We have a number of testimonials up on our website from some of our members, our current members, and one of them, Diane, she’s amazing. She wrote this not too long ago. I am so thankful for this program, which gave me the tools and support I needed to make changes in my life. All grounded in Christ. I lost over 15 pounds in six weeks and I’m still going. I feel more equipped to manage life and be more reflective, less reactive. I’m sleeping better. And I’m more energetic. I had been stuck with my weight for almost 14 years. I also had felt stuck in other areas of my life. No more. Now Diane wrote that testimonial a couple of months ago for us. And she is now down 55 pounds. So at the time she wrote this testimonial, it was, she was down 15 pounds.

She has continued to rock it. And that’s a little, little testimonial of what women are experiencing when they join our Masters program. So I want to invite you to come check it out, give it a shot, even if it’s just for one month and you will have access to everything that we have been teaching. Some extraordinary coaching tools. I was talking to one of our Masters members this evening on a coaching call. And she was just saying about talking about the impact of like, just the need for her to learn this stuff so that she can help her kids with their stuff. And, and that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing so many of our members really not like these tools, not just that these tools are not just helping them, but they’re using these tools to help their, their families, their children, their spouses, and that’s what makes Sterling and I so excited and just give them the passion to continue to do this work and to continue, continue to pour ourselves into this podcast and into the program.

So please go check it out. And now I’m really excited to share with you all about my encounter with peace. So as I was, I always like to start off my stories. I’m like this happened a couple of years ago. This is another one that happened a number of years ago. About this time of year, it was happening to me in late May. And I was working down at St. John’s cathedral, the cathedral, where I had been doing youth ministry for many years. And it was a day I was getting ready for confirmations. I had so much going on that week, but it was, it was like, I remember getting up in the morning, I was in a really big hurry, a rush to get to work. I had a list of at least 30 items that I needed to get done. And I was just set to, like, I just knew that I had to get all of this stuff done.

So that’s all I was thinking about. I rushed out of the house, got to work and was in my office. And I don’t know about you. I don’t know if anyone else does this or if it’s just me in my crazy brain, but when I have a lot to do, I want to have like stealth focus. And when I have, especially when I have less than I have a short amount of time, then what I do is I will set my timer on my phone. And I’ll like, I’ll say, I’ll look at the first task on my list and I’ll say, okay, that task should take me 10 minutes. And so I’ll set my timer for 10 minutes and then I try to beat my time. So I’ll be like, I’ll try to get it done in eight minutes or however fast I can do it.

And so I was having one of these days where I was just like, I don’t want any interruptions. I just want to focus, get it done. And I’m going to just nail these 30 items on this list. So that was kind of my mindset for the day. And I was like, boom. I was like going through it, setting my time or doing all these things. And about three hours into my morning, the sun was beaming. It was a really hot end of may day. The sun was shining through the window. My office was pretty stuffy and hot. And all of a sudden I became incredibly aware of the fact that I was, I had totally forgotten that morning to put on deodorant. You probably weren’t thinking I was going to say that, but this is the deal. I know it’s maybe like, okay, Lorissa too much information, but it’s actually important information for this story.

So I was, I was starting to like get hot and sweaty and that I was realized I wasn’t wearing deodorant. I was like, oh my gosh. So for me, I, I never forget to put deodorant on for me deodorants, like brushing my teeth in the morning. I would never leave the house without, you know, those essentials. But for some reason I was in such a hurry that I had forgotten. And now I was, you know, and I was like working really hard and go, go, go, go, go. And it was really starting to bother me. Like I couldn’t even focus on the stuff that I was trying to do. And then I was like, Lorissa, come on. It’s okay. It’s just one day. Just push through. Don’t think about it. But as the, the minutes kept progressing, I was like, oh, Lorissa, why did you do this?

Why did you forget deodorant? And then I had thought to myself, well, just take a break, go to the industry, to the store. But literally in my mind, I’m thinking, no, I can’t, I have too many things to do. I can’t leave. And I had, I was just totally, I like wanted to get this, all of this stuff done. And I knew I just had such a short period of time to do it. So I kept doing my work. And then all of a sudden I had this thought that there’s a, there’s a gas station, literally a block away from the church just right down the street. So I thought to myself, maybe the Jackson’s gas station has a travel sized deodorant. And I thought to myself, okay, I think I can do this. I think I can run down to the, to the station and see the deodorant and get back in three minutes.

