Sterling (01:13):

Yes, we are so excited to bring you onto the team. You have some very special gifts and an amazing story, which we’ll get to today. And we are just growing like crazy. You guys, we’re just growing. And so many of you are talking about masters with your friends and your family and, you know, Lorissa and I had this dream that we would have a big team of coaches that could bring their gifts and their talents and their unique voice to the team to help coach all of our members. And so we just knew from the moment that we met Emily, the holy spirit just really put his fingerprints all over it. And so this has been in the works for a while, but we are so happy to finally announce this to all of you guys and to introduce you to Emily. So Emily, why don’t you just take some time and tell us a little bit about who you are you know, your Catholicism story, your family, those kinds of things. We just want to get to know you a little bit.

Emily (02:13):

Yeah. Oh, awesome. Okay. So I, I’m a stay-at-home mom. I work from home. I have seven beautiful children. My oldest is 14 and a half. My youngest will be three in November. We homeschool all seven of them. Two of them are currently doing high school. So it’s very exciting and busy around here. And my husband teaches at our local community college. We have been married for 15 plus years and you know, that’s, I mean, that’s kind of just us in a nutshell, I am, I’m a ministry junkie. I love to serve people. I absolutely love to, you know, to, to help, especially moms you know, really find their beauty and their self-worth in the Lord. And for me, I didn’t grow up Catholic really. I was born and baptized at a really early age in a few weeks of birth.

Emily (03:18):

My dad is not Catholic and that just wasn’t part of our regular lifestyle, but by the grace of dad, I was able to do first communion and reconciliation in second grade. And my family traveled a ton we’ve we moved a lot. And when we finally landed in Idaho in 1995 I was just entering sixth grade and all of my friends were LDS and I really didn’t have any knowledge really of what Catholicism was. I knew that I was Catholic. I had those memories, but I really didn’t have any kind of identity and in the Catholic faith. And so I spent a lot of time with my LDS friends. I absolutely loved their families and their family culture. And like, it just was, it was a completely different lifestyle and way of living than I was used to.

Emily (04:21):

And so a lot of the times I would spend a lot of weekends going to church with them and got to know a lot about the LDS faith went to a ton of like super fun youth groups and like summer things. And ultimately I just kind of, I, I knew in my heart that that was not the religion for me, but I didn’t quite know why. And I loved all the fun stuff and the family stuff. So I just called my mom one day after going to church with some friends. And I just said, Hey mom, we’re Catholic. Right. And she goes, yeah. And I said, well, do you think Catholics have fun? And she’s like, I don’t know. So we decided to go find out. And that was kind of the beginning of my faith journey. I started a youth group and just fell in love with the Lord at mass. It just, I went to mass and saw Jesus in the Eucharist and I just knew I was home. And I knew that that was exactly where I needed to be. So it took kind of a roundabout way, but at about the age of about 14, I really kind of reverted, I guess, to Catholicism. And

Sterling (05:37):

Did you, did you find that the youth group was fun, like, cause that kind of coming from Protestantism, like theirs are really fun and I feel like ours in comparison, the ones I’ve been part of, like have not been as fun. So what did you find?

Emily (05:49):

You know, what’s really funny is that I guess the fun part of the youth group that I had attended with my friends was that my non-Catholic friends was that it was a lot of like sports and we played probably a ball and we did dances and it was a lot of just fun. And what I discovered in the Catholic youth group was that it was a lot more prayerful and we did have fun. We played games and we did praise and worship and I love to sing. Singing is one of my very favorite ways to pray. And so this was just, it was a beautiful mixture for me, that just felt really deep and like something I could trust and it like, again, it just felt like home. Yeah, of course. Oh yeah. We had a lot of fun, but we also did a lot of prayers, which, I definitely needed as a teenager.

Sterling (06:39):

Okay. So you were enjoying Catholic youth groups, spoiler alert, Catholics. Do have fun. Did your mom have kind of a reversion experience at the same time?

Emily (06:49):

Yeah, she did. She is also a musician and so she saw people playing the guitar at mass and she just wandered over and asked, I think she I’d have to clarify all of these details, but I’m pretty sure she just asked if she could join their music group. And again, the music of our faith just kind of brought her back into the church and she has been there ever since and just continues to play music. She and her friend recorded a CD a while back. I mean, it’s just really beautiful what the Lord does and how he uses our talents to serve him and give him glory.

