So across the board, women are a little bit more and they just label it neurotic than men, and so it makes sense that the happiest demographic would be male. And then my friend and I were talking about why is it that evangelical husbands, particularly married, evangelical men, are happier than other people? 

So then our other friend chimes in and says her daughter has been going to Protestant use group. And she said they actively talk about men being husbands and being fathers and taking care of their families, really starting from a young age, there’s just kind of this culture of building them up to feel the importance and the honor of being a husband and being a father.

And she’s noticed that, you know, we don’t necessarily do that on the Catholic side. And of course maybe out there, there’s some awesome Catholic youth group that’s doing that. I’m not saying never, but I think we can agree that by and large the Catholics are not preparing men very well for the expectations of marriage and fatherhood, both in how sacred and beautiful they are, but also how much work is involved. 

I remember when I first got married to my husband, he had a friend who had been raised Catholic and was pretty grumpy because he really felt that his parents had made it sound like if he was Catholic and if he waited to have sex until he got married and he married a good Catholic girl, that he would be happy.

Now, on the flip side, having been a parent for a while here, I do see that kids kind of hear things that we don’t say and they make conclusions that we did not mean for them to make. So who knows what his parents actually said. I think it has nothing to do with them necessarily, but he came away with this message.

And I think we can understand how he got there. I mean, I think in an effort to get these kids to save themselves for marriage and to marry someone Catholic, we do kind of make it sound like that’s the right way and we shine it up. And I don’t know that we necessarily, at the same time give them enough information about how hard marriage and parenting is.

So in one way during this episode, I’m gonna say that we should be a little bit more negative, and then I’m gonna circle back around to why I think we end up being too negative. So hang with me. 

So here we are. My friends and I are talking about how in the Protestant circles, at least on the outside, and we know that there’s a lot of divorce there too, but at least on the outside, the way that they’re talking to the teens, they are really setting these boys up to understand the honor and the importance of being the spiritual leader of your household and taking care of your wife and your kids and being, you know, firm but loving.

And we don’t see, I think, as much of that on the Catholic side. So I think that when. Catholic dads get thrown into it. They’re a bit surprised and they’re not as well trained. And I think that they are often unhappy because it’s very different than what they expected. And my friend and my husband’s friend would have conversations with him about that because they started having kids a lot younger than we did ’cause my husband got married later.

And I don’t remember how many kids they had at this time. But anyway, a typical Catholic family. Had a bunch of kids and he was just basically like, life is really hard and he’s not wrong, you know? And really he was also saying it wasn’t very fun. It wasn’t very fun. And I will say, being in the thick of the little kid, years of six kids, I totally get how you could think. This is not very fun. 

And I do think that we have to go out of our way. To find fun and to create fun and to feel joy, and to feel sparkle and anticipation and dreams. The feeling of dreaming, because it’s not our default mode and it’s really hard to do. Then, and this brings me to my main point about this podcast.

Then culturally, Catholics, I think, tend to sit in the pocket of. I just offered up. Suffering is really good to the point that we kind of idolize suffering and it’s what we focus on and it’s what we lift up in each other. When I was Protestant, it was a good time, you guys, it was fun. It was like Jesus loves you. He will help you with that. Everyone was always praying with me. I felt so surrounded by love and joy and it felt so positive. 

And of course, we’re all humans living human lives, which means amidst all those people, there were very hard things, but I don’t remember it feeling that way. I remember people praying for each other and hard things, but just like the punchline was that life is good. God is good. This is beautiful. Something good will come out of this. 

Now on the other side of the fence, I think redemptive suffering is such a beautiful message. It is so beautiful. It is so special. I really genuinely feel sad and sorry for the Protestants that do not have this message, right? Redemptive suffering is the concept that God lets us participate. We get to be coworkers with him, participate in the passion. 

He doesn’t need us to. It was complete without us, but because he loves us, he gives us this opportunity to take our pain and our suffering and like commingle it with his suffering to participate in this huge redemption arc. 

And so we can offer our suffering up for the salvation of sinners for the conversion of people who do not believe for certain causes like abortion, to be obliterated for certain people. We can offer up our suffering to the Lord, so we can participate in this amazing, you know, really mystical complex. I’m sure we could never understand it with our human brains. Things that he did for us.