And so I decided to make this a little game and I was going to set my timer on my phone to see if I could actually get to the gas station by deodorant and get back in under three minutes. That was my goal. So that’s what I did. I grabbed my purse, set my timer, bolted out the door, started running like running. And as I was like running down the sidewalk in front of like where our office is, there’s this little grassy area with this beautiful Dogwood tree that always blooms and Mays like beautiful pink, a Dogwood tree. And then all these tulips. And it’s actually my favorite spot down by the cathedral pare by our parish. It’s right in the middle of all these parking lots and cement and all of this stuff, but this like beautiful little tree and tulips, which are my all-time favorite flowers.

And I always love looking at that when I walk by, but I was in such a hurry, I ran kind of by, but as I was running by this tree in this little grassy area, I looked, looked down to my right. And I noticed there was a man sitting in the grass painting, like doing a watercolor painting of this tree and the tulips. And I was in such a hurry. I just like ran by and as I’m running by him, I say to him, oh, that’s beautiful. And I just kept running. I didn’t stop already, man. I was like, oh, that’s beautiful. As I’m running past like a frantic mess. And I run to Jackson’s, I get to Jackson’s in 45 seconds. I run in I’m like, Hey, do you guys have deodorant? And they were like, yes, it’s right there. So they, you know, they show it to me.

I grab it, I pay for it. I’m coming back. And I met like two minutes, 25 seconds. And I’m totally going to make it in under three minutes. And I felt like an absolute rockstar, but as I’m running back, I see the man still sitting in there and all of a sudden my heart was just overcome with the only, the only thing I can describe it was this prompting of the holy spirit. Like God was telling me, stop, Lorissa stop and talk to this guy. And this may sound weird, but I’m actually a total introvert. I don’t ever like stopping and talking to people. I’m like, that makes us totally out of my comfort zone. And not only that, but I was like, no, God, I’m going to, like, if I stop and talk to him, I’m not going to make it to like my time.

Cause like, in my mind I was thinking I needed to get back into my office and under three minutes to win the competition that was going on in my head anyways, this is me and my craziness, but the prompting kept getting stronger and stronger. And I was like, okay, I can let this one go. And I stopped running and I got close to this gentleman and I just, I just introduced myself. I said, hi, I love, I just, you know, I work here at this church and I love this tree and these tulips and it looks like you’re painting them. And so we started up this conversation and he said, yeah, I’m here, I’m in town. I’m a gymnastics coach and we’re in town for a meet. I’m from Portland. And I rented a bike from the hotel and I’ve been driving around, riding around downtown and I grabbed some lunch and I was riding back past this church and I saw this tree and I thought I’d stop and paint.

And he is, I love to paint. It’s a hobby of mine. And I just, and I just said to him, wow, well, that’s a, that’s a beautiful painting and you know, good luck with your gymnastics meet. I hope you have, you know, a great time in Boise. That was pretty much it. And I started to walk away and he said, wait, wait a second. And I said, I said, yeah. And he said, what, you know, can I get your name? I told him my name. He introduced himself. Well, he actually didn’t introduce himself. At that point. He asked me my name and he said Lorissa. And I said, yeah. And he was, how do you spell it? And so I spelled it for him and he said, this painting is for you. And I was kind of like stunned. I was like, what? And he said, yeah, he said, every time I paint anything, I always give it away.

And I just feel like I meant to give this to you. And he said, if you could just wait one or two more minutes, I’ll, I’ll be done in just a moment. And I was like, oh my gosh. You know, I just felt like so blessed to receive this gift from this, from this man. So, you know, we kind of, I stayed there, talked to him for another moment. He wrote at the bottom of the painting to Lorissa and he titled the painting feel, feel loved. And then he signed it. And at that moment, I, I said to him, I was kind of, you know, I was wearing my sunglasses and I was, I could feel myself kind of getting choked up, but like, gosh, I just, like, I couldn’t believe that he was going to give this painting to me. And, and then I said to him, I said, what is your name?