Sterling (07:31):

All the beauty, beautiful story. Okay. So feeling super Catholic in high school?

Emily (07:36):

Yeah. Okay. So my parents got divorced when I was officially divorced and when I was a sophomore and I was going to Catholic high school, but I was one of the only practicing Catholics in my class. And so that was kind of tough. I chose to go to the Catholic high school because I was super excited about my faith. And interestingly, it didn’t really like, it didn’t really spur my face to be there, but I definitely had a lot of wonderful experiences that did lead to my, I think, growth and capabilities, or like at least confidence in my capabilities with serving others and campus ministry and, and all sorts of things. Lots of things I would choose to not do again. We all have that. We all have that. Exactly. and so, but I was really grateful to the youth group and I was really faithful to serving on the core team, as a high school student.

Emily (08:41):

And through my youth group, I actually met a young man and we dated when I was a senior. And his name is Joey and we got married actually about a year after I graduated high school. And we, we were so young that we, we had a lot, we met a lot of resistance at our parish. You know, that the, everyone was very concerned that we were too young to get married and ultimately we decided to anyway and we moved out to the Portland area for him to go to the Western culinary Institute to be a chef. Yeah. and so we lived out in the suburbs and we did that for eight months after we got married both just working like crazy. And we actually ended up not going to mass on the weekends very often. Like almost never while we were over there, we were not surrounded by other Catholics or it was, we were working, like I said, like crazy. I had a couple of jobs. He was in school for time and worked a full-time job. And I mean, it’s not a great excuse, but it was what, 19 and 18 and 19-year-olds, that’s what we did

Sterling (09:58):

Or that you’re sharing that because you know, so many of our listeners and so many of our masters’ members are you know, moms to adult children. And as we’re watching our adult children, we have these thoughts like, oh no, she’s headed down the wrong path and she’s not going to mass. And like, I know the punchline to your whole story and beautiful and faithful. And you’ve been such a gift to all of the kids and families that you’ve ministered to. But if we’re watching you in this slice of time and we’re like, oh my gosh, she’s 18, 19 leaves go to Portland, isn’t going to mass. Right? Like your mama’s heart was probably a little worried for you.

Emily (10:36):

Yeah, I think so. And she was so supportive through the whole thing. But the Lord never abandoned us. Like we, we didn’t really, like, we really didn’t stay close to him as much as I obviously would have liked to at that time, but he was always there with us. And let’s see. So we got married in May and in the following January for actually excuse me, the following Christmas. So that December, we had been married for six and a half, seven months. We were talking about maybe starting a family in the next year. And we were realizing we really needed to save some money. So we asked his uncle if we could move in with him and live in his basement, he was so generous and welcomed us in. So at the end of January, we moved into his basement.

Emily (11:26):

And so all of our stuff was just in boxes in his garage. And we were living out of, kind of, out of suitcases, kind of out of dressers as we were slowly unpacking into the beginning of February. And on Valentine’s day, I miraculously had the day off, I worked for a big grocery store chain, and there’s a rule that you don’t ask for holidays off. And so I didn’t, and somehow miraculously, I think my boss knew that it was my first married Valentine’s day. But she gave me the day off. And my husband and I went to the movies in the middle of the day and we were on our way home. And we were so excited cause we were going to go take a pregnancy test. We were really hoping we were pregnant. And as we were driving home, he called his parents to wish them a happy anniversary because that is their wedding anniversary. And yeah, we just, you know, we were kind of, you know, just, just trying to make the most of this incredible day that we had off. And as we were driving home, I, we came up to a T intersection kind of on some back roads. And as he was pulling the car out to turn left at this T intersection another car came kind of out of nowhere and hit us directly on his side of the car which sent both cars spinning and he died on impact.

Sterling (12:55):

I know I was waiting for that. Oh, it’s hard.

Emily (12:58):

It is. Yeah. It’s very

Sterling (12:59):

Hard. I know you probably told this story so many times, but it still feels new to me, right?

Emily (13:06):

Yeah. Yeah.

Sterling (13:07):

And how old were you?

Emily (13:08):

So I had just turned 20 at the end of January and he was going to be 19 and six days. Yeah. And so yeah, I mean, there’s no handbook for how to be a 20-year-old widow,

Sterling (13:22):

Right? Yeah. And so here you are, you’re walking with God and this like big plot twist happens. Yeah. What did your faith life do at that point?