I think that’s so beautiful. I have experienced some very, very deep pain in my life, and I do not know how people experience that level of pain without the concept of redemptive suffering. So I am team redemptive suffering. I think it’s so beautiful. I think that can be joyful, but the way that we end up doing you guys kind of makes us sound like a bummer.

It really does. It’s kind of just my general feeling of a lot of Catholic spaces, not all just tends to be this die to yourself, offer it up, you know, have humility like Mary, and you can see that all of those things are good and can be true. 

But if the general vibe of our club, let’s call it a club for a second. Not minimizing it, but let’s just call it that, is kind of. Look for suffering, celebrate suffering, talk about suffering, offer the suffering up, and then we go over to the Protestant side, which is like, God is so good and he takes care of us and he provides what we need. And I don’t know, it was just a lot more gushy.

My question is, how can we land in the middle where we as Catholics bring in the truth and beauty of redemptive suffering? Without idolizing suffering and necessarily dwelling on it or searching for it because brains will search for what you tell them to search for. I have this program in the Catholic Mom Calm membership, called Raising Saints.

And one of the exercises that I have parents do with their kids is I say, okay, I’m gonna read you a story and I want you to pay attention to every time that I mention, I forgot what colors I picked, so let’s just say blue. So I read them this cute story about these kids on a sailboat. I think it’s on a sailboat and something about ice cream. And I mentioned the color blue a few times, but I also mentioned other colors. 

And then at the end of the story you say to your kids, okay. Can you tell me the things that were red and the kids can’t because their brains were so focused on looking for the things that were blue. That’s how brains work. If you say, brain, please look for all the ways that I’m suffering so that I can offer that suffering up your brain will be primed to look for suffering.

If instead, you prime your brain to look for miracles or grace or mercy. You know, any combination of those things, your brain will start to look for that. I love asking people about a miracle that they’ve experienced in their lives. ’cause we tend to think of miracles like the Eucharistic Miracles or people who’ve had miraculous healing.

Like all of a sudden they could see. We think of those miracles, but the truth is, all of us have experienced something that was unexplainably miraculous. Where it’s like it shouldn’t have been that way. It doesn’t really make sense. An example for me was how we got the house that we’re currently living in. 

In Sandpoint. So I live in Sandpoint, Idaho, which is an hour north of Coeur d’Alene, and we bought this house in January of 2021. Y’all, do you remember the market in January of 2021? It was bananas, especially if you were trying to move to a red state and. Just everybody was offering cash for everything, and we didn’t have cash. We had a conventional loan. We had to sell our house. I mean, it just seemed hopeless. 

And I’m not gonna tell the story, it’s very long, but I would describe it as miraculous. Like there was no reason why we should have gotten the house that we did, and I just attribute all of it to the Lord, and it was just a miracle. It couldn’t have happened without him. 

And you have something like that in your life, just something miraculous where God just swooped in and maybe changed the direction of your life or said yes to something that was amazing or said no to something that you wanted, but something even better happened.

And yet, because the brain. Its basic design is to keep you safe. It’s gonna look for danger. And so if you’re a human, and then on top of that, you happen to be a Catholic human, your brain is pretty good at looking for suffering. But we know. That suffering just for the sake of suffering is not holy. 

And I think one of the best examples of that is in St. Faustina’s diary. She wanted to wear a hair shirt or one of the chains around her wet waist that kind of dragged her body down. And she might’ve wanted both at one point, which is why I am confusing it. But anyway, she wanted one of those things and the Lord said. You have to ask your superior for permission and then you have to be obedient.

And the mother Superior said, no. The mother superior was like, Faustina. No, you can’t keep adding crazy, extra suffering onto your life. ’cause Faustina also had health issues. And I think it’s just such a great example that you can have a heart for the Lord, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants you to wear a hair shirt. You guys. 

Now I do think that there are some saints that he’s called to suffering, right? The saints who lived in the desert, the saints who were hermits, like there are many forms of suffering that he calls us to step into. And then he calls us to trust him and have a good attitude about that suffering, and that’s when we can participate in redemptive suffering.

