“Fix It” Girl

One of the most hopeless feelings of my life came when I was twelve years old, standing somewhere in the orbit of my mother's dying. She had cancer eating away at her body, and the pain was extreme. Her yelling in the hospital room pierced something in me and even forty-something years later, I don't remember much about her. But I remember that sound. The sound of pain I couldn't take away.

Something changed in me then. I made a quiet, fierce determination: as far as it depends on me, I will fix it. Anything to avoid pain. In the struggle and the grief, I didn't know how to feel, so I learned how to fix instead.

Fast forward into my years as a professional, and I wore the Fix-It Girl identity like a badge of honor. I'd scan every room for problems I could solve; systems, technology, relationship woes. I was good at it. I was celebrated for it. Supervisors recognized my problem-solving abilities. That kind of validation was ego-stroking and, honestly, fulfilling.

But what I didn't see for years was that my "fix it" nature was actually avoidance in disguise.

I could turn my attention to everyone and everything else in my world. What I wasn't doing was turning it on me. Sure, I knew there were things I wanted to fix about myself. But when that became hard, when I became the problem too complicated to solve, I redirected. There was always a plethora of people and problems who needed fixing more urgently. And the world rewarded me for it, so I kept going.

But God, ever gently, kept reminding me: I was not a problem to be fixed. I was a daughter in need of His healing touch.

It wasn't my job to fix anyone.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being a problem solver. The gift itself isn't the issue. It was the reason behind the nature, that's where the real story lives. Because deep down, in the crevices of my heart, I had blamed God. I blamed Him for the pain my mother went through. I blamed Him for the loss and the way my family fell apart. I blamed Him for every single day my family wouldn't have with her.

And because of that anger, that blame, I didn't truly trust Him to fix anything, including me.

That is where my controlling nature was born.

If God didn't show up, it meant He couldn't or wouldn't. So life was in my hands. Work was in my hands. Making things better was in my hands. And when I eventually became a believer and learned to trust Him, I began to see His love for me and others BUT there was still this stubborn corner of my heart that believed: problems are mine to fix. He gave me a brain, so He expects me to use it. I just started adding Christianese to the same old operating system. I called it stewardship. I called it leadership. I didn't call it what it was.

I didn't truly surrender until I had no other choice but to face all the reasons why I became who I did and how it shaped me as a leader of my life and in the companies and ministries I would lead.

When I finally got still enough to look, I began to see clearly: all the ways control, insecurity, and the Fix-It Girl showed up in day-to-day operations. In meetings. In the way I over-functioned so others wouldn't have to. In the way I couldn't let a problem just be without immediately trying to resolve it.

And the truth beneath all of it? It started with a twelve-year-old girl who couldn't fix her dying mother.

That was my story.

But we all have our reasons for who we are, don't we?

The matters of the heart that profoundly change the fabric of our beings, the matters that shape us whether we are twelve, twenty, or forty-two. This life becomes a journey of becoming and undoing, and then becoming again. We can see God one way, and then years later see Him in an entirely different way, both versions shaping our beliefs, our perspectives, and ultimately how we show up for others and for the world.

The Fix-It Girl doesn't disappear overnight. But she does begin to loosen her grip when she finally learns she was never meant to carry all of this alone.

What's the wound behind your default leadership pattern? Take a moment to sit with that question. You don't have to have the answer yet, but the willingness to ask it is where the undoing begins.