Christ is the Answer

And instead, I just want you to know that, like, sin is very real and there will be a judgment, we will be held accountable for everything that we’ve done. It is all being noticed and tracked and so often the things that we’re upset about in our life are not even salvation issue things which doesn’t mean that they’re not important, but I just want you to lay it at the foot of the cross. Keep coming back to the cross and saying, Lord, I’m really upset about this thing, but how am I doing? How am I doing in my prayer life? How am I doing with my sinfulness and am I guarding my eyes? I will tell you guys over and over again to guard your eyes. What are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you consuming? Does it please the Lord? I am continually in my life, tightening that up and being like, no, I just keep making the bar higher and higher. The other day I was watching something and they just took the Lord’s name in vain a couple times pretty quickly and I was just like, I don’t even care what this is about. I’m out. I just will not listen to that.  

It hurts him every time, it hurts him. So I was listening to a Father Ripperger talk, he’s an exorcist, I don’t know that I’m on board with a hundred percent of what he says, so let me just say that, I don’t know that I’m not, but I don’t know that I am but one of the things he was sharing about, which was so interesting is when he’s, you know, performing an exorcism, he gets to talk to the demons. He can ask them questions and so he was asking them about Mary. And he said, you know, he was asking like, why the demons hate Mary so much and this one that he was talking to you said, that Mary never once in her life counted the cost to herself. For anything that God asked her to do she never once counted the cost. And just this morning, I set my alarm for 6:30 and I ended up getting up at seven and I just thought, yeah, I counted the cost. And that’s a silly example, but I think we’re doing that all over the place where I’m like, oh, I was just tired and I didn’t sleep very well. So in my mind, I had a really good reason but I was just like, ugh, this sucks for me, right. She didn’t count the cost and she knew, right. She knew what was going to happen. She knew how much pain she was going to go through and he asked her just incredible things. I mean, even just from the beginning, he was like, hey, I need you to be pregnant. 

Even though everyone’s going to hate that and I need you to have this baby and be stable. We need you to go to Egypt. I didn’t like to just think about her life, it was just full of tons of stuff she probably didn’t want to do, but that’s what was so incredible about her is she, her fiat were just complete. It was all the time, yes Lord I will do that and so when I see that Christ is the answer to everything. What I mean is that I want you to talk to him, I want you to ask him what you should be doing. It’s so easy for us to pray to him, but I want you to ask him, Lord, what do you want me to do here? I want you to believe that he will tell you, and then I want you to be like Mary and not count the cost and just do it, now of course, we’re not going to do that because we’re not married and we are sinful. 

So we are going to count the cost and we’re going to thrash around a bit and some of us we’ll avoid doing the thing that God wants us to do for a while. But whenever I’m feeling frustrated in my life and thinking that something isn’t working or something isn’t fair I just bring it to the Lord and I go, Lord, what do you want me to see here? How do you want me to show up? How do you want me to grow in virtue? Oh, I really don’t like asking that question, but I do. I ask the question, how do you want me to grow in virtue? And usually it’s pretty clear how I need to grow in virtue in a situation. And now, I just, I love this idea of not counting the cost. I was just saying, yes, I will do that Lord, I will step up. I will grow in virtue and so what are you going through right now? What feels heavy on your heart? Maybe you have something you’re trying to discern, but there’s so many things in our lives where we think it is an external thing or a thing of the world that we need.  

I need money or a different house, or my body needs to look different or I’m, you know, my family members need to act differently. But none of those things are the answer Christ is the answer, go ask him. I am so surprised how often I will be praying about one topic, let’s just pick schooling, let’s say I’m just like worried about a schooling thing and I’m bringing to the Lord, I’m like, oh, school for this kiddo. And I’m feeling worried about it. And then he’s like, hey, I really need you to do this totally other thing and it’s not related at all. But who am I to question that? Who am I to think that I know more? Then the God of the universe and I know some of you are thinking Sterling, I don’t hear God’s voice or maybe I do, but I’m not sure if it’s mine, I’m telling you this just takes practice. But nothing is more important than this to practice. Getting your marching orders from the Lord is the most important thing. So I write about that in my book, I write about, “How to hear God’s Voice”, “How it sounds”. I’m sure we have some podcast episodes about that. I definitely know that I cover that in the daily podcast because I cover the whole book and the daily podcast.  

