanding that would work in your 20s, but when you're, you know, in your 30s and beyond and you're parenting and you need to grow deeper, this, this isn't going to cut it.
This idea of I'm just going to do my best and ask God for help and no, no, it's very different what brought them to holiness, and it was actually renouncing their perfectionism that led them to holiness. And so, I began to see that was something I needed to root out and renounce in my own life. And as I.
Began that journey. I thought how many other people are also walking around unaware of this or unaware of how many others have struggled as they might be struggling. So, I wrote that book. 

[00:14:10] Jim Jansen: Yeah, I mean, I think already I'm like, Oh my gosh, she's been reading my journal. You know, I think, like, a lot of people can relate to this.
I want to give you just a chance to talk a little bit more about how the experience of parenthood is. Exposed this because I think I can relate as a as a parent myself having, you know, perfectionist tendencies in myself. What was it about being a parent family life that seemed to bring this to the surface?

[00:14:39] Colleen: Well, I think parenthood has a way of Holding a big mirror up to you, you know, just like marriage. I mean, you, you, you know, I, I was listening to a story of a saint when we were on our pilgrimage and talk, he was talking about how he thought he was a great holy guy until he moved into community and realized he wasn't half as patient as he thought he was.
And that's true of marriage. That's true of family life. So, there's that. For me, the, the real, uh, wakeup call was actually very early in parenthood when I was beating myself up for mistakes. Some of them rather small, some of them more significant, but, but just really kind of tortured by the thought I wasn't doing this thing perfectly because, you know, you want to give your children your very best.
You, even if you love your parents and think they did a good job, you always see things that, Oh, when I'm a parent, I'm going to do it even better, you know? And, and so to see my own weakness was very kind of painful to see, because it was always this fear. I'm going to screw something up and screw up this kid.
And then it's going to be all my fault. And there'll be a therapy for 50 years. Blame it on you, and it was actually a friend of mine. I was in a book club with some women and a friend of mine said, I mean, they were. Newborns at this point, I had twins first, which is tough for a perfectionist. I mean, talk about not being able to do everything you want to do.

[00:15:50] Jim Jansen: That's an intense way to start. Holy cow. 

[00:15:52] Colleen: You know, I, I was upset about their early birth because I thought I had brought it on by taking too long a walk the day before. I had had a really traumatic pregnancy. They almost died. 
And anyway, uh, she said, you know, Colleen, I don't know if there's room for perfectionism in any other part of life, but I can tell you right now, there's no room for it in parenthood.
And. That stuck with me. Then a few more things that happened after that as, you know, as kids start growing and there's ER visits and there's this and there's that, and you know, you're beating yourself up. And I just, I had a moment one day in the midst of a crisis like that. And I write about it in the heart of perfection in more detail.
So, I'll spare you all the ins and outs, but basically just this insight. one day in the midst of a crisis of what is that voice in my head criticizing me, condemning me, beating me up. Is that the voice of God? And is that the voice of truth? And is that voice even on my side? And I had always thought that voice was mine.
I thought that was the voice of truth. And it was the first time. I think the Holy Spirit just gave me a split second of distance from that critical voice to say, Hey, by the way, this isn't God's voice. This isn't the truth. This is, this is something you've taken on or you've absorbed, or maybe it's a remnant of original sin that, that you think that God's expecting this.
And you're always falling short when that's not how he's looking at you. And it doesn't. None of this means that we're not called to strive for holiness, that we're not called every day to root out faults and pray for grace and that's the other piece of the heart of perfection that I really emphasize in the book and that I found emphasized in the lives of the saints is that this is not an either or.
I can be holy and a miserable neurotic mess or I can be mediocre, and I never try too hard in order to keep myself emotionally stable. That's, those are not our two options. There is this. third option, which the saints embrace, which is I still hunger for union with God and holiness, and I'm willing to be changed and purified in any ways that he sees fit.
And I know that at the end of the day, this does not depend on me, that it is all grace. And therefore, my weaknesses, as St. Therese says, are things I can rejoice in, because I said, there I go again, that's just a good reminder I need Jesus. So, that whole thing is a, it's a long winded way of saying that there's so much in their example, and it's so much of a truly Catholic both and, not an either or, and the world gives us an either or, you know, don't try too hard or you're going to make yourself crazy.
And the church says, no, there's, there's a deeper, higher truth that'll make you joyful. 

