The Chaos of May is Coming

And here’s why, it is because it tends to be sports season, graduations, sacraments for a lot of people, like first communion or confirmation. It includes Mother’s day, Memorial day, whether you homeschool your kids or send your kids to school, school tends to be winding down so there are bigger projects that are coming over, trying to wrap things up. It’s also nice out so I think there’s like a collective, hey, I don’t want to do this and I would rather go outside because May is often a very beautiful month. And so, it catches us off guard and Mom’s just feel terrible. They feel stressed, they feel guilt, they feel behind and I just want us to take a deep breath right now we know that this is coming. No, that this is coming and we can set ourselves up for success.

And so in The Catholic Mom Calm community, we are going to be doing a Tame the Mayhem program. And we’re going to hold your hand, making really good plans for May. And then we’re going to hold your hearts through May to deal with whatever comes up. But I wanted to do an episode just to give you an overview of what we’re doing, because you can do it. The steps are not mysterious or proprietary. I think even knowing the steps isn’t enough. I think being in a community, or coming to calls, filling out a workbook. Those things create accountability for us but you don’t need it, you don’t need those things and so I want to share with you an overview of what we’re doing and you can do this, for yourself, even if you aren’t part of the Catholic Mom Calm Community.

Because, you know, that May is coming, it does not need to be a surprise and you can take really good care of yourself when you think about it like the Mom Olympics, okay? I think about a person who is training for the Olympics. First of all, it’s like a lifelong thing that they’re doing; they usually start training as children and there’s many, you know, events and like big, I’m going to use the word tournaments I’m not sure that’s the right word that they have to go through to qualify for when in order to even qualify for the Olympics. But then, they know that they’ve called to fight for the Olympics and there’s a certain amount of months leading up to that so they’re training and they’re getting their body ready. but then when the Olympics actually comes, they just get so laser focused, I’m totally making this up, but I think it’s a fair assumption that they get really laser-focused. They let other things go; they’re not doing regular things at that time, right before the Olympics or at the Olympics. They’ve got a coach. Who’s just like, here’s your water? Here’s your towel. I, somebody, you know, did your laundry. We pre-made all of your food. Just eat it.

We understand that this is how someone should behave in the Olympics because they’re doing this incredible thing that they train for, that they wanted to do, that’s important. And so we’re going to streamline as much as possible so that all you’re doing is waking up and executing. I just think that it is like the Olympics from mass. And we want it, we want to see the kids do it first communion, or confirmation, or graduate from high school or college. We want the kids to wrap up school well, we want, maybe, I don’t know, to celebrate mother’s day, lots of mixed feelings about that, but in general, it’s a holiday and we do celebrate it. We want to enjoy being outside.

Some of you take trips every Memorial day or have traditions around that, so these are all really good and beautiful things. Things we have trained for, things that we want to be a part of and yet because we kind of just are living from day to day, we don’t change the rhythm of our lives to accommodate this crazy month of activities. Okay, so I want you to think about yourself as someone who’s going into the Olympics. So the first thing that you’re going to do is you’re going to go forward and look at all of your commitments for the month of May and decide if you’re going to do them or not. I’m going to keep using the Olympics as an analogy because I think it will be helpful. So imagine you’re going to the Olympics super excited; everyone’s happy for you. Maybe we’re not going to Bible study that month. Bible study is a good thing, maybe you really enjoy Bible study. No one is questioning whether you should go to Bible study or not one your competing in the Olympics.

And so maybe you don’t go to your Bible study in the month of May. It’s a good thing, it’s a holy thing but given the totality of the commitments so that you don’t lose your mind and yell at your husband and yell at your kids, maybe we drop Bible study. Now for some of you going to Bible study may be the rest of the freshmen you need to energize you for the chaos of me. So I don’t think that you should go or not go to Bible study, but I want you to look at every single commitment on your calendar and just go, are we really doing this, this month? You don’t have to decide forever. You don’t have to decide for any of the other months, but just in May given the totality of the commitments, are we still doing this one?

