Remember to Breathe

I see, I see the extra little things that you do. The little things that nobody else notices. Mom’s we just pick up things when we’re in a room always tidying up. A lot of us manage our finances and we’re just like, moving money around to make sure everything’s where it’s supposed to be.We’re making sure that we have tights for the girls and church shoes for the boys. Presence stockings, Christmas dinner, Christmas breakfast, the tree, maybe even traveling. You are superhuman. What you’re doing is incredible to not forget it. Just really sit for a moment and just think. Just tell him it’s incredible, it is what you’re doing. What a gift it is how much you love people. And the problem is we lose our temper. We snap at the kids. We didn’t do everything that we thought we were going to do, and your brain has a negative bias. So it’s just feeding you all the negative things. But then I want you to come back here so I can tell you. You’re doing a really good job and I want you to remember that all of us, children and adults, remember the feeling of Christmas. We do not remember Christmas of 1997, unless you give your kids a puppy. Your children will not remember Christmas of 2023, unless you get engaged. Not you, but one of your daughters maybe. Like we just don’t remember specific Christmases. And I want you to find comfort in that, that they really just remember this.

Conglomeration of feelings for all the Christmases, and Kelly on our team was saying how her parents started some really lovely traditions, like when she was in high school. And she said, my brain remembers it like we did it the whole time. And she said, it’s so silly because when I think about it, we really just started doing it in high school. I love that you were doing a good job. You love all these people so much. You are a homemaker. I wish we said that more. I wish we identified that role more and spoke about it. Like we’re homemakers. We make the home. We decorate the nest. We care for people’s hearts. You are a nurturing woman. Even If you were like a frosty engineering type who doesn’t love children. You nurture in your own way. It is the natural gift of women. And it looks different for each of us. But, it is your feminine genius. Now I want you to remember that God loves you so much. When you are feeling lonely. When you were feeling discouraged. When you were feeling like it’s all on you and there’s no help. When you are missing someone who has passed away.

I want you to. know that God is with you. And he loves you. God is with you and he loves you right now. You can just look over and be like, Hey. I love you. He’s just always there. You can talk to them anytime you want. It’s like a best friend on an instant dial. I want to hear from you. He wants your heart. You know how sometimes I’m just saying that maybe our husbands don’t like it. When we talk, he talks, talks, talks all the time. Maybe it’s not their favorite thing. But you know, who never tires of hearing you talk to The Lord. God is with you, and he loves you and he provides. He’s a God of provision. And we always have what we need. I want just literally like yesterday or the day before you were super stressed out. And maybe you were like, I don’t even know how we’re going to get through today. One of my friends had a hilarious thought, perhaps not at the time. Story. About the curlers that got stuck in her daughter’s hair. It’s the night of the Nutcracker performance. You know, and as she was telling me the story. And she was laughing about it. She had gotten to the place where she could laugh about it. Right. But she said, you know what? I was able to be calm and I just handled it. And it was fine. And that’s what I mean. God provides even these intense situations, even things going, not the way that we thought.

You made it to today, you’re listening to a podcast. You’re doing all right, kid. God provides. He always gives us what we need. If you think that there is something that you need and you do not have it, right now. I want you to question that. Why do I think I need this right now? I often find myself caught up in what I need on the weekend or what I need next year or what I need, like when my children get married and what kind of wedding am I planning for them? I mean, it’s just ridiculous what our brains do. A friend of mine’s daughter is engaged so now I’m just thinking about my kids’ weddings. No, my oldest is 12 and God is like, hey, I don’t have anything for you. Related to that right now. I’m not going to provide you anything related to your daughter’s future wedding right now, Sterling. But we do the same thing about the weekend. Like, oh, no, I gotta cook all these things. I gotta wrap all these things. And he’s like, yeah, I’m going to give you enough time to do that. You have enough time?

Tell your brain, we have enough time. Because it wants to tell you every hour that you don’t have enough time and that you’re screwing it up, but it’s not true, that’s not true.

I want you to remember to breathe. And, it’s just the most basic and simple tool, and yet we just get into the habit of holding our breath. When you are anxious and scared. You will hold your breath. Most often that sometimes we breathe, but shallowly. And everything just feels like really big and scary. I should just take five deep breaths into your belly. And breathe it out. So. intentionally and slowly. When you get auctioned into your brain. Right, It’s like your toddler brain has taken over with stress and when you get oxygen, just like, it’s like having the hole in your brain and the hole is like mush, smash this now. And when you breathe deeply and the oxygen comes in the Hulk. Melts and turns back into Bruce banner.

I didn’t know we were going to use a Marvel analogy today, but where do you want it? Just, I want you to understand that something biologically happens when you breathe slowly, it’s not like. This goofy trick that we just say, people like, Hey, you need to calm down. You need to breathe. The reason they ask you to breathe is because when you flood your brain with oxygen, a different part of your brain shows up. Also some of you. I’m going to give you two very ridiculous things to do, okay. One of them is to give yourself a hug. Okay, it’s going to feel ridiculous. It’s going to look ridiculous too, by the way. But you literally like to put your arms around you and you just squeeze yourself with love. Like you’re hugging someone you love so much and it totally works. And the other thing I go to when it’s a Def con two stressful situation and I’m having a hard time calming down as I grab a stuffed animal. I don’t know about you, but I have three daughters. They counted the other day. Are you ready? Are you ready for this? 83.83 stuffed animals between the three of them. And I have those little corners of the room with hammocks, and that’s kind of the rule, Like if it fits in the hammock, they get to keep it. And I was just like, how. Do they have that many? Now some of them are small, like beanie bears. My husband’s mom may have like a thousand beanie bears and every time she sees us, she brings one for each child.