[00:18:29] Jim Jansen: Right. Yeah. There's, there's, there's somebody besides you working with you and for you as a parent, as a spouse or whatever. I mean, you know, as you were talking, I couldn't help but think about my own journey. I, you know, have six children.
Uh, I have a junior in college down to a five-year-old. So full, full spectrum parenting, uh, all the stuff we're, we're, we're out of diapers for the moment, but like, it's the, yeah, it's the full, full spectrum and. I remember early on having a similar kind of epiphany that that you describe where I recognized some of the parenting philosophies that I was embracing, like the idea that my Children were kind of a blank slate, right?
But that was unhelpful to me because what a blank slate implicitly said was, if anything bad happens, it's really probably because of you right now. Maybe at the time it's like, okay, later on you can blame it. It's like the school, but like you see something unhelpful. You know, not good coming out of your cage like crap.
That's my fault. And, and although that is sometimes true, there's also this original sin thing that's like, you know what, like they came broken and I'm going to do my best to not make it worse and then not exact, you know, not exaggerate and maybe be a vehicle for God's healing, but it's not all my fault.

[00:19:49] Colleen: Right. 

[00:19:50] Jim Jansen: And it was just very, very freeing. 

[00:19:52] Colleen: It is. And it actually frees you to be easier on your kids because if your entire self-image is wrapped up in them being perfect and perfectly holy or perfectly successful, perfect athlete, whatever your thing is, if it's all wrapped up in that, then, then you're going to necessarily In some way, if at least subconsciously put on too much pressure on them, because everything is riding on them, you know, not screwing up, not being unhappy, not whatever, and that's a lot of pressure for a kid, and you know, I don't think any of us would say, oh yeah, I do that, but I think it can be in the air in a home.

[00:20:28] Jim Jansen: Oh, it totally is. I mean, kids are so, I mean, they're so smart and intuitive. We don't give them credit for it. I mean, it's like, you know, if we were honest, I mean, it's like, honey, daddy needs you to score a couple of goals in the game today, because I'm feeling a little insecure about how this, this week, when at work, you know, 

[00:20:46] Colleen: Right, right.
So, when we let ourselves off the hook, I don't think it, it means then I don't care. I don't sacrifice. And there is a philosophy in the world that says that, says that, you know, almost the rejoicing and being a lousy mom school of thought, you know, where all the jokes are, I'm so horrible and I don't care about anything and my kids do blah, blah, blah, whatever.
And I don't even care. Try and I mean, there's, there's that way of approaching it, which I think is unhealthy. And I don't think it's what God's calling us to. I mean, he's entrusting us with immortal souls. So, I think just laughing it off and not trying too hard doesn't really make a lot of sense, but I think letting.
God enter into our weakness and saying, yeah, I'm not really totally up for this job, but thankfully, you know that and you can step in where I'm, where I'm falling short and then letting them know, you know, I'm not perfect for this job and, you know, and we're all broken and weak. And, you know, I've told them since they were little, you do have a perfect mom.
It's, it's the blessed mother. So luckily when you're mad at me or you're sick of me, or I'm, I don't seem to get it someday, you know, cause when they're little. You know, they think you are basically the blessed mother, but someday you're going to be pretty sick of me. And that's fine because you have a mom who loves you perfectly, just the way you need to be loved and sees the whole picture the way I don't.
And you know, have a perfect father in heaven and, and, you know, and you have parents trying really hard here on earth, but we're going to make mistakes. And that's just how it is. And, and like you said, they, they do come with their own, you know, it isn't the blank slate. I mean, you see them when you have multiple kids, it's just like, Wow, that one has this gift, and that one has that gift, and that one struggles with this, and that one struggles I mean, you know, there's no way you could, uh, you could program them for good or ill completely, because God doesn't trust you with these unique souls that are not of your making.

[00:22:30] Jim Jansen: Yeah, I love it. So, let's get a little bit practical here. Like, how do, like, what do we do? And feel free to wrap this in a story, or You know, go bullet points, you know, do this, do this, do this. But just practically, I mean, I think a lot of people are like, yeah, I feel this, you know, and we're, we're talking a lot about parenthood and family, uh, less about work, but everybody feels this, that, you know, I mean, maybe not everybody, there are some people who are like, eh, why even try, but for those of us who are trying and sometimes tip the scales too far in perfectionism, what do you do practically?
To overcome it. 

[00:23:06] Colleen: Yeah. Well, there's obviously there's a lot in the heart of perfection has I think eight or nine chapters because I, I really did find so much richness and there's even more that could be said. And it can kind of depend on the realm of life. I guess maybe one way that I organized the book that might be an easier way to talk about is these saints that I found who struggled with various forms of perfectionism.
And again, you don't have to alphabetize your CDs or color code your sock drawer to be a perfectionist. You don't have to have sparkling clean kitchen floors or, you know, a gold star resume. A lot of times when I tell people what I wrote this book about, Oh yeah, yeah, I got a sister-in-law like that. My mom's like that.
My dad's like, no. That's cool. And it's so funny. They'll read the first five pages of the book and come back to me and say, Oh, actually, this sounds like me, so I'm like that. 