Emily (13:33):

Well, you know, here’s the incredible thing about God. He, like I said, he never abandoned us. We had, like, we were starting at Christmas. It really kind of spur, sparked us to when we decided we wanted to start a family, we just knew as many Catholics do once if they’d been away from the mass for a while, if they decide to start a family there suddenly there’s something about starting a family that like inspires you to go back to church. And so at, in January, he and I decided to go back to mass. And so we had been to mass a couple of times leading up to the car accident and the next day after the accident, my mom and his parents came and kind of brought me home back to Idaho. And I, it was right before Ash Wednesday.

Emily (14:28):

And this was something that I think was life-changing for me was I was able to look at what was happening at the moment and look at how all of, like, we didn’t have to have moved out of his uncle’s basement to him. We could have stayed, we could have renewed our lease. And I would have had an entire apartment to pack up and go through and move and all of that stuff, but everything was already done, it was already packed. It was already ready, to move. I didn’t have to call and cancel leases or tell someone 47 times I needed that my husband died. And so he just really protected me and all of that, which was, I mean, it was so beautiful. And I could see that at the moment. I don’t know why I had that clarity, but I went to mass with Joey’s parents and his siblings.

Emily (15:21):

And I was sitting next to his brother, Patrick, who was we were at Ash Wednesday mass and Patrick was able to come home from the Navy. He had been on a Navy ship for a long time. He wasn’t even at our wedding. And so I had been so long since I had seen him in even longer since Joey had seen him. And something that I had found out about pat was that when he was on the Navy ship, he wasn’t able to go to mastery often unless they came ashore and then even, and then it was, it was, they were in Japan. And so he was, he had, he had to really make an effort to go to mass. And I just, I remember sitting there praying at Ash Wednesday, mass thinking, God, what do you want from me?

Emily (16:04):

Like, I’ve, you’ve taken everything. I have nothing left to give you. Right. And I have nothing to give up this lent and being kind of sassy about it. And I just heard clear as day. I mean, not necessarily a voice, I just knew that I needed to go to mass every day during lent and offer that Eucharist every day for Patrick and for his safety and for his soul. Like I just knew that he hit this family could not lose another son and that I’d like to find somehow to get out as my, like my mission to like make sure that he could receive the Eucharist in some way. And so I did for the next, like 38 out of 40 days minus some travel days I was able to go to mass every day at the St. Paul student center at Boise State.

Emily (16:55):

And that’s really where the Lord led me. And that is where my mom was doing music for their mass and invited me to come and hang out with these other 20-year-olds who seem to be totally open to a 20-year-old widow and listening to my story. So I got really good at telling my story to all these people who were just like, wow, that’s incredible. Like you’re my age. And you’ve been through so much. And I was still trying to process all of that at the same time. So that was a really helpful way for me, to process some of that and stay close to the Lord and be around these incredibly faithful Catholics at the same time. So I think the Lord was just, he was working a lot on me at that point.

Sterling (17:36):

Absolutely. I mean, it is an incredible story. And I love how even then you were able to manage your mind, right? You were just looking through the lens of the Lord, how is this a blessing? What gifts are you giving me this? And, and you found so much there.

Emily (17:53):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was by the grace of God because I look back at that going that wasn’t a choice. Like I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t choosing that. I felt like I had no other choice at that point, but to listen to God because he spared me from that accident for some reason. And I just knew that maybe my reason was to sit there and tell that person in front of me that day, my story because somehow it was going to change their life. And, and every single day, since then, it’s, that’s been, my, my thought has been I guess that is a conscious thought that I started having was just that this today is the reason I’m here. Isn’t is another reason I’m here. And just trying to listen for whatever it is that he’s trying to tell me or wants me to do, or he wants to do some kind of work. He spurred me to do some kind of work.

Sterling (18:41):

Absolutely. And, and listen, like understanding is a gift of the holy spirit. So, I mean, you know, I just want to encourage all of you when you want to know something, just pray that God tells you, he gives you that knowledge, that he can just do that. He can just give you that knowledge in your mind. You don’t have to work for it. That the holy spirit can just give that gift to you and often does. So I think that that is such a perfect example of that.

Emily (19:09):

Yeah. I, I totally agree.

Sterling (19:11):

Okay. So 20 year old, Emily now, what happened?

