Rhythm of Life

You already have them right now. Whether you’re conscious of them or not. Your life has a rhythm. And within your life. You have a rhythm of rec of exercise and a rhythm of eating. And a rhythm of reading or the kind of music that you listened to or how you greet your husband. We have these rhythms and these patterns and the rhythms, the sound of the patterns change. And sometimes we can have a chaotic rhythm instead of a steady beat; a predictable beat. It’s unpredictable. It’s all over the place. It’s a chaotic rhythm. Okay, and if we have several rhythms that are chaotic instead of I’m going to say balanced or predictable, then our life begins to feel chaotic. And really just think about music, you know, think about the orchestra and everybody in the orchestra has a part to play. And most of the parts are different from the other parts. But all together, they create harmony.

But all of a sudden, people are not playing their parts or individual parts begin sounding chaotic. Like someone just goes off the map and starts playing whatever they want. All of a sudden the overall sound doesn’t sound great. And so, I just coach moms all the time, so much coaching. I love it. I love getting to see your brains and I wish all of you could hear. Hours of coaching every week so that you would just go, oh, nothing’s wrong with me. I’m just a human. Most of the humans have these thoughts and ideas or challenges. And it’s actually not that difficult. To make progress in my life. I wish that is the gift that I could reach through this microphone and give you the perspective that I have. And one of the things I see so often is that our brains just tell us that we are good or we are bad. That we were doing well, or we are failing.

Brain’s have all or nothing thinking. Tank, we have an entire episode called all or nothing thinking you can go check that out. But because our brains have this tendency to just say that you are good or bad where you are winning or failing. We lose the opportunity to tweak. The rhythms of our lives we think we need to erase something or start over or buy something or overhaul something. Because if you were completely failing, then we would need a radical change. Right? But instead, If we just need a little bit of tweaking, like, Hey, this rhythm needs to be just a little faster, that rhythm needs to be a little slower or louder or quieter. Can we just think about tweaking? These rhythms, these patterns. It doesn’t feel so heavy. So in the catholicmom.com community we’d just been talking a lot about. The relief that comes from knowing, oh, I just need a little bit of tweaking. Like as soon as these moms are recognizing that their life is not in fact, a dumpster fire, and they’re not the only one that hasn’t figured everything out. And they just realize that there are many systems in the home.

Many patterns and they can begin tweaking them to create a different sound in the house. Really think about the way that you run your home, like an orchestra. We just go,ooh, those violins are a little screechy over there. We need to bring them down or ooh, you came in a little bit too late. Big bass drum and it didn’t make sense with the overall sound. We’re doing this all the time with food and nap times and where do you put your coat? And I want you to begin to see these, these systems, these rhythms in our lives. As things that you are always going to be tweaking ’cause that’s the other thing that I’m hearing so consistently in the community is that once I’ve told the moms, hey, you’re going to be tweaking these systems all the time. They’ve taken the pressure off themselves of thinking I have to get it right or there is a right system.

There just isn’t that we’re changing our lives all the time. I have a major change in my schedule because I was teaching catechesis of the good shepherd on Thursdays. And we moved to Mondays at the same time that my three girls are doing a homeschooling co-op so now they overlap which required a change in systems for Mondays and the change in system for Thursdays. Oh, and the other thing was, the kids are skiing on Wednesdays. I think through March. So for a couple months we do skiing too. And so nothing is wrong. I didn’t fail at anything. But, the rhythms needed to change. And I’m so comfortable with that now. Because I don’t think that I am a good mom or a bad mom, or that there’s a perfect system. I’m always tweaking based on what I’m going to say, like the sound of my house based on the peace level of my home. It is our job to be the peace center of our homes.

Moms have a special gift of having a pulse on the home and the hearts of everyone in the home. That’s our special gift. We know when the rhythms are off. And we may need to slow down to figure out why we may just go. Something’s not quite right and we have to do a little investigating. Oh, the seven year old. The seven-year-old is feeling left out or the seven year old needs some wins. For me, it’s actually my eight year old right now. She’s I can tell it’s kind of growing and stretching and wanting to establish something that’s hers. She’s not quite as big as the big girls, but she’s not a little kid anymore. And she’s trying to figure that out. And nothing’s wrong. But the rhythm of her life needs to be tweaked a little bit. And I’ll tell you, I’m not even sure the answer right now. I’m just thinking about it. I’m just watching her and I’m thinking about it. I don’t even feel in a hurry about it. But if you imagine that your home should run smoothly all the time. Like, we’re just gonna sit down at the beginning of September and say, okay, here’s a new school year. Here’s our new family life rhythm. And that it’s just gonna be like that. As soon as it’s not, which of course it won’t be. You will think something is wrong with you?