[00:23:52] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Thank you for that. Because it's yeah, this isn't necessarily someone who's like temperamentally uptight or just a little too organized.

[00:23:59] Colleen: No, I mean, not at all. And that's the deceptive thing is I would argue, and I do in the book that all of us have some area of our life where we're trying too hard to control. We're expecting more than is humanly possible. We're beating ourselves or other people up over failures that are really beyond our control.
So, all of us and, and the, you know, the stereotype is, Oh, it's about a professional achievement or it's about grades or it's about a clean house, or it might be about sports. It might be about looks, it might be about. Holiness, you know, and that was the surprise to me that you can actually import this toxic view into your spiritual life and it can really twist your relationship with God because he stops being someone you lean on in hard times and he starts seeming like part of the peanut gallery that's criticizing you, which is a very sneaky way for the devil to distance you from God because who wants to go talk to their biggest critic about their biggest problems, right?
So, then we start leaning more on ourselves and the more we do that, the more disastrous things become. The different saints struggled with this in different ways, and one thing I loved about these saints is each one had a version of this, but they manifested in entirely different ways. So for Jane de Chantal, who was a mother of four, who was widowed pretty young, you know, it manifested in how she parented, how she dealt with her crazy in laws, she had some really nutty ones who were harassing her, and how she overdid on penances, you know, at the direction of a priest who was not helpful until she met Jane.
Francis DeSales, who got that she was scrupulous and needed to back off a little, Alphonse Liguori, a great, great saint, great moral theologian, doctor of the church, but he was raised by very scrupulous parents, a very tough, demanding father. And he struggled with basically a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the religious version.
And he tortured himself over thoughts he was having over words. He didn't say, great. You know, he had that kind of form of it. And had he not overcome that, we wouldn't have these, you know, all of these amazing works that he wrote, actually emphasizing balance of all things in the spiritual life. We have a Saint Benedict who, you know, he's known for his balance in the rule of Benedict.
But actually, in his early years, he was, he was so fiery. They tried to poison him in his first monastery. They were so sick of all his rules. He was very strict and a little probably excessively. So, and it wasn't until he kind of began to make room for human weakness that he became the great. spiritual leader that he did, who basically saved Western civilization.
We have, uh, Francis of Assisi, who was a seemingly carefree playboy, but he was mortified by lepers. 

[00:26:27] Jim Jansen: Yes. 

[00:26:28] Colleen: He loved being, uh, celebrated and loved and popular. And so, for him to give up all of that up was a way of renouncing his own reliance on, on his lovable ness basically, because he became this. You know, this outcast for many years until he found a disorder that only happened later.
First, he had to really experience his old friends laughing at him and mocking him for just becoming a baby, basically a hobo. Ignatius of Loyola, another one, wrote amazing spiritual exercises. I mean, the foundational discernment rules for the church. We all still use them today and, and they are still amazingly relevant to spiritual perfectionists.
I mean, you look at those rules and I think my chapter on amnesias can help break them down a little. The works of Timothy Gallagher are also great in this regard. 

[00:27:12] Jim Jansen: Yes. 

[00:27:13] Colleen: But you apply that to the way you're approaching your work or your family life. You might be shocked at how useful it can be. But again, he was a guy who almost.
He was tempted to kill himself. He was praying in a cave, and he was seeing his past life, and he was seeing his imperfections, and he just wanted to end it all. That's how bad it got for him. And then he later rose to become this leader who was counseling other people in these amazing letters of, you know, be very careful of that spirit of despair and desolation that tells you you're beyond hope and, you know, your failures are too big.
And, you know, And so on and on, and there are more saints and Therese is kind of the capstone for me because her all is grace philosophy to me sums up really what this is about, which is that we have to love with the sacred heart of Jesus. We have to ask him to love through us because in and of ourselves, we do.
Don't have what it takes. I always laugh when I see those flyers. Sometimes I even see them at churches, you know, you are enough, you know, actually, I'm not enough. I mean, I'm just, I'm just flat not, you know? 

[00:28:12] Jim Jansen: Oh yeah. No, it's so good. Yeah. 

[00:28:14] Colleen: I think that's comical because you know, it keeps trying to convince us you're enough girl.
You're the, actually, I'm just not. And I'm okay with that because trying to convince myself I am is exhausting and it's just an exercise in futility. 

