Okay, I grew up a punk rocker, like hardcore alternative music, punk rock music. There was not a Taylor Swift song to be played in when I was in high school and, you know, I feel like a Love Story came out. I don’t know the tail end. I remember being on the radio and I remember being like, oh, that’s okay. But like I would die before probably buying a Taylor Swift album at that point in my life. Right, it just wasn’t my persona, my musical persona at the time. I don’t even remember when I fell in love with Taylor Swift. It was years later, maybe around red. And then I just like all of it. If you looked at my iTunes, a year ago, it would have a couple Jesus songs, like one-off songs that I bought on iTunes and every Taylor Swift album. That’s it, that’s all there.

And then I often listen to Pandora. I have a Pandora station that is the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack. So you can do that, you can pick something that you love and just say, make a whole station like that. And so, I love it because the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack is just beautiful and utterly moving and it plays it often, but then it also just plays other really beautiful scores of movies. And that’s what I listened to a lot of. And then for those of you that are my business programs, I also have a Spotify playlist. My favorite, like hype songs, get your head right for Jesus. So you can do your work. And those are pretty great too. So mad love affair with Taylor Swift. Just literally the day every album came out, I just bought it, listened to all of it. And then I would lose sleep by the way, because Taylor Swift songs are so catchy that they would just like play and play and play and play and play in my mind. And you know, eventually I’d have to be like, you have to stop listening to that.

You’ve take a break. So I’d taken a break. So I could sleep again. I just want you to know the level of which I loved Taylor Swift. So then Lover came out and, you know, she had that LGBTQ song and I was like, ah, I don’t love that, and I didn’t play that for my kids. I’m pretty selective about what they get to hear. And I feel like there was another one on there. So generally that’s what I would do. I would listen to the songs and then I would actually just delete them from my iTunes album. So I would just delete the songs where I was like, I’m never going to that song. I’m never going to listen to that song. I’m not, I’m not going to listen to it. And yup. Lover came out. I was like, that song was a little cringy. She started costing a little bit more, which I didn’t really love, but you can buy a clean version of her albums that changed the words. , for the big cuss words and some still love Taylor Swift going along for the ride. Evermore comes out. Full-color comes out.

I’m okay with some of them, there were a couple on both of those albums where I was like, Nope. I’m not listening to that. I don’t like it. So then midnight comes out immediately. I’m like, oh, I’m not listening to Karma. I don’t love the concept of karma. It’s just weird. So weird song anyway. It was like, I’m not having any of that. Okay. Catholics don’t believe in karma, just none of it. So she deleted that one. And then. I heard someone say, oh, did you see that video of hers that came out? And I hadn’t because it was the video for karma. And so I went to YouTube; I’m sorry somebody said there was some cult stuff in that video. So I went to YouTube because I wanted to see, and sure enough, she’s dressed up like satanic stuff and there’s like witches and like a whole bunch of stuff. And I am just like part out for that. And so here’s the thing, as I become Catholic, my tolerance for anything related to anything, a culty has just gotten lower and lower.

We’ll not do it. And here’s the thing about music. Okay, Music is a little bit hypnotic. It can put us into a hypnotic state. It gets embedded in our brains and we know because we know all the words to the Taylor Swift songs, right? And for me I could deal with some LGBTQ things, I can deal with that. That is the world that we live in. People believe that. Listening to a song is going to change my views on that. And I could choose not to listen to a song. I can just be like, oh, we don’t listen to that song. Okay. So I just want to explain that that’s where I was at when you need to calm down. That’s what it is you need to calm down was that song on Lover. And I was just like, I don’t need to listen to that. It’s fine. I am a total artist. We are liberal and they have different values than me. And for the most part I’m okay with that. I just choose not to put it into my mind.

But this is a cult thing. Okay. That means that she sat down with a team of people and said, I think this is a really good idea. To film a video like this. And I think I read somewhere that she, it was kind of like a parody that people have accused her of that. And so she wanted to like it, and she does that ham it up. There’s just no excuse for me. We do not mess around with that. We do not play around with that.

And I don’t know how real that is for her, but if it was, if it was real and people definitely worshiped the devil. And practice magic and do cult things and it is real and evil. And if she has any part of that, and then is making songs. I don’t know what’s in them. I don’t know what’s in the background.

I don’t know and I was so upset. And that day I deleted all of the songs now, do I think. That was going on for her when she made the love story, probably not. But I don’t know.

I don’t know. And for me, because I spent so many years not being Catholic and expose myself to so many things. Now I just have such a high bar for what I’m willing to put in my ears and my eyeballs.

And some of you have maybe like never listened to Taylor swift and you think my bar wasn’t high enough for those other things. But that’s what we’re having this conversation. We all get to stop and think about. What is my filter and why? And I will just tell you right now that for a cult things I’m just hard out. There’s just never even, I never make an excuse. There’s just not even anything, a little bit of it. I used to love vampire novels. Do you know that they’re like really fun Regency era vampire novels where Vampires who have lots of money and solve mysteries or have fun romances like clean, but still vampires. Loved them. There’s one out right now that it’s just getting really great reviews and I’m like, I will not open it. I’m sad because I’m sure it’s fantastic. I’m sure it’s very entertaining.

And I won’t do it. And so for me, like a cult stuff is just so scary. It’s so real and I won’t do it.