How do you discern God’s voice? What does it sound like and how are you blocking it? There are several ways that we block his voice so if he keeps sitting down and you feel like, oh, I’m just not getting it, you know, there’s some ways that we block that. And I want all of us just to continually ask for forgiveness, that we look for answers outside of Christ. We do that all the time. We just get so self-involved and we get so drawn into the sparkliness of the world. Ask for forgiveness about that, say, Lord, forgive me. It’s so silly that I went somewhere else for the answer and not to you. And not all of you have Catholic husbands or husbands that actively pray, but this is something that I ask of my husband too. I’ll just, we don’t even talk about things. On the first pass. I just say, hey, I’m thinking about this and I just really want you to pray about it and tell me what you hear. Like, if something is a new idea, we don’t sit and hash it out with our own human brains first. And, you know, I forget sometimes, but for the most part now we’re, we’re in the habit of let’s pray about it then we’ll talk about what we heard, because just think about that. Let’s say, you’re trying to decide between public school and private school next year, and you make your pro-con list and then you guys will talk about it and you talk about it for 45 minutes. And then later you pray about it and God gives you a really clear answer. 

Well, then we didn’t need to have that conversation or not the way that we had it, right. If you’re struggling with your health, which is one out of three women have crazy weird auto-immune mysterious things, one out of three. Which tracks were my friends that can feel so disheartening and so discouraging. I just sit with the Lord and say, how do you want me to show up? What do you want me to do? I am yours, do with me what you will, Lord. And don’t stop asking, keep asking him and then do what he says. I pray a lot which doesn’t necessarily mean in minutes. To me, it’s almost more in priority, like it is just the most important thing. Sometimes I pray for three minutes, even when I’m discerning something, I’ll sit down and take out a notebook and just, you know, do an, Our Father, Hail Mary and sit with the Lord for a minute and then ask him a question. So it’s not always the length in minutes, but it’s the priority that I give it and the importance that I give it. That is where my decision-making comes from.  

And I give the Lord all of my tears. I just say, this is really painful, Lord and I just sit with him with my tears, whatever they are. And he doesn’t solve everything; he doesn’t take away all of our crosses. And so I know that if he hasn’t taken away our crosses that there is a reason. This is part of my story and I’ve had enough of those now to trust it right where you kinda, you can look at something that was really painful 5, 10, 20 years ago and say, yeah, you know, I really see why I had to go through that or how that made me stronger or how that brought me closer to the Lord. I’ve got some faith about that, just trust in the painfulness. Like this is for a reason and then I just let him hold me. Like, if he’s not going to take it away. I just let him hold me and I ask for the grace and the strength to carry it. But the world right now is trying to sell you on the idea, the things of the world will help you, will solve your problem.  

And none of the things in the world will solve your problem; not deep down, but Christ will. Christ cares about the important thing, which is that we will either spend a turnout eternity in hell or eternity in heaven. And I don’t want you to walk around in paralyzing fear over that, but I do want you to be like, that’s the game we’re playing, those are the stakes. You know, like who cares, what our body looks like or what our bank account looks like. And who cares what jobs our kids have. They’re playing the same internal game and I want to make sure they know how to play it. So much of the work that we do here is about managing your thoughts and the thing is the world and the demons and all of that, they are trying to get your thoughts to be anxious.  They are trying to get you to think of anything, but God. Just notice that, notice how much you think about things that are God. I’ve been working on that lately, just in my free time, like in my free time, just meditating on any of the mysteries of the rosary, I’ll just pick one. And in my mind, it’s almost like I just play a video of these moments. And I just think about God. I think about his goodness. I think about what he did for us. I think about how awesome he is, like wow. And so I just want to give you a hug and say being a human is painful. I don’t know if it’s more painful in 2024 than it has been in other times, but it feels a bit bananas to me, just like all the things.  