[00:28:26] Jim Jansen: So, yeah, I was going to, I was going to say when you were saying that it reminds me it. My, I'll give a shout out to him. My, uh, my former pastor, uh, for the hairy boozy here in Omaha, I think he used to have fun kind of scandalizing people because he'd say, you know, he'd stand from the pulpit and he'd say, he'd say, you know, sometimes you hear the phrase that God only gives you.
So much that you can, you know, that you can handle and he's like, I don't think that's true. He only gives you enough that you can handle with his help. And it just, you know, he'd kind of pause there and get a little twinkle in his eye because he wanted to emphasize like, No, like, it is way more, you are not enough, it is way more than you can handle, but he's giving that to you so that you ask him for help.

[00:29:14] Colleen: Right. Right. And really, if you reflect on your life, when, when have you ever grown or experienced real genuine joy or breakthroughs? Doing what you could completely handle on the basis of your own personality merits, you know, knowledge you already had. I mean, when has that ever been a time of, of growth or true joy?
I mean, it's a nice feeling for a day or two when you get a few things accomplished and you start feeling good about yourself. But 

[00:29:39] Jim Jansen: yeah, but it's not satisfying deeply because it breeds this deeper insecurity. Like I'm going to have to perform. Again, I'm going to have to be perfect again. And it's, I mean, I'm assuming you're, you're familiar with the work of, uh, uh, Dr. Carol Dweck. In her book mindset, but she actually talks about this. 

[00:29:59] Colleen: Oh, I don't I don't know about her. 

[00:30:01] Jim Jansen: Oh, you would love it. I'm a huge fan. She basically like does all this research that points out again. It's called mindset, but that When people are moved into a place where they have to perform to, to remain perfect, it breeds this deep an anxiety and this cycle.
And in fact, if people are, are put into a subtly different place rather than kind of a performance mindset, but into a learning mindset, then there's a freedom and a joy and a desire to take on new challenges. And those individuals, this is the kind of the, her pinnacle finding, those are the individuals that actually achieve their potential.
Wow. Because they're not afraid of failure, because they can gamify the life and learning that really is available to all of us if we just You know, don't get so, so uptight about, uh, having to perform and, uh, it's, it's a fascinating book. You'd love it. I think it dovetails with kind of with what you're, what you're sharing here.

[00:31:04] Colleen: Yes. Very much. So, you know, and I, I think of how we often hear that in the spiritual life, a form of that in the spiritual life. How, you know, You know, God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called, and you really see that, especially in Scripture and in the lives of the saints, how sometimes His greatest leaders, prophets, you know, they're the people who are the least qualified in worldly terms, and that's so that He can show His glory through them, and so nobody mistakes, you know, Mother Teresa used to like to say, you know, why do you think God called you to this?
Well, she'd say, if He could have found someone littler and less, less capable, He would have used them, but He, you know, He found me. So, um, you do see that and I, I, and those studies are interesting. I, I, I don't go real deep into them in the heart of perfection, but I do mention a few, a few things about them.
And it's, it's fascinating to see how even with students in school, the ones who, um, get too hung up on, on their performance can be actually really hampered and afraid to try new things because they're terrified they're not going to live up to the straight A, you know, performance. 

[00:32:04] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Oh, it's totally sabotaging.

[00:32:06] Colleen: Yeah, it is. And it kills creativity. And it takes a lot of joy out of life because it's all about just maintaining your position and trying to keep topping yourself. And then you kind of burn out, you know, and the same can happen in the spiritual life. There can be a sense of burnout. And I wrote about this, just the sense of, I'm tired of always being the one who has to have it together.
There has to be that real sense of humility. And of course, humility comes through humiliation. So it's not an easy path to overcoming. It does seem to be the path the Lord leads us on if we're willing to follow the path of letting go of a lot of what we thought was our identity. And it does come down to identity a lot because it's, you know, we, we started as children trying to figure out who we are and then we kind of build this identity.
And then I feel like we spend the rest of our spiritual lives dismantling it. I think that it's, it’s not as important as we thought. 

[00:32:59] Jim Jansen: Yeah. No, I mean, I, I love that you talked about humility because there really is this, it's again, this kind of, you know, Jesus founds this upside-down kingdom where so much of what we've learned from the world has to be undone.
But you know, I'm like, I'm like flashing back to that Saturday night live skit. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And like the Christian version is like, you know, I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. And if people really knew me, they probably wouldn't like me. But for Jesus’s sake. You know, like I am actually lovable, but, but it's like, yeah, we have to unlearn so, so much.
Colleen, I want to give you a chance to talk like there's some patterns and you've already touched on one of them. One of this is like God equips the called and you know, and he, he calls people who are weak and by the world's by any standard, not just the world's don't seem to be up for the task that he has called them to what, what are some of the, what are some of the other patterns?
That you've seen in the lives of the saints that can be a place of freedom for us if we can recognize them and embrace them in our lives. 