But he does not call us to have a negative bias about everything. He does not call us to walk around. And look for all of the negative things and then offer those things up. Our default setting should not be Scrooge Mc, Scrooge Duck. Okay. And I do think that we’re doing that, and I think we could just as a community, work a little bit harder to talk about joy and miracles and mercy and grace and how good God is.

And imagine if when you got together with your friends, you were like, how has God blessed you this week? And then we celebrated that together and we were looking for those things. This is a very silly example, but I had a very busy day yesterday and I was trying to fit in a bunch of things in a three hour period of time.

And it was just gonna be tight. It was gonna be a little bit tight. I think I could have pulled it off, but one of my calls. Ended up saying, Hey, can we meet several hours later? And I said yes. And all of a sudden it opened up space in that three hour chunk so that I had a lovely amount of time to do the things that I needed to do, and I totally had time to do the call later in the day.

And to me, that’s just an example of the small gifts that God gives us, the little graces. Why aren’t we talking about that more? Where he just kind of smooths things out for us. That happened the other day. We got all green lights and we really needed them and it just, whatever we were doing, we ended up being there on time and feeling really good about it.

And I remember saying, thank you, Lord. Thank you Lord for those green lights. It was a small miracle. But as Catholics, we just, and I think it’s because redemptive suffering is so beautiful and it is so special and it is a tenet of our faith. I don’t think any of the other faiths have that. That we wanna share it. I just wanna caution us. I just want us to be careful because we also want to make Christianity attractive.

And I don’t think that means we need to have bands in the church and coffee. And have the once saved, always saved thing, right? I mean, the Protestants have lost some things in their attempt to be attractive, so I don’t think we should swing that way, but I do think that we could make Catholicism seem like less of a bummer.

And we can do that even while maintaining really traditional and holy things. I might say that the Latin mass might feel kind of dry and boring. If you don’t understand the Latin mass compared to a regular Novus Ordo mass, right? And so that might take some education. 

I don’t think just because something seems slow or calm, that we necessarily say, Hey, this isn’t fun enough. Let’s make it more fun so people wanna come. I am not saying that, but even in a Latin mass parish. I wanna go look at what their youth group is doing. And I wanna say what we’re teaching to that youth group is attracting them to the Lord. 

And I think Father Mike Schmitz is such a great example of how you can speak the truth, but in such a way that is interesting and compelling and draws the young people to him. And then when we explain the truth to them, it’s interesting how many young people do feel drawn to the Latin mass. Right. It is so beautiful. It is so reverent. 

I am seeing a huge revival in our parish around sacred music and the kids wanting to listen to and sing beautiful sacred hymns, and I can see that it’s becoming cool to do that, but we had to make it fun for the kids to sing and get together. And we do it around campfires and on camping trips. Like the adults had to make it seem interesting and then they enjoy doing it. 

And now it’s this incredible, beautiful part of the kids here. I would say the age is like 10 to 16 right now. So one, just check your own brain. You know, you may not be able to affect what’s happening at the youth group in your parish? Okay? 

And I’m not asking you personally to go prepare all the young men to be married, but let’s pray for all the people who do. By the way, let’s pray for all youth group leaders and all of those who affect and influence our young people. That they lead them to vocations and they lead them to be good and holy husbands and fathers and priests, of course. 

But we can begin by what is your brain looking for? Are you looking for things that are blue? Are you looking for suffering all the time, or are you looking for awe and wonder? Today actually, I set up bank accounts for all six of my kids. My oldest got a job. So we were like, okay, I feel like it’s time. Let’s open up bank accounts for all the kids. 

And I did it online. You can video chat with most banks. I think we have a small credit union, but even with that one, we can do it online. And I could tell the lady was like, oh, I’m sorry, this is taking a while. And I said, Are you kidding? I said, I think online video banking where I can open up kids’ accounts without going there is the most amazing thing. 

I am in such awe and wonder of online banking. I mean, I used to have to take three little kids to the bank and then they’d touch everything and they wouldn’t sit with me and then bless them. But the people, the tellers would be like, would you like sticky colored candy for your kids? And I’m like, guys, guys, that’s only gonna make it worse. 

And then, you know, I usually, I think would say yes if the kids heard. ’cause if I said no, then they would cry. It was a horrible experience. I really did not like going to the bank. And all of a sudden it feels like to me, kind of overnight, never have to go to the bank anymore. 

