More Peace with Mother Teresa

I can love you. even if I haven’t met you because God lives inside of you. There’s holiness inside of you. You are special. and that all you need to do to be loved is to be you. You are worthy of love simply by being who you are. Today’s episode is about Mother Teresa. And she is such a special person. And I love that she kind of transcends Catholicism, isn’t like lots of people in the world think Mother Teresa is special, not just Catholics. I think that’s a really neat thing that brings us together with other people. And she has just been such a big inspiration in my life for many reasons. The amount of darkness that she lived through I think she is such a great example of someone who walked closely with the lord exuded holiness Like, right? People just in her presence were just so struck by her peace and her holiness. And yet, internally, she experienced for years this spiritual dryness. And so to me, she is just such a great example of someone who managed her mind, someone who was able to show up and be present and to trust the lord no matter what was in front of her.

And as I go through today’s episode and talk about her, I’ll be sharing some things that she said. But I think that when I go through difficult things in my life, I think about her and how much pain that she was in and we learned that after she died. We learned so much about her interior life and just the darkness of her dark night of the soul and her cross. And yet, she showed up with such warmth. and such love, and I want to be like that. And I’m very far from that. I let my internal state determine what you see on the outside. So I’m like, if I am grumpy, you will know based on the look on my face. And I’m not proud of that. What I’m saying is I actively want to be more like her where I can be experiencing things on the inside. I can be walking with the Lord and having a journey with him, but still just show up in love and in service. to all the people I meet. One of my favorite quotes. And I’ve put this, I think, in all of my planners and a lot of the work that I’ve done, but I just love it so much. And she says, yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We only have today. Let us begin. she just really knew how to live in the present moment.

The other thing that is very special to me about her was the way that she made a little bow every time she met someone, and she was bowing to the lord inside the other person, to the holy spirit inside the other person, she just knew that every person was a vessel for the lord. And so just like we bow in front of the eucharist, she would bow in front of each person just acknowledging God is in you. And I just think that’s such an important message for our modern time because there’s so much anger and judgment and hate and insults and division. I just want you to know that it just really, really doesn’t matter what person is in front of you. God lives inside then. And that doesn’t mean we have to hug the people who are angry and yelling at us, right, but just for yourself, you can know, God is in them. They are special. They are loved. Another thing that she said was so profound to me before finding, you know, thought work, mindset work, this work that I do as a coach now. she said, we fear the future because we are wasting today. Ugh. Isn’t that just the truth? One of the ways that our brain distracts us from having to do something we think is uncomfortable in the present moment, we kind of check out of the present moment and we think about the future. instead of just showing up with love to this present moment, And I think that we make up a lot of stories about the future. about our financial future, about our health, about our children and what they’re gonna do or what they won’t do. And those made up stories feel painful in the present, or they can.

And so I want you to pay attention to when you’re living in the future or in the past and come back to this moment right now. You’re doing okay. There’s something that god is gonna put in front of you today, and he wants you to show up and be present. Another thing she said was the most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. And I feel that deeply. I have a challenging marriage, and I feel very lonely in my marriage. And I have this thought that I am and I know that that isn’t true. My husband is a wonderful man, and he loves me so much, and I love him so much. But that’s not how brains work, right? Brains are like, ugh, he didn’t unload the dishwasher. He doesn’t love me in our relationship, that’s probably the other way around. He’s the one that does more of the particular cleaning things.

But the most terrible poverty is loneliness is what she says. And I think we live in a society now where moms are so isolated. You don’t even talk on the phone anymore. As soon as we had texting, we stopped talking on the phone, and you used to live next to your friends. They could come over for coffee while the kids played. Now it’s just that most of us are alone most of the time. And so I just love that she wanted to point this out. Like, this is a terrible poverty, particularly as Americans were looking at the, you know, food poverty or clothing poverty in India and feeling so bad for those kids. And she was just like, but look at yourselves. And she just saw a particular kind of poverty in America. And, of course, food poverty and clothing and money, those are challenging too. but it’s easier for us to see those. And I think she wanted us to know it’s not as easy to see the poverty of loneliness. I just love that a reporter once asked her about why the nuns in her order spent so much time praying in the morning.

And I believe they prayed a couple hours in the morning and maybe another hour or 2 in the afternoon. And the reporter was saying you could help the children more or do more work if they didn’t pray so much. And she said they couldn’t do their work if they didn’t pray so much. And that has always stayed with me that when I’m really busy or I’m feeling behind or feeling a lot of pressure, that the answer usually is to pray is to stop what I’m doing and to pray more, even though I think I don’t have time. I love that she was so beautiful. Have you seen a picture of her? Every time you see a picture of her, pay attention from now on. You will be struck by this sense that she is beautiful, even though she really wasn’t. Right? Like, if we were just to use standard magazine beauty standards, she wasn’t.