And he smiled at me. And he said, my friends call me peace. And the funny thing is, is that he was actually wearing a shirt that said peace on it as well. And I kind of, you know, I kind of smiled and I was like, what? And he is my friends call me peace. And he said, I’m the peace artist. And he is, I love to go round and, and paint and give all my paintings away as a sign of, of spreading peace in the world. And he said this to me as he handed me the painting and instantly, oh my gosh, I was tears just streaming down my face. And I thanked him. I shook his hand and I, you know, thanked him over and over and said goodbye, went into my office and sat down at my desk and literally started to, like, I started to just lose it.

I started just crying so hard. And this is the, this is why a couple of weeks before this happened. There had been something that had happened in my life where there just, there was a lot of unrest and there, there was just a situation that wasn’t so great that had happened that I was really, really struggling with. And after a couple of weeks, I decided to go to confession and went to confession and I, you know, was hoping that that could go into confession would make me feel better. It did it, it always does. But I remember leaving the confessional and I went and spent some time in front of the blessed sacrament and did my penance and just was praying there in front of our Lord. And I remember looking up at him in the blessed sacrament. And I just said, God, like, I just need your grace right now because I have like no peace in my life.

And I just need you, like, I need your peace. Can you please send me your peace? And that was my prayer. And I, you know, I, I stayed there for quite a while, just praying for God’s peace to like flood my heart and my soul and my life in this situation and all of that. And for the next few days, I just continue to pray, God, please just send me your peace. And so you can imagine with that being on my heart and being on my mind really for the last, for like a whole week. Cause I, you know, had gone to confession that Saturday before when this, when this man gave me this beautiful painting of one of my favorite scenes at the church and he said, my friends call me peace. All I could think about was how extraordinary God is. He signed the painting piece and then he signed it. Like the number of paintings that he’s painted. And I just, all I can remember thinking is that like Kyle, like you are so it’s so amazing that like, literally I have been praying for peace. And in, in your amazing, extraordinary, creative way, you like sent me peace in person like this person, like who walks around telling people, Hey, like I used to go by peace. I’m the peace artists caught my friends call me peace.

But anyways peace and I felt, I felt like so loved. I felt so much peace. I felt like I had received this extraordinary gift, like, and I was like, who am I to receive this gift? And that it was so orchestrated by God. So choreographed completely, perfectly like God’s like Lorissa, I love you. And I’m going to just send you peace in the flesh. Like, I don’t want to make this so blatantly obvious, but I’m going to send you peace in person. And he’s going to give you a gift to show you how much I love you. And so that was my encounter with peace. And there’s a couple other really key things that I’ve taken away from this story that I want to share with you today. One of these things is is this reminder when, you know, like when I was running back from the gas station I was running back and I ha I felt the prompting of the holy spirit telling me to stop.

But I just, I think about how often we are. So, so often in a hurry and I, myself, like I live my life. I feel like on high-speed like, go, go, go, go, go. But I think so often God is prompting us to stop, to slow down, to be present. And I have thought to myself so many times, what if I hadn’t listened to that prompting? What if I would’ve just ran past him and ran back to my office just so I could have made it back in three minutes, I would have missed an extraordinary encounter with peace. I would have missed receiving the gift that he gave me that I believe God wanted to give me. And so I try and try and try so much to pay attention to that prompting, to like when Anna and I feel like it’s one of those things, that’s like a muscle that you have to practice.

Like you have to listen to it, but I can tell you this. There’s never been a single moment where I felt a prompting that, and I actually listened to it and actually did what I felt like God was telling me to do. They’ve ever regretted it. It’s just crazy. And like, it’s those types of moments. So I believe that God wants to put it into our lives. Not just like once a year, every once in a while. I believe that God wants to orchestrate those types of moments in our lives all the time, like a lot. And I think he’s just trying to get our attention and he’s telling us, he’s giving us these promptings. But so often we are just too caught up in our own brains and our own world in our own, like our own agendas and our own schedules that so often we ignore the promptings.