[00:34:00] Colleen: Well, I would say one is a rethinking our image of God. I know for Alphonsus Liguori. That was pivotal again, very scrupulous, raised by scrupulous parents. This guy graduated at 17 with two doctoral degrees, civil law and canon law.
He was so young. He was kind of drowning in his. a graduation gown as he processed up the aisle, uh, went undefeated as a lawyer for a long time. And then he lost his first case and he just, He just completely fell apart, locked himself in a room for three days, refusing to eat, you know, his mom's trying to get him out.
His dad says, let him starve. Cause dad had him sleeping on the wooden floors growing up to toughen him up and would lock three hours at a stretch with his music teacher to make sure he practiced. So, and he comes out and he had sensed this call to the priesthood but wouldn't follow it. Cause dad wouldn't have liked it.

[00:34:47] Jim Jansen: Lawyer in Naples was much more, um, Prestigious at the time and better for dad's ego and self-identity. 

[00:34:54] Colleen: Exactly. And dad was this naval captain who was a pretty big shot, and a harsh guy and son was trying to follow that. And so, so he, he gets the nerve to follow this call, partly because it kind of blew up his law career.
I don't think it had to necessarily, but he took it that hard. And, um. But then he takes his scruples into the seminary with him. So, he's eating his meals on his knees. He's flogging himself. He's, he makes a list of commandments for himself that he must be as an angel because that's the role of a priest.
And literally as an angel, like, I can't, I can't think of wrong thought. I can't. So, he's, he's repenting of bad thoughts. He's, you know, he's making himself sick. He's basically, you know, kind of slowly killing himself with all of these penances. And this Bishop and spiritual director Gets ahold of him and says, you know, I think a lot of this is rooted in your image of God.
You seem to think God is like your father, but he's like your biological father and he's not, you got the wrong image. So, he has him go through scripture, especially the gospels and write out any verses he finds about God's love and his tenderness and his mercy. And as Alphonsus does this, he begins to heal his image of God and start seeing where God is on his side where fear is not of the Lord.
Where he is loved in and through his weakness, not in spite of it. And he still has a lot of work to do. He still has to fight these scruples. He's again, basically suffering from OCD. So, he has to, you know, resist those compulsions and that's hard work for him. But he rises up to become the founder of the redemptorist order.
He's preaching these, you know, soul saving retreats all over the country. Saving, you know, just. Hundreds, thousands of souls. He starts writing at this point. I think I read that he had more works, uh, in print today than Shakespeare or pretty close. I mean, the guy wrote a lot. Wow, you know, but it was the healing of the image of God was the beginning.
And again, I'm not sure if you, you know, put a gun to his head and said, what, what is God like? He would have said, Oh, he's harsh. She's mean. He's to me. We all think we know better than that, but I think our fundamental problem is we think God looks at us the way we look at us. We think God looks at us the way we look at other people and we can say nice things, but you know, we can be critical, we can be harsh, we find fault.
He really is totally different in his approach to us. He's loving like a loving parent, but without the edges that any parent has. And so, I think the healing, the image of God is a big foundational step. And then I think also we have to be prepared to do what I think Francis of Assisi is a great example of, and that is breaking free of our image in the world.
And that is sometimes the harder thing because, you know, whether it's as a parent, as a professional appearance, whatever it is. We, we have to be willing to look different, to act differently, to be odd in the eyes of the world. And that means. It could mean something small. Hey, my kids aren't doing the travel teams, you know, it could be something huge.
I'm going to take a big case and work for the church. It could be something, you know, I'm not getting plastic surgery. Whatever what I know is, you know, whatever it is, whatever the thing is, whatever your hang up. 

[00:37:56] Jim Jansen: Boy, you hit my, you just hit my temptation there. I can't believe. No, sorry. Keep going.

[00:38:02] Colleen: Whatever it is, yeah. You know, it depends what part of life we're in. It depends what we're facing. I know for our family, the sports thing has been hard. Cause I grew up in a home where we did sports, and my kids really haven't done much in the way of organized sports. And I don't say that because there's anything wrong with organized sports, but because for some reason, the communities we've lived in, it seems to be a train that once you get on it, it's just this runaway train and there's no time for anything else.
And we've just had to, Like, Oh, you know, you can surf, you can hike, you know, you can do a wrestling, you know, a little wrestling thing for a few weeks, but we're not going to be that family. That's just crazy all the time for sports. And I, I am not saying, I'm not saying that to judge anyone. Maybe we're crazy about other things, but it's just a small example of how you wind up standing out and you can look a little odd.
We don't have a TV. And I was. I was on TV with my own show and didn't have a TV. So that's awesome. 

