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Show Notes

Does it feel, I don’t know, hopeful in some way. Like, oh, okay, I’m really normal. How does it feel? Does it feel like, oh, I’m just part of this club? Some sort of sense of community like, yeah, I’m part of this club of moms and moms are stressed. A perhaps silly example would be like, ballerinas have blisters on their feet, right?

If you are a ballerina and you’re part of the club and you’re really going for it. Then your feet get kind of beat up and so they kind of have this comradery over this special problem that they have. So you could choose to feel that way about it.

But what I wanna make sure, given the work that I do, is that we decrease the amount of stress that we can. So I both agree that moms are stressed, but I also wanna challenge at least half of the stress that moms experience and say, Hey, you probably don’t need to experience that. 

So let’s talk about a couple different kinds of stress. So we’ve talked before about the visceral kind of stress of, you know, you’re walking on a trail and a snake comes in front of you and your body has a stress response, like, and you might have that being on the edge of a cliff or something that you perceive to be dangerous. 

If you hear a really loud noise the other day at our parish, somebody’s emergency, some sort of emergency alarm went off on their phone and. I thought it was, it sounded like when there’s an amber alert, it sounded like that, but it ended up being just for this one person. So I don’t know what was going on, but it was that very clear emergency honking, beeping sound. 

And so you’re gonna have a stress response to that. Your body has been primed to go, oh, that’s a stressful sound. What’s going on there is a problem. Okay? So you’re gonna have an automatic stress response to certain things, so nothing we can do about that. 

Now you can immediately start talking to yourself and calming yourself down. Like, Hey, it’s probably okay. Let’s find out what’s going on. You know, or Hey, that’s just a tiny snake. We’re actually fine right now. We’re not gonna die. You know, whatever it is that you need to do to calm your brain down. 

But there are these physical danger things that your brain is always gonna have a stress response to. Then I also think that we are always gonna have some amount of a stress response to. An overstimulation of noise with kids, right? 

So if we’ve got kids and they’re crying and whining and knocking their water over and he took my Legos and like there’s just lots of that kind of grading, high pitched noise. I think we also have an automatic stress response to that. Now, again, you can get way better at how you respond to that, but I just do acknowledge that that is probably just part of the gig.

So when we say, Hey, everyone knows that moms are stressed to me, that is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the fact that if you’ve got an 18 month old and you’re like, please don’t fall down the stairs, please don’t climb on the couch and then fall off the back of it. Please don’t grab that glass plate off the counter and pull it down on your head. I mean. Those are just baked in stressful situations about having an 18 month old. 

Okay, but then my friends, there is all the stress that we add into our lives that we do not need to add. I coached two moms yesterday on them both feeling like they were failing. One of their kids, each of them had kind of a spicy kid, which just means has some things that aren’t maybe what we would call normal.

And navigating being a mom of a spicy kid and just feeling like they were really doing it wrong, and both of them separately said, I just feel like I’m failing this kid. And when you have that thought, I think I’m failing this kid. How does it feel in your body? Terrible, gutted, punched in the stomach, despondent, like just, it’s so terrible to think I’m failing this kid.

But as I asked each of these moms who were dealing with slightly different things, I said, what does failing mean? And we explored that. We explored, does failing a kiddo mean not being Catholic when they’re an adult? Does it mean not being able to get married? Does it mean not having a job or a good job? And what’s a good job? Does it mean going to prison? 

Like we have this scary monster under our bed feeling about failing the kids and that they’re not gonna thrive as adults. And yet we don’t really know what that means. Most of us, I mean, we can definitely all agree that not Catholic and being a heroine addict is not ideal. We don’t like that. 

But even then, you guys, even then, I remember reading, a long time ago, a book about Mego where people went and had these kind of miraculous things happen to them. And one of them was this guy who was a legit heroin addict, and he’d like stolen all his parents’ stuff all the time. And I don’t know how he ended up there, but he just had this really beautiful story and then became deeply Catholic. 

So even that guy, and you know, his parents were like, we totally failed. He’s not Catholic, and he’s a heroin addict. And then he just had the most beautiful conversion and just loved our lady so much. It was just, it was so touching.

So we add stress to our lives by making things up that feel really scary. You may be dealing with something difficult in your life right now, and it’s very common that our brain then takes the difficult situation and goes, and it will be like this forever. And that’s pretty scary, isn’t it? Whatever you’re dealing with right now, that feels painful.