I’m pretty sad, like I watched a lot of the era’s tour on Tiktok. A lot of people would stream the whole thing. So I would just sit in bed and watch it like Texas or whatever when she was doing it. Then the movie came out, she’s doing it at movie theaters and I just won’t go see it and I’m so sad. It would have been so fun. I would have gone and sang the loudest and cried. I cried watching it in my bed by myself. Okay.

And I just won’t do it and I am not judging anybody who chooses to. There are so many of you who love Taylor Swift. I see you posting your things. And I cannot choose for other people. And I’m sure there are things I choose that are wrong. I’m just inviting everyone to ask themselves, what are they watching? What are they listening to?

And where is there cult stuff showing up and you’re making excuses for it? I don’t know what the answer is.

I just know for me, that’s where my line was. And I, again, I promise we live in this world where we are all trying to navigate these things. And so I, if you’re listening to Taylor Swift and still buying things from Target, I just feel like, yeah, it is hard to navigate these things.

But, the world is going to get crazier and crazier and more and more disordered and sinful. And we have got to draw some lines. It just wants you to check in with yourself about what they are. Okay. So let’s talk about Halloween. There are a hundred bajillion articles that say it is totally fine for Catholics to celebrate Halloween. I’m not coming out against Halloween on a catechism level. Okay. I think Kendra Tierney has a nice one. I think carrots from McComas might have a nice one. Like just, I’ve seen so many. Okay. Now a lot of you know that I was Protestant for almost two years before I became Catholic and the Protestant do not like Halloween, okay. So I came from there where there’s no Halloween.

We have a fall festival. We do a fall festival and sometimes they even let the kids dress up. And they give them candy but no Halloween. And even when the kids dress up, there’s just kind of like a known Hey, we don’t dress up though, as witches, or demons or anything? A culty. Okay? And that was kind of my first indoctrination about Halloween. So then when I became Catholic, it was really hard for me. So many Catholics love Halloween. And your kids are young for a while. You don’t have to make any decisions. And then one year our friends were like, Hey, we’re going to go trick or treating. And so I dress the kids up like a butterfly and I don’t know, cutesy animals. We just had the two girls.

And we went to this nice neighborhood. It was a safe neighborhood and it was just. I did not like what the girls saw. I did not like what the other people were dressed as. And I also don’t particularly love sugar and giving kids a ton of sugar and candy. That’s a different soap box, but.

I think it’s probably fine theologically to celebrate Halloween. But for me, exposing my kids, even to the decorations in people’s yards. Was just not okay for me. And So that was the only year we did that.

And then we found some friends that also kind of felt the same way that we did. And so we would go to their house on Halloween and make food that represented all the different Saints and we would pray the rosary and just have fun with the kids. Because the kids now, especially as they get older, they’re highly aware of this concept of people dressing up and getting lots of candy. And so I like to have some sort of party thing with them but we just don’t celebrate Halloween. And they know that. You know, I know that’s hard for them. And then of course we dress up for all saints day, the next day. And that’s really lovely. I just use this as another example. Particularly, because straight up it is totally fine for Catholics to celebrate Halloween. Okay? But for me I cannot control the level of a cult images that my kids are exposed to in people’s yards walking around in costumes.

And I’m just not willing to do that. And I don’t want to raise them with a culture of Halloween because then they’re going to get older and they’re going to go, you know, If they’re used to celebrating that holiday. They’re going to go see a bunch of a cult things in other places.

And then, not to mention, the immodest trends of girls dressing like ladies of the night for Halloween. You know, by the time they hit high school, it’s insane. So again, I’m not judging you for participating in Halloween, I’m just explaining my thought process and why I don’t do that.

And I just want you to know your reasons for doing or not doing something and to like them. Because less and less are we going to be able to go along with the culture? So you’re going to increasingly live in a counter-cultural way. Against the majority against what most people are doing. That is going to be what we’re going to have to do more and more of, and I hope you can tell by my voice that I’m not condemning people.

Right? It is hard to be a human right now, it is painful, it is confusing. And I just have so much compassion and charity for all of us Catholics and non-Catholics just trying to navigate things right now.

And so let us meet people with love.

But always be prepared to give your reason, right? And that phrase is about someone saying, why are you Catholic, always be prepared to give your reason for me, it’s the same about some of these decisions. I’m not going to go into someone’s house and be like, let me tell you my thoughts about Taylor swift and Halloween.

But if somebody asked me about it I am prepared calmly and would love to say, yeah, totally this is what I think and how I got there.

I think that’s important.

So let us guard our eyes and our ears.

Let’s do that for our children. Let us train them well. We have got to train them how to watch a lot of people around them to do something that they will then choose not to do. That is going to be their future.

How can we teach them to do it with love and charity? To not create more division to not create more anger in the world? I think that’s a really important thing for us as moms to be thinking about and to be kind of laying the foundation for with our kids. So I love you.

Just take a look at your life, that’s all I’m asking everyone to do. And we’ve got to keep the devil out cause he’s coming for families, and he’s coming for marriages and the battle is real.

And I want to fight. I wanna have my eyes open and I want to fight.

All right. My friends had a different kind of episode today. I love you. We’re doing models in the community. So come join us. It’s got a lot of mind drama. I’ll help you clean it up.

And the work that we do helps Moms live with more peace. And this increasingly crazy and confusing world. I think we could all use a little bit more of that. All right my friends thank you for listening and have a blessed day.