[00:38:53] Jim Jansen: I love it. No, that's so good. Okay. Colleen, you're already kind of here, but I want to, I want you to talk a little bit about the connection between busyness and perfection. 

[00:39:04] Colleen: Yeah, that's a huge one. So, I do think the devil loves busyness.
He likes to keep us moving. I think right now, the biggest… The struggle for modern Christians and busyness is our phones and our screens because, I mean, there's the busyness of our lives. Yes, the pace, I mentioned sports, it can be work, of course. There's even the busyness of the volunteering and doing for parish and church.
I mean, I've had so many experiences where someone calls me and says, the Holy Spirit told me you need to do this and this, you know, the Holy Spirit's calling you to, to do this, to run that. And, you know. I, I'm a busy person. I run a lot of things for our homeschool group. I, you know, I was on our parish council, just, you know, a lot of things in addition to work and kids and I homeschool, so I'm not, I'm not saying we shouldn't take on other responsibilities, but I have many times had to learn how to say, I'm, you know, The Holy Spirit didn't tell me that.
So, I'm, I'm, it's nice of him to tell you that, but he's not telling me that. And since I'm, I'm the one concerned, I think I have, so it's, it, sometimes we have to be ready to say no to what's good because there's something better. For our family, daily mass has become really important, especially since COVID.
And it means we miss out on something sometimes. And that's okay, because it's more important. And, you know, so there are, there is a priority setting. The truth is in this life, we can't do it all. We are going to have to make hard choices. Anyone who says that's not the case is lying. They're either lying to themselves or to you, but it's, it's just the truth.
That, you know, and if you're going to go 110 degrees toward your career, you are probably going to miss things important at home and there's just no way around, you know, and, and even with homeschooling for me, it was a really important decision. But, I mean, there's no way I could say, Oh, yeah, my career didn't suffer at all, I'm, I'm just as productive as, I think, oh, come on, you know, teaching four kids all day.
So, there is a cost, but I think the Lord wants us to prioritize. But the other thing I was trying to say earlier is I do think our screens and our phones are also a big piece of the noise. That affects us even in quiet times when we used to pray, we used to read, and now we're on our phone. I think that's a real danger.
I think the devil wants to keep us distracted because you can be distracted all the way to the grave and then it's not till a crisis that you even look up and realize that this life is about something more than what's next on your to do list. So, I think that's a big danger as well. 

[00:41:24] Jim Jansen: How do you handle that?

[00:41:25] Colleen: Yeah, well, I mean, I struggle like everybody else. I got a phone and there are days I check it too often for sure. Yeah. You know, I, I do turn off a lot of notifications. I'm basically not on social media again, no, no put downs to people who are, I know, you know, it can be a space for evangelization and connection and, you know, everybody's different for me.
I, you know, I write a Christmas message once a year on Facebook, so that. Readers of my books can know I'm still alive and they like to see a picture of the kids, but, you know, and who knows, maybe I'll go through a season where I get more into that. I don't think I'll ever get more into it because I find it, I just feel it dissipates my attention and I'm tempted to pay more attention to what's going on online, the people in front of me.
You know, I've just known it can be a temptation. I would say, especially for moms to post so much about their family life, they're not actually living their family life. So, I, you know, I just think it's, it's another one of those areas where it's easy to get into our image and how we're presenting ourselves to the world rather than what we're actually doing, you know, with the people in front of us.
So, I think that can be a danger. Bone use is tough. I probably still look at mine too often. Um, I do try to stay off the news a lot, which I know, again, is weird for a journalist. 

[00:42:34] Jim Jansen: Thank you for sharing that because it's freeing. You know, it's like, I mean, if you can do it, like, I have even less of a reason To, you know, to cling to a news cycle or to social media.
So, thank you. I really appreciate, appreciate the testimony. 

[00:42:52] Colleen: Obviously, I'm not working in daily news anymore. So, I do have that luxury, but I would say I don't think anything important has happened in the last 10 years that I didn't know about pretty much as soon as I needed to. 

[00:43:02] Jim Jansen: Right. 

[00:43:03] Colleen: Without constantly checking them.
It is. I mean, I know from the inside, our whole job as journalist was to keep you reading or watching. So, we're never going to tell you things are pretty much okay today. You could just move on with your life and go focus on your kids or something. 