And so this is kind of one of those things that this is one of my takeaways from this story is that I want to have more of those moments. I want to have a more encounters with extraordinary people, and I want to have these God moments more and more. It’s something that I talk to my students about a lot, my children, a lot about like, how is God working? What are the God moments? Are we paying attention? Are we paying attention to the promptings? Are we paying attention to that? Gentle whisper of God’s speaking to our hearts. And the more we pay attention to it, the stronger it gets. It’s like a muscle is stronger. It gets it stronger. It gets to the point that eventually I think this is how the saints, like this is why they were so in tune to the spirit, they were so used to hearing it, that they lived by it. They lived every moment of their day, like listening to that, that voice of God and because they were so aware of it, it was so obvious. That’s how I want to live my life. That’s, that’s what I’m working on right now in my life is paying more attention to that little voice. The other takeaway that I want to share has to do with the deodorant.

First of all, I just, now what I like the story, and I think to me, I remember feeling so annoyed, so frustrated that I had forgotten to put deodorant on that day. But once again, now that I know the whole story and how it unfolded, it was like such a God thing because I never ever leave my house without putting deodorant on. And so it was like, so profound to me, a couple of things, one, like I know that God was working in this. If I had put deodorant on that day, I would have never left my office. I would have just stayed there and like tracked away at my list. That’s all I would’ve done. I would’ve never had an encounter with peace. And so oftentimes now, and I think about the story, I actually think about this story quite a bit, because it’s so easy for us to have little annoyances during the day, little moments of inconveniences or frustrations where things don’t go as planned, or we forget something or we get stuck in traffic or something breaks, or we get a flat tire or just like on and on and on, we lose our keys or like whatever it happens to be these little inconveniences or frustrations.

And it’s so easy to just get so annoyed and it can literally like put us off, like it can ruin our whole day. This is one of the things that we teach in Masters is to how to manage our minds around these little inconveniences and these little moments. And for me now, like when I have them, I mean, not all the time. I wish I could say I do this all the time. I don’t, but there are times that I will pause and I’ll think to myself, okay, God, this is an inconvenience, but are you trying to show me something in this moment? Is there something you need me to pay attention to? Are you wanting to, you know, am I intended to like, have an encounter with someone today? And this inconvenience is just helping to like helping me to like focus on something else. Like, how are you working in this inconvenience and how are you showing up? And so it’s that little mindset shift of, instead of just getting super frustrated, whether it’s, you know, a child breaks, you know, just spills, milk all over the floor or something happens like that. Like, what are these possible opportunities where God is wanting to orchestrate a very special moment?

And for me, I think about it. If I hadn’t put deodorant on, I would have never ran to the gas station. I would have never met peace and I would have never received that beautiful painting. And I can look back at a number of occasions in my life where inconveniences led to something profound or led to a powerful teaching moment or a powerful memory where God showed up and did a miracle. 

An example of this for me, another example was a couple years ago. My husband and I, we were coordinating our Idaho Catholic youth conference. And we had, you know, six months earlier booked to Nashville, Dominican sisters, to fly out for our conference. And I was so excited to have these beautiful, young, amazing Nashville, Dominican sisters at our conference. They were all set to fly out. They were going to fly out early Friday morning and be at our conference about an hour before it started on Friday evening.

And that evening that’s late Thursday night, or it was early Friday morning at about one o’clock. I was woken up by a phone call from the airport. I had booked their plane tickets to the airport, had my number on file. And they called me to tell me that the sister’s flight from, from Nashville had been then canceled and that the next available flight out would be then the following day on Saturday morning. And so really late at night, I was frantically trying to reach the sisters, trying to, you know, let them know. And I was so bummed out. I was so angry and frustrated and sad. And I was, you know, I finally reached the sisters in the middle of the night and, you know, we were trying to figure out, is there any other flights, any other airports, nothing was working out. And I was just so angry.

And I remember even thinking of this moment, I was like, this is just the devil, like saying as this messiness up. And he doesn’t want the sisters to come out because he knows how powerful they’re going to be. And man, I just had this like horrible attitude. I was so disappointed. And when I talked to the sisters, they said to me, you know, I asked him basically, I said, do you guys even, should we just cancel the flight? Do you guys, you know, do you want to fly out on Saturday? You get there like halfway through the conference or is it, you know, I don’t, is it too much work? All of this just for a few hours, you know, for, for the few hours on Saturday and Sunday and the sisters were, they were like, look, this is, this is totally fine. We’re going to be great.