All the noise, all the information, oh, my goodness that football player guy. I haven’t really staying off social media, but so I feel like I was a little late to that party. What was his name? I can’t think of it, Harrison, gave the commencement speech and just look at what happened. Look at what happened on our own, can’t forget for a second that it made the world mad. I expect that and I expect them to chirp about it. But look at what it did among Catholics, it was wild. Why are we paying attention to that? Why are we talking about that? And we’ve just been trained to know like that just wouldn’t have happened 50 years ago. It wouldn’t have been splashed everywhere. You wouldn’t have seen it 10 times a day everywhere. And honestly, I didn’t because I took all the things off my phone and I just haven’t been  checking things, I’ve just been going in and posting things from my work. And I’ll tell you, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I just want to spend my time thinking about the Lord. I don’t want to be anxious or fearful. I want to go outside and listen to the sound of the birds. Anytime you want to calm down, open your door, go listen for birds, it’s amazing how you can almost always hear one.  

Christ is the answer, let us just cling to him and then by the way, the world looks beautiful again, when you do that, when you cling to Christ, you just, I’m drinking this cup of tea right now and it’s so warm and it smells so good and it’s you just really start to appreciate simple things like that. And I go in and out of being good at that, right. I go in and out of phases where I’m being really pulled in by worldly things. I’m really caught up in things and then I detach myself and I pull back and I come back to Catholic things. And I’m not saying that we all need to choose the Benedict option and go live in the woods. I don’t mean that, but you don’t need to check your phone 45 times a day, 45. You don’t need to read the news, it’s the same thing all the time. So, if you’re struggling with things that feel really real, you’re like Sterling, the money thing is really, real, my helping is really real, I believe you. That is totally real and probably painful but go ask God what to do about it. Get out of your head, get out of spinning, get out of ruminating and just spend more time with him. Pray for the gift of wisdom or knowledge or fortitude, so I would pray if I felt really hopeless, I would pray for the gift of knowledge because that one corresponds with the virtue of hope. If I was feeling really tired and like, I just don’t know how I’m going to do this or rank it, I would pray for the gift of fortitude, right. If I’m trying to make a decision, I would pray for the gift of counsel.  

If I’m trying to navigate something about my faith, maybe something with the parish or your kids are each situation I would pray for the gift of understanding, that really is about understanding our faith. If I was struggling with overdoing something, overeating, over drinking, overspending, over scrolling, I would pray for the gift of fear of the Lord. Because that is the one that helps us grow in temperance. If I was struggling with interpersonal relationships, I would pray for the gift of wisdom because that corresponds to the virtue of charity. And if I had really low self-esteem like if my negative self-talk was really out of control and I was really beating myself up. I would also pray for the gift of wisdom because you are lacking charity for yourself. So I know today was a little bit of a hodgepodge of spiritual things, but I realized that myself for this podcast have been like, what do they mean for the summer? What do they mean for their motherhood? I’ve been really practical and I just, I want you to know that this is how I live my life, the way that I create all of those other things for you guys is because I spend so much time with God.  