So I’ll tell you, for me we do coffee and donuts at our church once a month, where we have to go to the grocery store, we pick up the donuts, we go to church early, we set up the coffee and everything, and then we serve them after mass. And so even in the busiest of months, even in the Olympics for me, I can still do that. It really, it’s absorbable for me. I got up a little bit earlier that Sunday and we took two cars to mass, so I go in and got the coffee started. My husband brings the kids in it really, it doesn’t affect our lives that much. But I think by May, our park dates have already started. We do park dates on Thursdays. And I think they start up in May. I might choose not to do that. I might choose not to give three hours Thursday morning to taking my kids to the park, which is fun. I like seeing my friends, they like it. It’s a good thing, but I may look at that and go, nope, we’re not doing that or maybe we’re just not doing it on the week that we’re preparing to have a giant graduation party at our house.

We don’t have any of those things this year, and all a lot of you do. I remember, gosh was that last year Lorissa’s son graduated from high school and it wasn’t just the party she had to throw for her son, she loved all of her son’s friends and they had parties and she wanted to go to those ones too. So I remember seeing and kind of notching in my memory, like, remember this Sterling, it’s not just your kid graduating, but it’s all of these other kids who are special to you that also have parties so you may want to go to. And so, go through your calendar and just rigorously decide do you make the cut or do you not? And then let your yes be yes. And your no, be no. No bitterness, no one is making you, no one puts anything on your calendar, except for you.

And so if you decide to do something that is difficult or annoying, or tedious. You just say, hey, I chose this. Let’s say one of your kids, let’s say your kindergartner is having like a musical performance and maybe it’s the school that’s having the musical performance, but your kindergartener has one tiny part, but you have to go be there for three hours at an inconvenient time for this five minutes that your kindergartner does something. That would be annoying to me, I would not feel like doing that but I would decide ahead of time as I looked at my calendar Sterling are we doing this? It’s important to the kid. I’ve decided that I’m going and then I would just let my yes be yes. I wouldn’t sit there feeling annoyed or resentful because I would just be like, hey, we just chose to be here. I would also full disclosure, probably bring some earbud headphones and listen to an audiobook while they were doing it. If it was dark, if it wasn’t dark, I wouldn’t do that because it would be rude.

So let your yes be yes. And your no be no. And you don’t need to explain yourself when you give your no. If someone says, hey, can you volunteer to bring the cupcakes for this thing? You just go, nope. They go, why are you gonna be like, ah, May is really busy I can’t do that. So go through your calendar, let your yes be yes and your no be no. The next thing you’re going to do is you’re going to look at all the things that are on your calendar and just go, hey, what do you need? If we’re doing back to back to back things on a Thursday, what is going to be for dinner. Are we grabbing food out or are we packing food in the car? What are we doing? And then, you know, do you need to, I’m not a big fan of massages, but I know a lot of you are like, do we need a massage that week? Do we, do you need to get your workout in, in an even bigger way? Because the month is so crazy.

What do you need? How can you take care of yourself? These are not surprising things, like if you have a graduation, if you have five graduation presents that you have to buy, let’s get the bags and the tissue paper and the presence, and let’s just knock them all out on a calm Sunday at the end of April so they are all ready to go. There is no reason why we have to leave that to the last minute and be scrambling. That’s a great example of a way that you could love your future self and just knock it all out. Teacher presence, I don’t know what everybody does. Most of the stuff is solvable ahead of time and we know what’s going to happen. And then the third thing, and this is primarily what we teach in our membership is to honor your commitments to not just make the plan, but to honor it, to see it through and the way that we do that is you learn how to talk to your brain.