[00:43:17] Jim Jansen: Everybody turn us off and go for a walk. 

[00:43:19] Colleen: Yeah, the whole idea.
It's a soap opera. You know, politics are a soap opera. I'm yeah. I'm not saying you don't need to pray for these things and care about them. And of course, when there's something happening in your own community or needs around the world, the Pope wants us to pray for. Yes. But do you need to be the guy who knows the far, you know, the minute details of the current court trial or the, you know, the flood in Kenya?
I, I, do you need to know that? Or do you need to, you know, turn it off and go throw the baseball with your kid. You know, I, I think that's a real temptation, but all of these are forms of escape and we're all susceptible to them. I'm not, I'm not preaching from the, you know, I'm, I'm right in there with everyone else.
But I do find that when I catch myself, you know, doing that, I'm really trying to escape something. Usually some. call God is putting on my heart for right now in this moment, someone who needs me, something he wants from me, maybe just quiet time he wants with me. And I'm trying to find something to distract myself from that call.
And, and so I think as long as we can be honest with ourselves, we have a chance of, you know, you know, fighting back against it. But when we tell ourselves, no, I have to be on the news all the time, because it's very important that I know what's going on, you know, really, really, are you that important?
Cause I'm not, right? 

[00:44:30] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you. That's so, that's so freeing. So, okay. So, I have to ask, I mean, this is like, this is like the hard question. Colleen, what's different now in your life now that you're, you're, you've kind of discovered and you're, you're following the wisdom of the saints. 

[00:44:47] Colleen: So certainly, from my college years, a lot changed even in the first few years after college as I began paying attention to the Saints, uh, the choices I made even in those, uh, leaving the White House was a big choice. I mean, walking away from the White House, you know, to get married, I was going to get married eventually, of course, but, but not wanting a long engagement, not wanting to put off having kids.
Wanting to be near my dad as he had his final years with Alzheimer's, all of that, putting that as a priority above something like the white house, putting in more years and getting more, that, that was a big change. And then of course, having children and going through this as a parent, I think. Obviously, leaning into homeschooling was a big part of this.
That wasn't something I thought I would do. You know, I thought that was for crafty women who like staying home and knitting, you know, who were very patient with children and, you know, you know, designing their wedding gown from when they were seven years old. I just wasn't that kind of girl. I was, I was very interested in my career, and I knew I wanted to have kids, but I hadn't, you know, held a baby since I was in seventh grade.
So, I was not, I just didn't think I was the type. And then God really put it on my heart, uh, as I was pregnant with my fourth child and the kids hadn't yet started school and I just didn't feel it was time to send them off. They seem so young yet. 

[00:46:05] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:46:06] Colleen: And I decided, you know, it just became very clear to me through prayer that I was to leave my, my, at the time I was anchoring EWTN's new show and, um, and I knew when he came, I wouldn't want to be anchoring a show and trying to nurse a newborn, but I also was just feeling it's, I don't, I just, I want to do something different than the path the world sets out, because I'm not super happy with what I'm seeing in the world.
And I can't protect my kids from all the evils. I can't control their lives or how they turn out, but I can at least try to model for them that we live differently and, and we're okay with being different because that's part of being a Christian is just being a little different than the world. And so.
Homeschooling is probably the biggest change. And then that, of course, had ripple effects. Obviously, my career changed a lot, you know. You're not on TV every night or as much at all when you're home with kids. And I write books, but I write a lot slower. It takes me a lot longer to work on each book. I used to travel a lot to speak.
Even when they were young, I was still flying around speaking. We, we really felt God calling us to move here to California a few years ago. So, uh, in part, because we felt this was for various reasons, the place we could kind of live the mission, you'd give it a best, but that meant moving to the edge of the earth where, you know, speaking engagements became very difficult.
Then when someone asked me to come speak, it's kind of a massive, you know, time investment. And I have to think about whether it's really worth it. So, a lot of ways my life has slowed way down. And I'm much less in the public eye and, you know, and I've had to adjust my identity that my identity is not how many people are seeing me or reading me or talking about me or, you know, I'm, it's okay to be forgotten for a time or maybe for good.
And, you know, if I'm living what I told my kids was most important, then, then I'm doing what God wants me to do. And he's gonna take care of the rest. And I have to trust in that. And then when hard time comes. Various things happen in my right now my brother is battling cancer and it's very unexpected two months ago.
He's perfectly healthy. Now he's fighting for his life. And you know, it really reminds you that this life is short and it's precious and you really want to spend every moment serving God. 