She was kind of short and hunched over and wrinkly. And yet, even in a photograph, even if you showed that photograph to someone who did not know who she was, they would be drawn and attracted to her. And that is because holiness is the most attractive thing that there is. And you can just see it in the way that she lived her life, being present to the people that she encountered, walking closely with the lord and just desiring on such a deep level to do whatever he wanted. I’m here, lord. I am a pencil in your hand. And so How can we live like that? How can we live with more openness, more trust? How can we smile at everyone that we meet? She had so many quotes about smiling. That was so important to her. how can we trust that whatever god puts in front of us, he will give us the strength to overcome it to endure it. She says, I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness. I love that.

And so the reason I wanted to make this episode, this special episode about Mother Teresa, and there are some really great videos and documentaries about her. So if you don’t know a lot about her, I would highly recommend I’m sure there’s one on form. I watched one of them retreat once, and I’m not sure where they got it, but it was so it was so well done. And I really enjoyed it. The reason I wanted to talk about her today is because I always pick a patron saint to kind of cover me in prayer when I make a book. And I chose Mother Teresa for this book, Catholic Mom, that’s coming out on September 5th, which is her feast day. And in so many ways, she just showed up. She held my heart. She led me to the wisdom that I needed. She gave me the words. And she showed me that I could slow down, that I could pray and that prayer was the real work.

You know, when you’re an entrepreneur and you make up your own deadlines, there’s just this idea that you think of work and you want it to be done. I want to write a book. I want to have the cover be done. I want to submit the files. I want to get a proof copy. All these milestones. But they’re all arbitrary, right, because if you’re the entrepreneur, you just kind of make them up. And so it’s really easy to live in a world where you feel behind all the time. And I don’t know. I just felt like she walked with me and just all the time was whispering into my heart. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. And I love this quote that she says. I used to believe that prayer changes things But now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things. And that’s such a summary of the difference between me 3 years ago and me now.

I think 3 years ago there was so much resistance I just really kept telling the lord it shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t get pregnant all the time. I should have a different kind of husband. I should have a different kind of home life. Which for me, you know, I’m just not like a natural homemaker. I’m not sure anybody is a natural homemaker, but I really didn’t have those skills when I became a mom. I certainly did not have the skills to run a household with 6 kids. And I would pray that he would change things. Now I see that becoming a saint, becoming the best version of ourselves, is about managing our internal state, managing our minds, choosing to show up in a virtuous way no matter what is happening around us. And the way that we do that is through prayer. Prayer changes us. The more time I spend talking to the lord about my life, The more I ask God for what he wants me to do, the more I turn to him in moments of stress or asking for the right words in an important conversation. The more I just live this life with peace until I’m very grateful to her for her yes, her fiat, her willingness to be brave and to take risks in a way I really view her as an entrepreneur. You know, I mean, she basically went to her order and said, I want to do this completely other thing that god asked me to do. I just want you to see how crazy that is. And it wasn’t easy. It was very difficult. It wasn’t like God said, Hey, I want you to go do this work, and then everything just fell into place, it did not happen like that. And yet, her conviction was so deep that she just kept going. And even though she took a vow of poverty and did keep anything, just the lord flowed 1,000,000 of dollars through her and through her work in her organization.

Like, to me she was such a successful entrepreneur doing the work of god. and bringing his love to people, and you can just see how her work echoes on beyond her. She has this quote. Life is a challenge. We must take it. Like, instead of wishing them as easier, wish that you were stronger, and don’t just wish it. Practice. And so my book is coming out. On September 5th, it is called Catholic Mom Calm, 6 steps to calming the chaos of everyday life. And you can read it as a book or you can do it as a 6 week study with your friends. You can do it in person at someone’s house or at a parish, or you can start a Facebook group, or send out a Zoom link and meet virtually once a week. There’s so many ways that we can do it. but I want to create an army of Catholic Moms who look a lot more like Mother Teresa. Who knows that prayers are the answer, who manage their minds, so that they can smile and honor the lord in every person that they see. Who does not measure themselves by success, but by their faithfulness? and who live in the present moment, knowing that God does not give us grace for a future that hasn’t happened.

I love our Catholic faith. I love that we have this tradition of saints, these examples of how to live, and mother Theresa is just one of my favorites. She’s very special to me. And I just really believe that she was such a big part of this book, and I hope that through her and through this book that your life can be touched in the same way that mine has been. and that you turn around and do that for someone else and someone else and someone else. And that we just commit to bringing more peace to the world. Don’t you think we need that right now? So I hope something in this episode was just exactly what you needed to hear today, to remember God’s goodness, to feel hope, to know that you are loved, and to bring love and Christ to the people that you encounter today. If you want a copy of Catholic Mom Calm on September 5th, you can go to Amazon and you can order the physical copy or the Kindle copy. And if you want to watch videos that say all the same things the book says, you can go to Catholic Mom Calm and get those videos as well. on September 5th, and let us give praise in Thanksgiving to the lord for giving us the gift of Mother Teresa and for her faithfulness and her example of how we can live in this world. And remember, you were Made for Greatness.