Everybody has a cross. So it may not be a marriage cross. It might be finances. It might be health. It might be kids’ stuff. It might be in-laws.  We just had a whole bunch of people experience loss from a hurricane.  And so we all have pain.  And crosses.  Things that feel heavy things that feel hard. And then we have thoughts about those things.  

And when we do this work, when we learn about. Coaching.  And when you start challenging your own thoughts and realizing you get to think. Whatever you want about a situation.  That is when your life starts to change.  

And you start to feel like you have more control. And things start feeling calmer and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t negative emotions, but you don’t have that. That feeling of being thrown around by your feelings. By being trapped. By your feelings by.  A shame spiral or a deep depression or buzzy anxiety. That’s with you all the time.  You’re able to flow outside of your brain.  And go, huh? This is what’s going on. These the neutral circumstances of what’s going on.  And I get to think, however, I want to.  About that. 

So. Whenever I share. Stories or testimonials from the Catholic marriage hope program I will do so anonymously and I will change details that don’t matter. To protect people’s anonymity. So if somebody says,  you know, my three-year-old spilled pudding on the couch.  I will probably change that. To be, you know, My seven-year-old was doing art on the couch and spilled glue.  And I do that because really the analogy is the same. 

The situation is pretty much the same, but maybe you happen to have a friend and you know that her four year old spilled pudding on the couch. And I don’t want you to be able to identify those people. And that’s just really, really important to me. This group.  Is so private. We just share the hardest of the hard things with each other. And that is so important than the only way that I can create a group. That does that is.  If everything that we say about the group is really, really anonymous. So. 

I’m just going to read some wins. I have a wins. Area in slack, which is where we communicate. And I’m just going to read some of the wins to you, and then I’ll kind of unpack them for you.  So this person says, oh, after today’s call, I felt calmer and I prayed.  And I meditated on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and how those applied to my vocation of motherhood.  And she was doing this. 

And then one of her kids came and sat beside her.  And she said, Hey, do you want me to read you a book? And he said, no. Which, you know, kids will do that, but she said, you know what? I just started reading anyway. And then he smuggled in and it was a really sweet moment. And then she goes on to describe the rest of the day normal stuff with kids.  But she said. At the end of the day. My husband says, oh, the kids are always fighting. 

And I said, you know what? It was actually a really good day. And it was. What she is realizing is that kids are kids and they’re going to do kid things.  And we can get to the end of the day and we can say, Ugh.  The kids are always fighting by the way, which is another way of saying, oh, we have children.  They’re doing children things.  But she was able to see in the middle of it in the middle of the messy, beautiful life of having kids, it actually was a really good day. 

And I love this example too, because it wasn’t even really about marriage. But as she’s doing this work. She’s improving her experience of her kids too. And the way I do think that this impacts marriage is that so often when we are telling ourselves. A negative story about the kids in our day. And then we complained to our husbands and we’re just trying to connect with him and say, oh, my day was hard. 

But when we complained to husbands husbands here, oh, I failed. My wife is unhappy. And then it’s weird that they can get defensive with us. Mad at us or try to solve our problem. And we’re like, no, I mean, it’s fine. I just wanted to tell you that had a hard day with the kids. 

I love that.  Another person went on a vacation with her husband and she said, we always fight on vacation. There’s always lots of tension and at least one major blow up. And she said, I thought these fights were because of stress and because. I am a people pleaser and feel pressure to make sure each day of the vacation. Makes everyone happy.  And she said this was the most peaceful. Trip. 

She said there was only one moment. Where we started.  To feel a little bit of tension.  And she said she just let it go. She felt the moment where she could like jab back and escalate it and she just let it go and went. No, it’s totally fine.  And she said her husband.  Later, like an hour later, even apologized.  And she was like, we have never navigated it that way before. 

She said, I was just so grateful that we were able to have that family time together. And it was so much easier for me to enjoy myself. And when I was experiencing. Because. Of these tools, because I was able to just watch my thoughts and we also talk a lot about how we speak to husbands and how we have to be accountable for that. And not to be sarcastic and job then. And I just thought that was such a beautiful example of what little progress. Now, if you ask this woman, Hey, do you have a great marriage? 

She probably be like, no, it’s still painful. There’s still a lot of stuff between us.  But were they able to have a whole vacation with their kids without a big argument? Oh, my goodness. Even if you have a different cross.  We tend to think about things in a binary way. It’s either all or nothing. I either have a good marriage or bad marriage.  And.  We do that with all of the crosses that we have, but if we can see these incremental changes,  

Then. It helps us. To experience the growth. With more happiness. It’s not fixed. But instead of focusing on the fact that it’s not completely fixed, you can think, oh, this is great. I applied the tools to this part of my life and it was a win.  And it feels really good to do that. Another woman.  Had told her husband, she didn’t want to do marriage counseling and there was a backstory to this, I think. 

Maybe he was military was a different person. We have a couple of military families. Anyway. It ended up being that he really needed to go talk to a therapist about something specific. So it wasn’t like she was against marriage counseling or she didn’t want to work on the marriage, but.  Something where she felt like he should go. And she said, you know, He was out of town. 

I talked to him on the phone and she said I was very calm and logical. And I kept all of my points centered on me instead of blaming him.  And he took it really well. And he agreed with her. But she said, I love that she added this, even if he didn’t agree, I was ready to stay calm and let him have his feelings. 

So a big thing that I do. In the group as I have them practice. Big conversations. And just assume husband’s going to be the same way that the husband’s always going to be. Are always husband and then to say, okay, how are you going to react when he. Shows up the same way. And in this example, he didn’t, she was so calm. That he responded in a positive way.  But I just thought that was amazing.