We’ll fly out. We still want to come. They were awesome. They had like the most amazing, beautiful attitudes. And so we got them scheduled to go out on Saturday and yet deep down inside, even though the S even though the sisters were so awesome, I was like, still holding onto this anger and resentment and just trying to understand why their flight had gotten canceled, which was obviously something completely beyond my control. And so the next day comes around. They fly in, they got to our conference Saturday afternoon, like kind of early evening. And they walk into the conference and I see them and I walk over and they kind of run over to me. And they’re like, we have to tell you about these miracles that happen to us. And they start like telling me, they were like, it was so much God’s will that our flight got canceled.

We got to tell you about what happens. And they’re just like beaming with light. I mean, just total grace flowing through them. But one of the sisters starts telling me that on the first they had like two flight, you know, two connections or whatever. And so in the first flight, one of the sisters was sitting next to this gentleman who was a Catholic, but had left the church 20 years ago. And he was no longer practicing his faith. Hadn’t been in a Catholic church in over 20 years. Wasn’t really living a Christian life at all, just nothing. And the sister sat was sitting with them and they start talking and they talked for like three and a half hours on this flight. And he was asking her all these questions and telling her about his life and all of these sings, and just literally pouring his heart out to her, all of this stuff.

And she was like speaking God’s truth and love to him. And she said to him, our Lord, like, he wants you to come back. This is your home. And you, you, you need to come back. And so after, like when they got off the flight, the man like got up, gave her a hug and he looked her in the eye. Leis, looked her in the eyes with tears in his eyes and said, I’m going to come back. I’m going to go back to church. I’m going to go find a parish near my home. And I’m going to start coming back. He goes, I believe that God put you on this flight, like for this very reason. And then on the other flight, the other sister had an encounter with someone who wasn’t Catholic, but was like going through a really hard time. And I think he had cancer or something like really traumatic.

And a sister like sat with this person and prayed with them and loved on him, like whole flight. It was just like absolutely amazing. And both of the sisters are telling me this and they’ve got tears in their eyes as they’re sharing this. And I’m, you know, holding back tears as well, and just an odd guide. And they said, Lorissa, this is why our flight got canceled. We were meant to be on these other flights and God was working and now we’re here and we’re going to just be here and be present to the teams. And we’re so thankful to be here. They were just pouring out this profound grace and they were living in the present moment and they were just wanting to be instruments of God. Like they didn’t the fact that their flight got canceled. It didn’t even phase. And they were like, oh, well, clearly God has a different plan.

And clearly God is going to use us. However, he chooses to use us because we are his little instruments. And then this is really like the message that I just want to share for all of us today. Like what have we lived our lives like that? What if we lived with this abandonment to God’s holy and divine will like in such a way that we were like, you know what? I’m going to get up this today. And I’m going to have a plan and I’m going to go about my day and my work. I’m going to offer it up to you, Lord. But I give to you everything I give to you, my struggles, my crosses by inconveniences, all the little things that are going to maybe not go as they had planned for them to go, but I render the control and I surrender all of it to you just use me as your little instrument.

And to me, I think this is the answer to that peace like that we’re longing for, for those of us that are like, I want more peace in my life. I think this is how we go about getting it living in the present moment, surrendering ourselves to the will of God trusting that he’s going to use us in our weaknesses, in our lackings and our struggles that he’s going to give us the grace that we need to do, what it is that he’s calling us to do in that moment. And then the next moment and the next moment, right? So my sisters in Christ, this is what I’ve got for you today, please, that I’m praying for you Sterling and I are praying for you, and we love you, and God loves you so much. And he is speaking to your heart. I know that for sure. I know that he’s speaking. I know sometimes it’s hard for us to hear him, but but I can assure you that our Lord has some really powerful things he wants to rebuild to you. So mamas, I hope you have a fantastic week and remember that you are for greatness. God bless.