And so here I am in the comfort of my own home while my kids are doing other things, video chatting with this lady while she sets up bank accounts for my kids. I just think that’s so incredible. That is the kind of awe and wonder that I think that we can have and listen. The world. If you let it, it feels extremely negative right now.

The news, what people are talking about, I’m not even gonna list this stuff. You know, this stuff. I don’t have to list it. And yet we’re missing out on the incredible advancements in technology or the ease of doing life. And I just think video banking is such a great example of that. And it’s so beautiful.

And I want you to consider this is coming out in the summer, but whatever season you’re in. But for you summer folks, what if you’re having an amazing summer? Your brain might be telling you it’s hard and there’s been sibling fights and the house is a mess and whatever it is, right? But if you zoom out and you start to look at the summer as a whole, like what if the summer of 2025 was pretty cool?

What if you’re having a good summer? And I know one ever feels like that. Oh my gosh, what happened yesterday? I don’t know. I just remember having that moment, like, kids are so ridiculous. 

Someone did something yesterday that was ridiculous. And it’s so easy to take micro moments and then feel like, oh, today is hard, and this whole week has been hard and this whole month has been hard and summer sucks. It is so easy to do that. 

Which by the way, I don’t even think we’re doing that and then involving redemptive suffering at all. I think we’re just complaining. But what if it’s true that we can have those ridiculous moments with the kids? Or even some objectively very hard things, like maybe you traveled with small children and it was very difficult.

But if we zoom out, you can still go. Yeah, we had a nice summer. We had a pretty good summer. And how many of you woke up thinking that today, probably almost none of you. So I just think the mix of having a brain that’s already default programmed to look for danger and hard things, plus being Catholic, which kind of culturally has a weird mixed up sense of suffering.

I think there’s some truth in there, but I think we just take it a little too far and I just wanna bring us back to this place of Jesus is amazing. He’s so wonderful. He died for our sins. It’s so exciting. One of the things I love about watching The Chosen is I love watching the excitement of all of the Jewish people when they realize the Messiah has come because they’ve been waiting for so long and here he is and it’s so exciting.

And then it must’ve been so exciting when he came back, you know, for the resurrection. And for the time that he was with the people after the resurrection and all the hundreds, maybe thousands of people that saw him, and then afterwards the people who told other people that he died and rose again, right?

There’s this awe and this wonder, and I think it’s just so easy for us to have lost a little bit of that 2000 years later. But it is still true. It is still exciting that the Messiah came to earth and then died for our sins and then rose from the dead three days later. And no one has ever done that.

I’ve seen, like a meme online that says the easiest way to start a new religion is to die and then rise from the dead three days later. And I just think that’s so funny because that’s true, that’ll start a religion, but it has only happened one time.

So let us just have a little bit of awe and wonder about that, and we should have more awe and wonder about that than video banking. Although I think video banking is very cool too, right? But it’s just so easy to get busy into our day-to-day lives and just forget the awe and wonder of Christ.

And then we’ve got to impart this to the young people. We have got to tell them that it is such a beautiful honor to be called to a religious vocation or to marriage or to parenting, and that it is a great mission and a great honor, and it is going to be difficult, and that you have to create your own fun and joy. Within that. 

You have to find little ways to find joy and awe and wonder because. There will be a battle against marriage and the culture will be battling for our kids. And it would be so easy to just sit around and be like, oh my gosh, this is so hard, period. But we want to say, oh my gosh, this is so hard, comma, and God is good, and here are the good things that are happening. And there are beautiful things too. 

All right, my friends, I love you. Some of you, your kids are going back to school next week, which is wild. Others of you have all the way until after Labor Day. So it’s a weird divide that we experience across the United States as moms where we enter back into the fray of things at different times. But I love you. My guess is you’re having a pretty good summer. 

Let’s start walking around thinking that that’s such a fun thought. And Mary and Martha’s coming. We will do that, I think September 10th. I think we just kind of know that all of your brains are busy until after Labor Day, and then we’re gonna head into it and it is gonna be so fun. And we’re changing it up a little bit from last year. So even if you did it last year, some of the challenges are new and I think it’s gonna be really powerful. 

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