Emily (19:16):

Yeah. So I enter the college scene and try really hard to figure out what it means to be a 20-year-old widow and go to college and be around other 18 to 24-year-olds. And I’ve really, really missed being married. I really miss that connection and that closeness. And so I really made, you know, I, I’m going, to be honest, I made some mistakes along the way and the Lord never gave up on me through all of that. You know, and, and I could just see how I was trying so hard to do what I thought was the right thing, but my lens, my filter was getting a little skewed with everything around me and what I was allowing that to mean and what I was doing that to me and about me. And eventually, about a year and a half later after the accident, I just was so tired.

Emily (20:14):

I was so tired of trying to do it all myself. I was so tired of trying to recreate what I had and what I lost and like false connections. And just again, just trying to do it in all the wrong ways. And I finally just told God I’m done. Like, I, I just, I really, I need you to take this back. Like, I need you to take this thing that I’m striving for so hard. And I just, I really need you to have this back until you’re ready for me to have it. And then and then give it back to me. And you know, my romantic life and my, my desire for marriage and motherhood and that connection and all these things I knew God had in store for me. He, he, again, he kept me safe in that car accident for a reason.

Emily (21:08):

But I just wanted them now and I knew that I was doing it all the wrong way in my timings. I just Lord take this. And please just give it back to me when your timing is right. And I think that was all he wanted. I really think that was all he needed from me. Was this okay? I just give up and I, my way is no gag, your way is way better. I don’t know what it is yet, but I just know that it’s better. And so about, oh gosh, maybe even a month, less than a month after that experience. I went to there was an ordination for a deacon that I knew who had been working with me at youth ministry camps during the summers for many years. And he was becoming a priest.

Emily (21:59):

He was being ordained as a priest, and I had never been to an ordination before and a bunch of friends was gonna go. So I decided to go and it was just the most incredible experience watching him be ordained a priest and devote his life to God. And I just knew that I wanted that kind of devotion and that kind of love with God. But I also knew that I was being called to marriage. I just knew that. And so a couple of days later, I went to his ordination party and at that party, I was talking to a friend of mine. His name was Pocco and he, I had just actually just met him, but he’s my friend now. And I was telling him my story. He was a seminarian and I got to go to the bathroom and on my way back to talk to him some more, I ran into these two guys and they totally got in my way on purpose.

Emily (22:55):

They wanted to talk to me and I totally blew them off. I was like, I’m busy. I have to go talk to my friend Pocco. And so I just, but I, I did register them I to say their faces and, and, you know, I did, I made there was a connection there, but I didn’t want there to be, so I just understand how scary it would feel at this point. Yeah, exactly. And I was just so excited to be like talking to someone in a very neutral way and telling them my story, because again, it was still really fresh, you know, what only been about a year and a half. So that was the kind of the end of that evening. And the very next day the youth minister at my parish was getting married and this was not my youth minister.

Emily (23:46):

It was a new youth minister to our church. And I just decided I wanted to go, like, I don’t know, it was definitely the prompting of the holy spirit. Let’s not, let’s be honest. But I was not invited to this wedding. I’m just going to go crash this Catholic wedding, and I’m not going to stay for the reception because I’m not invited, but anybody can go to a Catholic wedding. So so I got all dressed up, showed up to the wedding, and lo and behold, I’m sitting there in the pew and this is at my home parish. You know, where I had grown up, I had gone to youth group. I had met and married Joey. We had done Joey’s funeral at that same parish. I’m sitting here in my home parish and in walks a slew of seminarians and former seminarians.

Emily (24:34):

And they all sit in front of me and the guy who had blown off the night before was one of them. And he turned around and he looked at me and he said, you look so beautiful. Wow. And I’m like 21-year-old men do not, they do not do that. They do not have the guts to do that. Okay. No, they don’t. I was blown away. And so I just sat there during mass and it was like, wow, like, okay, I’m just going to go with it. He’s really not my type. As far as like, at that point, I just was, I wasn’t all that like attracted to him. And he knows that it’s no secret podcast. It’s okay. I mean the man had mutton chops and a dark suit and basketball sneakers at a wedding. Like it was, it was it’s lovely now.