If I’m like, oh yeah, you’re gonna have to deal with that for the next 50 years. That’s so disheartening. I don’t even wanna get outta bed. Right? Those heavy feelings. Of just hopelessness and being trapped and stuck and unhappy. This is it. This is the best it’s ever gonna be. I just want you to know that that is in the bucket of stress, that we do not have to feel stress, that we can talk ourselves out of.

I had a very bad day yesterday for some legit reasons. As I stick up for myself, I even sent out an email about it. But I also this morning woke up and started my period and was like, oh, maybe just maybe a little bit of the things yesterday felt extra big because of that. So it still would’ve been difficult. 

There were still some like legitimate having nothing to do with my period or my emotions, things, but. That definitely made it worse. So because, and I’m tracking my cycle somewhere, but I, and I had this thought last week, like, I think my period’s starting soon, but I didn’t look, I didn’t look, had I looked and known that it was gonna start today. And I’ve been thinking about how to incorporate this in my Google calendar so I can see it. 

But if I knew that and I saw that that little red dot was today, then yesterday I might have been like, Hey, Sterling. I know this seems yucky right now and these are some real things, but maybe. Maybe they feel bigger because we’re about to start our period, and I could have calmed myself down in that way around what was happening. I could have felt less stress around what was happening.

So yes, I do think that being a mom is stressful. Do we need to be stressed all the time? Is there a lot of stress that I think we can say no thank you to? Absolutely. So I want you to fight for that. I want you to know that that’s true. It’s not hard and you can do it. What’s hard is remembering to do it. The doing it isn’t hard, but just like I forgot to really see where I was at in my cycle, which was such a simple thing to do. I just had to look. 

Learning to question why you are stressed and calming yourself down is rather simple, and it takes committing and recommitting and recommitting. I think of it like the 70 times seven and how we need to forgive people. It’s like that. I just wanna be like, yeah, 70 times seven, you’re gonna feel stressed and you need to calm yourself down and identify the real stress. 

There is real stress in our lives. Absolutely. But it’s the made up ones, the amplified ones, the ones where we ruminate on something over and over and again, and so we kind of ruin our own day. Like maybe something happened three days ago that was yucky or stressful and you’re just driving thinking about it and you just feel spun up and terrible. Three days later, it’s not even happening.

So I wanna invite you to know that motherhood has some built in intrinsic stress. Just like anything, just like being a football player or a ballerina or a lawyer, or whatever these hats are that we want to wear, there are built-in moments of stress. And that’s okay. That doesn’t mean we’re doomed to be unhappy.

That doesn’t mean we need to live stressful lives, right? We can feel stressed for 15 minutes a day and then not have the thought. I’m stressed all the time. I’ve noticed that about motherhood, that there tend to be maybe three to five really intense moments, and the rest of the day is okay. But we are anticipating those moments.

We’re reliving those moments. And so it feels like those moments are happening all day, but they really aren’t. I’ll give you an example, two things. Yesterday, one of my kiddos came up to me and says, Hey, I want a Lego set that’s like a car that spits out a motorcycle from the back. 

And so I was interested. I said, Hey, I’m not necessarily gonna buy that for you right now, but let’s look. So I pulled up Amazon and we couldn’t find it. I didn’t look for very long. I might look again later, but I couldn’t find it. And then I said, well, and actually I said, Hey buddy. You know, lego sets they cost a lot of money. 

And so that’s not the kind of thing that you just say, Hey, I want that and I buy it. I said, that would be a really great Christmas gift, and I know that Christmas is kind of far away, so you’d have to be really patient for this. 

And then he lost his ever blooming mind and just like broke down in tears and was like, I think the core of it was that he has one friend that really likes Legos and he kind of wants the Legos that that friend has. And that friend doesn’t really like almost anything other than Legos. 

And so my son was saying. You know, nobody likes our house. There’s nothing fun to do at our house. And after digging, I think it’s just this one kid isn’t super outdoorsy, which is fine. And his favorite thing is Legos. So every time he comes over, he wants to play Legos.

I don’t even know that this kid is saying anything like, I have better Legos than you. I think the kid probably is just saying, oh yeah, I have this Lego set that’s really cool and this motorcycle comes out of the truck. But my son is like, I want people to like me and be friends, and has just made some funny connections through that.

So here he is. Just a random moment in my day. Where he asked me a question, then breaks down crying. He was holding all Lego creation of his that he had made and threw it on the floor and it shattered all over the place, and then he goes downstairs. That was an intense mothering moment for me. 

And then another moment, one of the kids found a mouse in the barn. We have a. Plastic bucket, like a big plastic bucket. You know the big ones with the rope handles that you put kid stuff in. Somehow this mice had gotten in there and it can’t get out of there. Like the walls are too smooth. 