Okay. This mom shares. I had a crazy weekend with extra parenting, silent treatment from the husband after some angry, yelling about my plans for the weekend.  He was sick and I just chose not to wait around. So my win is I didn’t make any of that mean anything about me or the kids. I let him do his thing and I did mine. And she says, now this isn’t the marriage I want, but it’s better than me swimming in my thoughts about how he hates me. 

And he thinks I’m an idiot for making plans. I got to spend extra time. But the kids doing what we did and we had so much fun. And this is what the baby steps look like. The baby steps, look like husbands going to have thoughts and feelings and she wasn’t disrespectful. She just went. All right. These are the plans. This is what we’re doing. And oftentimes when.  You know, husbands are on their phones or stay late at work. Or, I don’t know. There’s lots of things that husbands do that make us think he doesn’t care about me or he doesn’t care about the kids. He doesn’t want to be with us. And that thought. Is so painful.  

And it’s optional. You guys totally optional. You could just be like, oh, this is what he wants to do. That’s totally fine. And this is what we’re going to do. Another mom says. When my husband gets really triggered, , he often Bates me and then when I get, when I act badly, he gets mad at me. And.  And then we kind of are mad at each other for doing that. And then he has, she thinks he, this anger that he has is like an emotional release that he needs or wants, or is used to something like that. And so she says last night, I didn’t take the bait. He said some really hurtful things to me.  And I just told him that I loved him and I was on his side. 

And then she ordered dinner and watched her favorite show.  And he kept trying to bait her. But I didn’t say anything back. And even the next day in the morning, he was in bad mood. And she says, I realized that I normally take the bait and fight with him because it’s easier just to get the fight over so he can be more regulated. But she stuck to it and it was really hard, but she did it.  And then her husband apologized and asked if we could move on.

And she said. Ladies. This was so hard and so uncomfortable. But I did something to break our pattern and I feel so proud of myself. And she said, I just moved on without feeling resentment. And this is what it looks like. To change the pattern to not change the husbands. Cause that’s what I say in this program. I’m like, listen, Darlene, I love you, but I can’t change your husband.  But I can help you show up differently. And when we have hope. Which is why I called. The program, Catholic marriage hope, and we have hope.  We are willing to confront our own anger.  We’re willing to just see it. Or if you have a different cross, you might have poutiness or entitlement.  

And you’ll have some of these like immature feelings that are keeping you.  From stepping out of the pattern from making progress. And this is always what growth looks like. And. This was just one day in this woman’s life. Again, her marriage is not completely changed, but it was a profound moment.  And I promise that that experience will wire pretty deeply in her brain. And that’s one of the reasons I really encourage them.  To write the wind down so that when you write it down, it wires it again. 

Oh yeah. You know what, when I don’t take the bait and I just show up with love.  We step out of the pattern. Now. I will tell you. From experience that she will probably take the bait again, we’re this is kind of a two steps forward. One step back situation because humans are emotional and maybe a different day she’ll be tired or have a headache, or have had a really bad day.  We don’t always have the same level.  The same ability to manage our emotions.  But she knows how. And that’s pretty cool. 

Progress does not mean fixing things overnight. It’s baby steps. It’s messy. It’s up and down. But I think. We can do anything with the Lord. I think when we invite him in. And when we are willing to look at our own childish reactions and we all have them. We can start making baby steps and then I want you to celebrate those baby steps.  So if you’re in a really difficult season right now, 

Try to find a baby step out. If you’re calm enough. And if you feel held by the Lord, you can think of one thing. We don’t own. We don’t need programs and coaches or therapy or all of those things. I promise you, the Lord has the answer for you. But. Sometimes there is a group or a person or a book or a podcast that can be really helpful. Be open. To change. So the Catholic marriage hope program. Is open again. It’s open for a week. 

You can go to Catholic mom com.  Dot com slash marriage hope. And you can read about that program.  You can join completely anonymously.  You can check out with an anonymous name. You can put an anonymous name in slack and you can put an anonymous name in zoom.  I thought that was really cool. And a lot of women in the program just like lurk in the background. 

They listen to the replays and they watch what everybody else is doing. And.  I sent out a survey and they said, that’s all I do. And it’s been so helpful. But a lot of women.  Raise their hand in coaching and bring their real things. And I’m so proud of them. And I’m so thankful that enough women are willing to be vulnerable, that we just do incredible work on those calls.  And the slack community is so loving and supportive because here’s the thing.  It’s an unusual cross, a very painful Catholic marriage.  

And we just kind of stand together. We’re just like, Hey, I see you. That is pretty difficult, but you’re, you can handle this. You got this we’re with you. We’re praying for you. God’s with you.  And it’s such a beautiful thing.  And I’ve really been enjoying it these last month. I think it’s been, I think it’s been almost four months now. If you have a painful marriage and you would know this is not like he watches football more than I like and leaves his socks on the floor. Like.  You definitely have thought about leaving.  It’s pretty heavy.  

Come check it out. Or  if you know someone who has a really painful marriage and they’ve never met me.  send them to Catholic marriage hope.com. Cause I have a. One hour video about the program, like just a free webinar and they could check that out first. This is just a very important ministry to me. 

I want to bring women hope.  And whether this is your cross or it’s a different one. I want you to know that you can have a different experience of your life based on the way that you think about it. You can step out of the pattern.  You can go through hard things and you would hold onto yourself and B O K in the storm.  

All of us, all of us can do that.  All right. My friends I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.