You learn how to encourage yourself and then when you’re feeling upset, you learn how to feel your feelings and settle yourself down and get your brain on board with doing it. Like, hey, Brian, I know you’re tired, but if we could just do this load of laundry right now you’re going to feel so much better about that tomorrow. And you can write yourself some words of encouragement. Just like you would for someone in the Olympics, like I believe in you, you got this, you’ve trained for this. You’re a good mom. It’s only one month. And for some of you, it may not be crazy the whole month. It might just be crazy, like two weekends. Learning how to build trust with yourself is just one of the best gifts that you can give yourself. It’s one of the ways that I really help women enjoy their lives more. It’s just learning to trust themselves. Everything just feels less serious. There’s less pressure, there’s less guilt. You don’t know what you need. You know what you need.

So, you’re looking at your calendar, you’re going to prepare for the things that are coming up, and then you’re going to honor your plans. It is very simple, but despite it being simple most humans won’t do it. They won’t do it, like you’re probably in your car and now like yesterday, yes, that sounds great I’m going to do that and then you won’t and so I want you to come join us in the Catholic Mom Calm community for $49. What if I promise you the best may that you’ve ever had, what if I promised that you would be able to have peace in the craziest month of the year? And I know that that’s what’s happened because we did this program last year and that’s what people said at the end, we do a celebration at the end where we’re like, we just, we all, we get on zoom meeting style where we can see each other and we just share our wins and women will say, Uh, you know, I packed my food and it was amazing, or I told my mother-in-law no or, you know, I showed up at the kids thing, but I had a good attitude about it or someone got sick and I just pivoted and here’s what I did.

Because we’re all doing it together and I’m telling you that’s worth it. It is what you want. You want to be a present mom. You want to not be stressed out all the time and I can teach you the tools to do that and I can coach you through the unusual things, then together we cheer each other on. We also put you, if you want it’s optional, but we put you in an accountability group where you can get even more support and I think that’s one of the most valuable things that we do because we’re so lonely and we’re so disconnected and we don’t have Moms to talk to anymore. And just so nice to talk to someone it was just going to love on you. And who will believe in you more than you believe in yourself. That’s all we need right on the hard days we just need someone to say, hey, you got this I believe in you.

And the women in our program, you know, we’ll point you back to Jesus. I’ll pray about it, pray for the gifts of the holy spirit. It’s really quite incredible. So we’re opening the doors to the membership today as this podcast comes out on Wednesday and they will be open all the way through the end of April. And, then they close. I can’t remember for closing them on the last day of April or the first day of may. But, the program is available already. It’s a short video, I think it was less than an hour where I just walk you through the mayhem workbook and then we’ll be doing the preparation for me together. We have a couple of calls for that, and then we have to deal with the craziness of May calls during may.

And so I want you to imagine they’re going to the Olympics and you want a coach who’s right next to you going it’s time to drink water, here’s your towel. I made you some chicken and broccoli, eat it and stay focused. That’s what this program will be like for you and I was talking to my husband about money. We were just talking about money and I said, gosh, you know, I said things are really tight. I think if I were part of Catholic Mom Calm, I might cut it. And I should be honest with myself about that. Because I’m in charge of this whole program and my goal is to make it really worth it. And he said, but don’t you think May is the best time? Like of all the months, that would be the month that you would need to do it. And I thought, yeah that’s true. We do a lot of things and we solve a lot of problems in many different areas of life, but I think May is such a crazy time, but it is also the time that we want to soak up and enjoy the most with our kids. Those milestone moments, you know, either Sacramento, sacker, mentally, or academically.

And a lot of times we’re also trying to eat well. Because summer’s coming. So, I don’t know if the holy spirit would just move him to say that, but I thought, yeah, you know, I really, I agree. I think it’s the best time and I think it’s totally worth it to get to the end of May and just say, wow, I was less stressed. I felt less guilt and I was more present. I think it’s really worth it. So I want to invite you to come join us. And if you don’t, just totally fine. Listen to this podcast episode again and do what I said, find a buddy you guys can help each other. Let us be women, love and support each other through the craziness of May. It is not your fault our culture just has increasingly difficult standards to meet. We can do it with grace. We can do it with the Lord. I’m going to be at peace, no matter what happens. All right my friends I’m praying for you, please pray for me.

Thank you so much for listening. and have a blessed day.