And instead, I just want all of us to realize that our job is the tweaking. It’s the constant tweaking. But when we anticipate that that’s what we’re going to do and we’re not doing it from a place of failure. We are much better at it. We are really good problem solvers. And sometimes we need to remove some sounds. Sometimes we need to say no. I love the idea that sometimes a chapter of our lives comes to an end. Maybe you’ve volunteered for something for a long time. And it’s time to just close that chapter. Maybe one of your kids has been, you know, taking piano lessons and doing that for a while, but it’s really just not, not for that kid. And it’s time to just close that chapter and say, you know what? That was a complete chapter, It’s completed. That feels so much better than saying we quit or fail. And logically, we know we’re not going to do all of the things. In our life for the whole rest of our lives. And yet, because I think we don’t have a great language around completing something. And that is a really good thing. The options we kind of have are quitting and failing. And so sometimes we have to say no. Maybe even to something we’ve done for a long time. Maybe something that we even have hung a little bit of our identity on, I know that someday I will stop teaching catechesis of the good shepherd.

And it’s kind of part of my identity right now, I love it. I really enjoy doing it. I’ve done it for many years, but there will come a point at which I go, you know what? That chapter is complete. And so what is the rhythm of your life feeling like right now? We’re about to head into lent. Thank God and his goodness gave us seasons in the liturgical calendar and I’m a big fan of lent. And just that. That time of reflection, that time of detachment. And so you’re going to have a different rhythm of your life for the Lenten season. What is that going to look like? I want you to take this job of homemaker, take this job off of you holding everyone’s hearts seriously and not in any way, do I think you’re not taking it seriously, but maybe more just to, to think about it differently, like the conductor of an orchestra. And your job is to listen for the discordant sounds for the sounds that are not quite right. And to say, oh, you know what it is. It’s the cellos, they’re out of sync or they’re too quiet. We get to do that in our homes and it’s not because we have failed. It is just literally our job to always be tweaking and that is why I’m such a big fan of taking time on Sundays to think about the home. Somebody posted in one of the Facebook groups that I’m in about meal planning, it was a great thread.

She said, Hey, you know, how are you guys saving money? I think that’s what it was about.It was, it was just about saving money overall, but then a lot of the comments were about food and I commented and I said, listen, I think most people or just living completely reactive lives to the fires in front of them. And if you just spent two hours every Sunday, thinking about your life, Not from a place of pressure. But just sitting with the Lord and saying, Lord, how can I steward this time? This money, this home, my body, my mind, how can I steward it? Better for you, Lord. I think most of us have really great ideas. And I applauded the person who posted, and I said, this is an example of someone who slowed down enough to go. I should probably just ask some other people. That is by nature, not a reactive response. She had to slow down enough to go, you know what? I bet other people have some wisdom to share with me. I’m going to go into this group and ask a question and take the time to read the answers. What is the rhythm of your life? Like right now? What does it need?

What needs more attention? And it can’t be everything. My friend, don’t hit yourself with, you know, I got to get healthy and I got to save money and I got to start reading to the kids and I got to pay better attention to my husband and I got to clean out the pantry. I don’t do the litany of things. I want you to really, really ask yourself, like, what’s one thing. That you could tweak a little bit, that would bring more peace to you and your household. Because it’s very unlikely that Jesus would come down right now and be like, Hey Sterling, I need you to just change all the things. He wouldn’t do that. He would gently guide my heart and say, you know what? I think you can do this right now. I’m with you. You can do this. And we can live more moments like that. I think because the holy spirit lives inside of us, we just, we do, we have this natural sense. Of the rhythm of life, the rhythm of your own heart and of the heart of your home.

Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t make yourself right or wrong. Don’t fall into all or nothing thinking. Just begin to look around your life for opportunities. For tweaking, sock basket here, label there a little bit of training with that eight year old. One is that it could just bring a little bit more peace, your home. Let us not get caught up in the fires in front of us that we do not slow down. To be good stewards. I think lent is such a great time to slow down and to ponder who God is. Why are we here? Why did he choose us for this time? And to really see the work that he has put in front of us, the work that he put in front of you today, what is that work? What is he calling you to do? All right my friends, two things you can come to do with us this lent.

I am doing a fustiness study over on the daily podcast, Catholic Mom Daily. There’ll be a free workbook that you can download everyday, I’ll do a reflection and come join us there. And then in the membership we’re doing a new Lenten Declutter Challenge. And I will talk about that probably more next week, but it’s new. I completely revamped it. I’m very excited about it. It’s going to be heavily about systems and how we continue to declutter our homes. All right, my friends thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.