So my kids did not catch a mouse. They just found a mouse in a bucket. They were very excited about it. I said, Hey, nobody touched that mouse. You know, if it bites you, I’m gonna take you to the doctor and get you shots. And so they put some grass in there. It’s pretty cute. It was a pretty cute mouse. And my husband says, okay, you guys can look at it for a little bit, but then we’re gonna let it go. You know, after dinner.

And one of the kids reaches in, picks up the mouse and it bit them. And I was like, why? Why children, why? That was also another intense moment. But those were the two intense moments that I remember from yesterday. Lots of questions, lots of conversations, but actually it was a pretty chill day and there were just those two intense kid moments.

So we sell ourselves this story that we are so stressed, but part of that is because we are choosing my friends, we are choosing to think stressful thoughts all throughout the day, and we can stop doing that. We can float through the day with peace and joy and anchor ourselves to Christ. And Mary, I know that is a big ask.

I’m not throwing that out there. Like, oh yeah, we all can just do that so easily. It takes practice. But we can do that. We can be calm for most of the day and then we will still have these stressful moments. Because we’re moms, that is where we can link arms like ballerinas and be like, woo. There’s mom stuff every day. That’s stressful, but it isn’t the whole day. 

And God does not want us telling ourselves the story that we are stressed all the time, and that motherhood is so terrible, which we’re not allowed to say. So we just think it, all the time and we’re stuck here and it’ll never get better. We do not need to have stress like that. 

So I was praying a couple days ago asking the Lord what he wanted me to tell you, and he said, tell them not to be so stressed. That is what God told me. And I was like, yeah, I mean, I’m sure I’ve talked about that a hundred times on the podcast, but I wanna talk about it again. And God wants you to know that. 

God wants you to know. That you are acting more stressed than you need to be. Now, again, that doesn’t invalidate the real things. Like all of you are like, oh man, that Lego mouse situation sounds terrible, right? Those were real moments, but the rest of the day was fine. It was pretty normal.

Or there might be mild annoyances. Mild annoyances are different than being stressed. And we’ve got to learn to tell ourselves the truth. A lot of us are living in a story that’s not true and it feels really terrible.

So I wanna invite you to join Mary’s Heart Martha’s order. I want you to come join the seven Week Challenge for me. We have already had almost more signups. In a few days than we did in all of last year. Like it’s gonna blow up this year. We’re gonna have so many moms go through it. It’s gonna be so fun. There are prizes, which I love.

But listen, you’re not coming for the prizes. You are coming to learn this thing, which is how to stop telling yourself stories about your life that feel terrible, and instead, I’m gonna teach you how to tell stories. About your life, that feel great. So if we’re both of those moms that were worried about failing their kids, I know them both very well and I pointed out all the ways that they are amazing moms.

That they are the perfect moms for these kids, that they are navigating it well. And they both were able to see that and they both were able to take that in and go, yeah, you know, I am navigating it really well. I am trying to figure it out. And I challenged them to think about these kids when the kids were 30.

And I said, what do you think we’re gonna talk about with these kids when they’re 30 and we’re gonna talk about their childhood with them and we’re gonna be like, yeah, it was really hard. It was new. I didn’t know how to do the things that you needed, but I figured it out ’cause I loved you so much. That’s the game.

We are the good moms. I want you to take that in. We are the good moms. If we’re not the good moms, who are the good moms? Ask your brain that. I don’t know that my brain can stretch to great mom. I don’t know that I walk around thinking I’m a great mom, but I think I’m a good mom. I’m a good mom. I’m a good swimmer. I’m a good dog trainer and I’m a good mom. I really believe that.

So. Go to catholicmomcalm.com. Sign up for the Mary’s Heart Martha’s Order Challenge. Early bird pricing is through August 31st, so make sure you sign up before then. Tell your friends, because it’s really fun to do with other people. It’s gonna blow your mind every week, and you’re gonna wanna talk to people about it.

And we have a community off of Facebook where you can chat with each other, and that’s really fun. But it’s fun to talk to your friends. So I want you to copy catholicmomcalm.com in your mom’s group. Paste it there and just say, Hey, I saw this thing in case anyone’s interested. I know that’s gonna happen this year because it was so great last year.

Go read the testimonials and I had pages of testimonials. We just didn’t put them all on the website. You do not need to be this stressed, I promise. I pinky promise. I super duper promise. You can be a lot less stressed than you are.

And I’m gonna validate that motherhood is also stressful. You’re not crazy. There are moments that make us a little bananas, but then we can calm ourselves down and get back to you trying to be like Mary. That is what we want. 

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