Asking him how I can grow in virtue and how I can avoid the occasions of sin and knowing that he is the answer to everything. And that’s why, if you guys come join us for keep your cool over the summer, I’m challenging everyone to pray for 10 minutes and to plan for 10 minutes. And, you know, it’s just one of the things that’s so easy to do, but it’s so easy not to do. But when you do that, when you really sit and talk to the Lord for 10 minutes and then plan out either the day for doing in the morning or the following day for doing an evening. It is amazing how much order comes to your life because you were putting things in the proper order, you were praying and you were getting the plan from him, by the way, you’re getting the plan from him and then carrying it out. Because, you know, when you say, Lord, what do you want me to do tomorrow? He might say something like, you know, put more love into the world. Well, you still have to decide what meals you’re serving. You know, he never says I never hear my prayer life Sterling, take the kids to the park at 10:00 AM tomorrow, right. But he might say something like show them who I am. If God told you in your prayer life, show the kids who I am. What would that mean? And it might be to take them to the park and say, look at these beautiful trees. Look at our friends. Look how blessed we are. God is so good. By the way, side note, this is hilarious. They bulldozed our park here. We had one park where we could take the kids and they bulldozed it and had put up the most giant ridiculous indoor pickleball court. It’s just like who on the city council was like, let’s take it, I’ve always lived in a city where there were many parks and here there’s just one. They just tore it all down to put up an indoor Pickleball court or many courts, I don’t know. So, anyway, this is the summer we’re having to rethink mom’s day at the park we’re having to find other places. So I love you, God loves you so much. Hell is real, like we’ve got our, lock it up. We better check in on those vices friends.  

I don’t know what this is, how it goes, but if you knew, if you knew that you were going to have to sit in a movie theater and someone was going to show you every sin, like, I just picture it being like that old lady from monsters, Inc. who’s next, and then on a video camera, they show you every single one and they’re like, this was the cost. Maybe this is your purgatory cost for that.  We think in time, so I bet that is kind of how it works, but it’s instant obviously, I don’t know. But if you knew that you were going to have to watch every single sin on a video camera, especially in front of other people, I don’t know if they do it in front of other people, but if there was that level of an accounting, oh boy, I think we would live very differently. It’s just that it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind, right? And so one of the things I want you to pray for when you’re talking to the Lord is like, Lord, help me see my sinfulness more clearly and to not do it. I don’t know how that works. When we say that, you know, when we confess our sins to Jesus forgets them, but I don’t think that means that there isn’t an accounting still, I believe there’s still an accounting for them. I would rather think of a worse situation that then drives me to sin less than to assume it’s going to be a lovely, easy situation and then be indulgent with myself, right. So it really doesn’t matter whatever you need to do to get yourself to sinless. 

Oh, I just got a book, I haven’t read it yet. It’s kind of in my to be read pile, but it’s, I think it was called glittering vices and I wanted a book that was like, what is a low level sin. Sinful things that we do that we barely even notice. You know, because obviously we know the big ones but I think it’s worth exploring, like, what are the little ones. So Christ is the answer, he is the alpha, he is the omega. He’s where everything comes from without him, you would be a wretched sinner. You would probably commit mortal sin every day if it weren’t for God. I know we think we’re all like, so above that, but without the grace of God, we would all just be so wretched. And so it is only even because of the grace of God that you are, where you’re at but he is good and he loves you and his mercy is endless and he wants to just give you a big bear hug and say, I love you. But he also hates sin and he wants us to be better about that. So, if you want to be with a bunch of moms who talk about things like that, right or we hold each other up to this. This idea that we are. We are Catholics first and foremost and we don’t want to be angry and we don’t want to sin. We want to have a fun summer without compromising our souls. I want you to come spend the summer with us. 

Today is the last day to sign up, so the door closed at the end of today, June 5th and they’re going to close for the whole summer. We’re just, we’re grabbing everybody. We’ll put you guys into accountability groups so you can make friends and whoever is with us. At the end of the day on June 5th is who’s going to be with us for the summer. So don’t wait, go check it out. Go to catholicmom.com/keep your cool.com even if you forget that and just go to our website, there’ll be a big banner that says what we’re doing and June, July, and August. I’m going to hold your heart and your soul, I think we will have fun. But I think we’re going to do it in a way that really honors the Lord. I’m gonna be like Mary, we’re going to do what he asks us and not count the cost, I think that’s so beautiful.

All right my friends, I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.