MTP 62 Sara Myers Pt 1, How do you surrender your professional identity to Jesus? 🧑‍⚕️🧑‍🏭🧑‍💼👨‍💼👷

In this episode of Meet the Prof, we sit down with Dr. Sara Myers, Professor of Biomechanics and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activity at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Sara shares openly about a challenging season in her marriage during grad school, and how God used that time to deepen her faith, reshape her priorities, and teach her to surrender both her career and parenting to Him.

Read more about Sara Myers online:
 https://meettheprof.com/view/professors/entry/sara-myers

Main Takeaways

• God used Sara’s marital separation and academic stress to draw her into a deeper, daily relationship with Jesus.
• Surrendering identity in career opened the door to spiritual growth and greater professional success.
• Parenting teenagers and young adults involves discernment, surrender, and honest dialogue.
• Professors often struggle with over-identifying with achievement and need reminders that identity is in Christ.
• Professors can model faith by demonstrating transparency, humility, and prayerful dependence.
  
  

CHAPTERS
 00:01 – Student question: How can professors be bold in faith and still honor legal boundaries?
 00:50 – Introduction to Sara Myers’ roles and volleyball humor
 02:30 – Embarrassing moment: forgetting a student’s name
 04:06 – How God used marital separation to reshape her priorities and deepen her faith
 08:50 – Identity in career vs. identity in Christ
 11:23 – Trusting God with your marriage and taking faith steps
 12:50 – Surrendering kids’ decisions to God as a parent
 14:19 – Parenting teens with honesty and open dialogue
 15:56 – Prayer for discernment in parenting
 16:20 – Teaser for future episode on parenting + career