[00:48:15] Jim Jansen: For what it's worth, you seem, you seem at peace. You seem happy. You know, I'm sure there are days That maybe it's harder, harder be out of the spotlight than others, but it seems like you're embracing this, like you're owning it and just kind of joyfully right where the Lord wants you right now.

[00:48:32] Colleen: No. Well, thank you. Thank you. It's always hard to know if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing on any given day, but I think he does give us peace when we're at least trying to, uh, Follow his will. He doesn't make it easy. And that's true for anyone. 

[00:48:44] Jim Jansen: Yeah. You seem happy. 

[00:48:46] Colleen: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, you know, we get joy with the Lord, right?
Not always like every, every day is a sunshine, but 

[00:48:54] Jim Jansen: yeah, I know, but it's totally, that's totally coming out. So, I want it maybe just kind of like a closing here. You know, I want to give you, I want to give you a chance to speak. To some of the listeners that for lack of a better way to describe them like they're, they're leaders in the church.
Uh, I don't know if we would describe the equip cast listeners as blue collar or whatever, but you know, it's not, it's not a professionally nichey, you know, it's not designed for bishops. It's not designed for Parish staff necessarily, but I know some of our listeners are leaders in the church, whether they're a volunteer, whether they're paid, cleric lay, whatever.
You've seen leadership at so many different levels within the church. Yes, but within, uh, civic life, what advice would you offer to church leaders, uh, who seem to be struggling with perfectionism? and living at an unsustainable pace. 

[00:49:48] Colleen: I guess I would just come back to prayer, which is, maybe seems like a pretty predictable response, but really isn't that what it always comes back to?

[00:49:57] Jim Jansen: Well, it does kind of sound like a saint. Right. I think that's what St. Alphonsus would say. 

[00:50:04] Colleen: Yeah. But, you know, and I know these are folks who are probably not the types who are just not praying, but you know, just leaning in and enjoying that freedom of. You know, maybe letting go of some of what, obviously I have to keep doing this, obviously this is the next step and kind of allowing the Lord through quiet prayer, through maybe a little less screen time and more quiet time through maybe if an extra holy hour a week through maybe, you know, those who aren't making it to mass other than Sunday quite as much as they used to because of this pace, whatever it may be, just allowing the Lord to, to kind of come in and.
Possibly upset the apple cart a little because that's what he likes to do and it's terrifying, you know, and I do think if he showed us all at once what he had in mind, we'd probably say, Oh, no, no, thank you. I, I'm not ready for that. So, he's merciful enough to just, you know, he kind of leaves the breadcrumb and you'd take that one and he leaves you another.
And we know with the Holy spirit that each inspiration we follow, he gives us another. And so. We don't have to figure it all out today, but I do think just intensifying that prayer, especially in times when we feel there's too much noise and we don't have time, that's when we most need to take that step back.
Because we can go a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction. And man, is that frustrating when you look up and realize you've been doing that. So, I think it's always good to take that pause and almost the busier, the more necessary that pause. 

[00:51:32] Jim Jansen: Amen. Thank you. Colleen, you know, if people want to find the book.
And they want to connect with you. Where do they go? 

[00:51:39] Colleen: Sure. So, the Heart of Perfection is my latest book and it's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all the, all the usual spots. And my website is Colleen Campbell. com and you can read more about my work, my other books. There's a, you can send me a comment. I am on Facebook and Twitter, but not too much.
So, you're more than welcome to follow me and you'll get my Christmas update and that might be all you hear from me. But, uh, if you go on my website, you can sign up too for a newsletter, which again, you'll probably hear from me once a year, but, but I do, I do a nice long reflection once a year. 

[00:52:13] Jim Jansen: Yeah. So, yeah, that's so good.
Thank you for your, I mean, just the conversation today, uh, your example, uh, and this book. We're going to link to it in the show notes here, uh, the heart of perfection. Yeah, you can find it on Amazon, and we'll make it really easy to click. So again, thank you. Thanks for being with us. 

[00:52:30] Colleen: Oh, you're welcome.
Thanks for having me. 

[00:52:31] Jim Jansen: All right, everybody. So now I always say this at the end of the episodes, right? You know, someone who needs to hear this conversation and you especially do after today's conversation, maybe don't start with, Hey, I like you really struggle with perfectionism, but, uh, however you start the conversation, that's up to you.
But, you know, somebody who needs to hear this. So, I encourage you when you get to your destination when you're at a safe spot, uh, share this out with a friend. I know it's going to be a gift to them. All right. Thanks for being with us, everybody. Thanks for listening to the EquipCast. We hope this episode has inspired you to live your faith and equip you to be fruitful in your mission.
Stay connected with us by going to equip.archomaha.org. God bless and see you next time.