I will just grab one of their fuzzy stuffed animals and I will hug it. If you have a dog or a cat with your animal and just be like, what’s going to be okay. We just want to calm our brain down. You’ve got this. I love you. We are in it together. I want you to imagine that the thousands of Catholic moms that listen to this podcast link, arms together. Oh, it’d be cool. If we had like, Like a badge. Kind of like a Star Trek badge maybe, but when you press it, Like a gold crown appears on her head and then like a Cape shows up. And more like super moms. Time to go. We have that superhero moment where we look at each other and we’re like, yeah, we’re going to do this. I want you to imagine that we’re all doing that right now. We’re suiting up and we were getting ready to slay the rest of the days until Christmas. And it is such a gift to our families. And if none of them think to say thank you, which usually they don’t. It’s not a problem. I see your friends see God sees.

It is a special gift of women to serve others and to not need a thank you. I love that. Mary kept so many things in her heart because I’m such a brash loud mouse. A little bit I am. I just want to yackety yack, yack about everything. And I want everyone to know all the things. And instead of just thinking like, oh, I just did this incredible thing for my family. and I don’t need anyone to say thank you. And I’m just going to keep it in my heart. Just something Jesus and I see together so special. It’s so beautiful. I’m so proud of you for not losing your mind. I know a lot of us just feel like we’re on the edge of losing our minds. And I just want to validate for you the craziness of the world that we live in. Did you see if you have not seen it? Really very crunchy. I believe that’s the name of her account on Instagram. Probably, YouTube too. It’s called really very crunchy. And it’s just this mom who spoofs, crunchy mom things. And in a recent one, she like fully decorates the Christmas tree and puts it outside.

And her husband does these videos with her, and it’s just so fantastic. And he’s like, why is the Christmas tree outside? And she’s like, well, I like it like that. And then eventually she’s like, well, do you know, that mold grows on these trees? And if we bring them in there, it could create like, Lung, lung disease. Anyway, it’s very hilarious. And so he just stomps off, grabs the treat and brings it inside. And she’s not serious. She’s really just kind of sue, but I think she really captures this moment in our society where it just feels like you cannot win. Everybody says everything is terrible. And I’m just so proud of you for being a mom right now and just hanging with it all. And that is probably the most common feedback that I get on the Catholic Mom Calm book is how validating it is about the hard things. Like they just in the reviews over and over again, they’re like, thank you for validating all that and putting language around what’s hard. And then giving me tools, right? It’s not like we just stay there and we swim in. How difficult things are, but I think it’s important to have language about it.

And I was explaining, did I say this on the podcast? I don’t remember if I did this or in one of our coaching calls, but I was saying like your mom. When she had to shop for Christmas she went to like JCpenney and toys, RS and that was it. That was it. She was just like, what do they have? Let’s buy some things. And then she went home and wrapped them. And the wrapping paper that she probably got from like, it’s a drug store. And now we have a hundred stores. We don’t even have a toys R us anymore. We only have a Shishi, like a super expensive toy store. And then we have the internet. And black Friday started on November 1st. And they put the Christmas paper out at Costco. Early November two, and if you don’t get it, man goes away. Like just, there’s so many games that we play now that your mom didn’t have to play. And that’s okay. And we’re doing it and I’m proud of us. But literally when they say that the last battle will be against marriage and the family. I actually think it’s a lot of this. So much, that’s trying to just take us away from our families. And get us super focused and obsessed about things that don’t matter. And I’m not condemning doing the things, but just make sure that you can do the things from peace like I always bring up my friend who has 20 or more nativity sets. And she takes them all out and puts them all over her house and they’re just beautiful. She collects them that is not stressful to her; she just loves doing it.

My husband and I released it to my husband. But I get the eggs and the things and stuff though. But he elaborately hides all the Easter Eggs at Easter. That’s a lot of stress. He’s not like, I have to hide those eggs again this year. I just pick the things that you like doing. You’re doing a better job than you think. I see you, your friends see you. We all know what we’re going through right now. This ain’t your mama’s Christmas rodeo. She was less stressed than you. Because the environment was less stressful. Not to mention her money probably went four times as far.

God is with you, no matter what you were thinking, you can just cling to him. I want you to breathe deeply. Hug yourself. Hug a stuffed animal. Pet a real animal. Whenever you call to do. And keep these things in your heart. Christmas is a hundred things that moms do that go mostly unseen. God sees. I love you. This is probably not the time for you to think about setting new year’s goals, but I’m just gonna plant a seed in your mind. We’re doing an incredible goal setting program for moms called “Year of Calm”. And if you hate setting goals, I’m going to tell you why. You have goal trauma. I’m gonna sort that out for you. This is different from your average goal-setting program. And, you know, I change it every year. But this time I created a beautiful. And by, I mean, my amazing designer took my ideas and made them beautiful. Quarterly planner. And so If you want to distract the code of www.catholicmomcalm/year-of-calm. It’s going to be called the year of calm.

And it is $29 and you buy it. And you get to do it anytime because some people like me. Like to set their goals on December 26th. It will be available then you can buy it now, but the videos will drop December 26th. Uh, and you can have the videos forever and I will be doing two coaching calls where you can. Come ask me questions about the program. And so if you’re in our membership, this is included in the membership, but I wanted to make it kind of just a one-off thing to help all of you. With your year and I don’t know about you. But after 2023 that was a crazy circus. I’m really ready for a year of calm And I know that when we anchor ourselves in Christ, And we come back to God’s promises and his truths we can be calm. So I’ll talk more about it next week. I just want to plant that in your mind because the next podcast will come out on the 27th. So it’ll already be out by then. So, if you want to know www.catholicmomcalm/year-of-calm I’m gonna check it out. All right my friends, keep breathing.

Be nice to yourself. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.