I've spent my career where mental health and ministry meet: in private practice and group settings, hospitals and hospices, employee assistance programs, and classrooms at seven universities. I'm a licensed marital and family therapist, a minister, and chair the Behavioral Sciences Department at Oral Roberts University.

This is my fourteenth book and my fourth with an academic press. My other books include Trauma and Crisis Counseling: An Overview for Emerging Professionals, Drowning for Jesus, and Discovery Teaching Like Jesus. The thread running through all of them is the same question: what it costs to care for people well, and how to keep doing it without being destroyed by it.

In 2026, The Journal Record named me a Woman of the Year honoree, and I received the Heart of Hope Award from the Scraper Counseling Center at Mid-America Christian University. In 2022, The Journal Record recognized me as an Oklahoma Health Care Hero.

I was featured in Beth Allison Barr’s book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, a New York Times bestseller, and in her limited-series podcast, All the Buried Women [Episode 2: The Invisible Woman].