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Transcript

0:01

My name is Rachel Ward. I go to UNCW. I'm a freshman studying nursing. My question would be, how do you be bold in your faith while still respecting the legalities of being a professor and honoring different people's worldviews? Well, welcome everybody to Meet the Prof. I am Shane Hartley and I'm here with Spence Hackney. How you doing, Spence? Good, good to see you. So this is a podcast where we interview Christian professors and we use questions we get from college students and our hope is to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. And we have the privilege of getting to meet Sara Myers this morning. Sara is both the Associate Vice Chancellor of Research and Creative Activity and also a Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Nebraska Omaha. So Sara, great to see you. Welcome to Meet the Prof. Good morning, thank you for having me. So the very first question I like to ask is something from meettheprof.com. So what is the difference between old lady volleyball and young lady volleyball? Well, uh mostly speed of the game, I would say, but also instead of practicing after school, we play early in the morning before everyone goes to work. So yeah, it's uh something we started doing in our local town. live in a small town between Lincoln and Omaha and a lot of us enjoy playing sports and played sports in college. And we started playing. Thursday mornings during the volleyball season when the nets were up and just good exercise and laughs and fun. that's great. So do you have any injuries you've incurred during this volleyball stint? Fortunately, no, no injuries. Great. So I'm still trying to play tennis and I played tennis with my buddy Reece a couple years ago and tore my Achilles and that was, that was a wake up call that yeah, I'd need to start playing old man tennis, not young man tennis. Yeah, I these injuries have been going around so even professionally lately. You got to be careful. I think adult sport leagues keep orthopedics in business pretty much. That's their best target audience right there. for sure. So we like to establish the fact that professors are human too. So could you tell us about an embarrassing moment that you had, either while you were teaching or as a student? Yeah, well, would say while teaching, the most embarrassing is definitely forgetting a student's name that I know. Just because I always have a lot on my mind and see a lot of students. I taught really large classes, anatomy and physiology when I was teaching. And so not being able to think of a student's name is probably the most embarrassing. I'm still impressed you can remember all their names in those big classes. That's tough. it just depends on how active they are in the class usually. yeah. Yeah. Do you have a method that you use to remember all their names now? Did this like spur a drive to. um No, not really. I mean, taking roll is helpful. And if they come to class, that's always helpful. Some professors would take pictures and then put people's name by them so they could kind of learn them or have students sit in a certain spot. That helps. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the book, The Memory Book? I think Harry Lorayne years ago. So he coauthors it with someone. I did not apply the book well because I can't remember the coauthor's name, but I remember that he had memory devices, you know, where you try to picture what their name brings to mind for you. Then you find something on their face that sort of stands out and you associate the two. So I've been working on that for 20 years and I haven't got it mastered yet. I don't know what it says about his method if you can't remember his name there. I'm just saying. exactly something's wrong with this method, not me. Well, Sara, I really appreciate your transparency on meettheprof.com. I was wondering, tell us more about how God really turned your life around, especially during the separation time with your husband. Yeah, so it's interesting that you asked me about that and um thinking about it seems like so long ago. I think we were probably married about seven years at this time and I was finishing my doctoral degree. We had two young children, probably under five um at home. And I think uh God used you know, problems in my marriage to uh help me re-prioritize my life prior to our separation. I had grown up in the church as a Christian. I don't really remember a time that I didn't know Jesus being young, but I would say that it wasn't until this time that I really uh depended on Jesus and made that a personal relationship and a priority in my life. And basically, there were several different uh issues that I had. mean, one was just when you're getting your doctoral degree or getting graduate study, spending a lot of time working and studying. It was one issue. And so not prioritizing my husband and our children in terms of how I used my time. But then also, academia makes it easy to prioritize focusing on your career and also focusing on your accomplishments and self-promotion and making these things about you. And really, as a woman as well, hearing that, your spouse should be doing 50 % of all of this and... You know, really not biblical principles were being applied in my marriage and my life. And so there's a couple of situations during that time that were kind of pivotal. ah One was uh a time I was on the phone with my mom and I hadn't slept well for a long time and I was just talking with her and uh upset and she prayed for me and prayed a Bible verse in 1 Peter. I can't remember which one it was, but uh it just gave me a sense of peace and uh I realized that uh really the only way I could live my life is completely relying on Jesus because kind of in the midst of all of these attitudes or beliefs that I was having as I was finishing my graduate studies, I was also expecting my husband to be everything and be perfect when God is really the only one who can fill that role for us. And so it was a lot of uh unrealistic expectations that I was putting on him as well as not making him a priority. And so after that, that or during that time is when I really started a habit of I'm getting up early. I'm a morning person. Some people spend time with God late, but I got up early and would read the Bible or do devotions and pray, something that I still do to this day. So that was about 15 years ago. And it made a really big difference in my relationship with God and just learning to completely trust and surrender and of course that's a process, right? But I think it's really important for those of us in academia because there's so much uncertainty and you're constantly being judged about your publications and your grants and if we make that our identity, it's gonna be really disappointing and that's really where I was. so that. that separation really helped me to focus on what God wants for my life and his priorities. And the interesting thing is when I started prioritizing my marriage and my family, I started having more success professionally as well. So somehow um God can make it so that our time is more efficient or we're more productive uh when we really seek his will and try to follow his ways. He works out the path that he has planned for us already. And so that's been pretty amazing to watch from that point and further on in my life as well. Yeah. How do you know when you've made your career your identity versus just good stewardship? Hmm. Yeah, well, I think it's more of an attitude than anything and I don't have a perfect answer to that. I pray constantly for God to show me his will and I often will say things like, know me, God, and I have to be really certain to know what you want me to do. um But I think when we make our career our identity, there's going to be problems and signs that arise from that. um Things like not being able to recover from disappointment. That's a big one for me. It's easy for me to get discouraged. But when things don't go the way I want in my career, and I... I can get discouraged or I can ask God, I don't know what you're doing, but help walk me through where you have me going next. So I think it's, we focusing on what we can do within our own power? Are we focusing on how God is trying to use different aspects of our career to work for Him? That's helpful. Well, so as you began a new walk with the Lord through all of that, when was the time that he called you to take a step of faith? I think just learning to surrender different situations, like, well, I mean, one would be, um, as I was trying to, as we were trying to kind of rebuild our relationship, you know, there's oftentimes when you have something like a separation. Sometimes one person wants to work on the marriage and sometimes one person doesn't. And I think that was probably true really early on. And just trying to demonstrate how I had changed and wanting to prioritize my marriage, but also respecting how my husband was feeling uh was really important. And so I would say that was one. uh aspect of surrender that was really clear. And then just trusting that God was going to take care of it and also take care of me because I had been relying on my husband to make sure I wasn't lonely or whatever. And instead, you know, realizing that God is with me everywhere I go and being satisfied. with that. I still don't like being home alone all the time, but I'm okay now. So that's, guess, one example, um not related to my marriage, but another huge area that um God really requires me daily to take steps of faith are just in parenting. So we have five kids from 21 to eight and You you think that when they're little is the really hard time of parenting, but you realize as they go into adolescence and young adulthood, ah you have to surrender them their decisions to the God and just trust him. You you helped me raise them as well as we could. And now they're going to make their own choices and they're going to make mistakes. And I have to was trust that you're gonna be with them and bring them through those mistakes and it isn't always gonna be pretty. So that's another area that he's working on me all the time. You're speaking to Spence and me and you're speaking to the parents who are listeners now. If I could drill down a little bit more on that, what have you learned about discerning? Like how do we discern when our child needs us to back off or when they may still need us to help in some way? Yeah, well, as our kids have gotten to be teenagers, I think we move from more of this is what you're going to do because I'm telling you to do it and that's what we think is best for you to a conversation or even a negotiation with them. um This is what we think is best. What do you think about that and why? And just being honest, I mean, with one of our children just in full transparency, there's choices that are being made that we don't agree with and just saying, we don't think this is a good choice. This is why we don't think that. We know what's going on. You don't have to hide it from us. We'll be here when you need help and just being open and honest about it, uh even though you can't force them to make a different choice. I love the fact that you maintain communication even when you disagree with them. That's imperative. yes, yes. And it certainly, it's not easy. that's another common prayer that I have is, help me, God, not to just do the easy thing. Are we letting our children make mistakes and learn from them? Or are we being lazy or just doing the easy thing or avoiding conflict? What's that balance? That's something I constantly seek is discernment with those types of em choices. I imagine we're going to need to do another interview that's talking about the tension of having a career and raising a family because with five kids and your youngest one being eight, uh you are still needed quite a bit at home. Yeah, Happy to talk about that more whenever you want. Great. That's a whole nother podcast right there. Parenting a massive amount of children. I could, I could do that one too. Well, I hope you found that useful. I am so encouraged by these professors and please don't forget, you can get to know all these professors better by going to meettheprof.com. You can search for them by name or school or even just state. So we're so glad that you joined us. Thank you. If you are a Christian professor, would you consider giving us your testimony online that we can share with students? You just go to meettheprof.com and click on create a profile and it's pretty easy to do there. If you're a college student, would you consider sending us a question for these professors? You can do that best by finding us on Instagram at meettheprofofficial, and then just send us a question by DM and just tell us your name and your school and whatever your question is there. And lastly, if you're interested in supporting our ministry, thank you very much. And you can do so online at give.cru.org forward slash zero 42 43 44. So until next time, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ centered conversation on your college campus.