Emily (25:32):

And it’s adorable now at the time I was like, yeah, no, no, flown away by his courage and his, his just genuine I don’t know his sincerity, I guess. And after the wedding was over, he turned to me and he said, are you in a stay for the reception? No, no, no. I’m not invited. I just came to see them get married. And he said, well, my, my buddy who’s at my table. You know, he and his, his date didn’t come, so we have an extra spot. And would you like to come join us? And I said, okay, sure. It’s free food. Why not? But this is a very nice reception. Everybody had a name tag and I’m like, they are going to so know that I don’t belong here. And I have, this is, it’s kind of a long story. So but we went into the reception and I am, again, I’m telling my story to anybody who wants to hear me. And I’m telling my story to his friend, John, who I was sitting in the spot next, where he was his, his girlfriend was supposed to be. And look overhears me and Luke is, you know, the man from the night before. And he goes, wait, you’re married. And I said, oh, no, I, I’m not married. My husband passed away and he goes, oh, okay.

Emily (26:59):

I don’t know her face. So funny now. And like at the time he was like, he was just so relieved that I was available. Not that I had gone through the trauma, of course. And he, but he asked me to dance a bunch and we were waiting for the wedding party to come back from taking pictures. And I just, I don’t know. I just felt like it was time to go. I really felt kind of silly for being there. At this reception, I wasn’t invited to. And so I actually said, I’m going to take off. And I got my purse and I wandered out to my car and I’m standing there in front of my car in the same parking lot where Joey, it gets me for the first time after the retreat. And I’m just looking at myself in the window of my car.

Emily (27:46):

I’m standing there with my keys in my hand, ready to open the door and I’m looking at myself and I’m like, I’m all dressed up. I have nowhere else to be today. What do I have to lose? Like what, where am I going to go? You know, and I could just tell that the holy spirit was like, just stay. Wow, stay. And so I went back in and I sat down and like half an hour later, maybe later, maybe longer. I’m not sure that the timing is all messed up, but in my memory, it’s all skewed, but I actually left for the second time. You know, it was lovely. I was having a lovely time, but I decided no, no, no, no, I’m not supposed to be here. Right. Did this whole negotiation with the holy spirit, went back out to my car.

Emily (28:32):

I got in my car that time turned it on to roll, like toward the end of the parking lot. And then instead of leaving the parking lot, I just re-parked in a different spot in a win-back. It’s so funny when anybody’s watching this, they’re going to say, love. It’s the most ridiculous story. But it’s so powerful because again, I went back in for the second time and I’m sitting there and I’m enjoying myself and, you know, talking to these people who just are genuinely interested in me. Yeah. And again, I just have this prompting, like, Nope, it’s time to leave. There’s something that you shouldn’t be here. So I get my first and my keys and I got some of my cars. I have to find it. Cause it’s not where I was remembering. I parked it. And I got in, turned it on and I actually left the parking lot this time. And it’s a set in a neighborhood that’s churches. And I ended up driving completely around the neighborhood. And this voice in my head is like, go back. Like, there’s like there, go back, like, just stay. There’s no reason for you to leave and they’re sorry,

Sterling (29:45):

But the guts, right. Like, I would have been so curious to walk back in again and be like, JK you guys, I guess.

Emily (29:56):

I think I must have known that Luke was just so excited to see me that I don’t think it was really registering for him that I was leaving over and over again. I think he was just, every time I walked in, I was like, there’s

Sterling (30:08):

A pretty girl. I

Emily (30:09):

Like her. I know. Right. Oh, so funny you guys. And so I, oh my gosh, just, and I stayed, you know, and we danced and he asked me to dance, which again, 21-year-old guys do. And at the end of the night, he asked me for my phone number and I was totally planning on giving him a fake number. And I’m thinking, oh gosh, as he lives like six hours away in a different town. He’s leaving town tomorrow. Like, I’ll just whatever, it doesn’t even matter. I’m probably never going to see him again. So I wrote down, but my heroes wrote my real number and I gave it to him and I was like, oh shoot. She might actually call me now. And at the end of the night, I was driving my friend home and she said, wow, you were, you were dancing with that guy a lot. I said, yeah, he’s not really my type. And a year, almost a year to the day later we got married.

Sterling (31:03):

So fun. Yeah. I love it.

Emily (31:06):

Yeah. It’s just incredible. Like I thought guys like, God is so good. He can do so much goodness. In our pain. And if you just are, if you just allow it, if you give it back to him.

Sterling (31:22):

Yes, yes. If you just, yeah, I love this surrender. I love this. Giving it back to him. I often say, you know, lay it down at the foot of the cross. Like just give all of the things back to him because they are all his anyway.

Emily (31:34):

Yeah, absolutely. And just because you think something isn’t right for you, like if you were just willing to be open to it, then, you know, God can do so much good with that. Just that willingness and on surrender, like you were saying, like, he definitely was not my type because my type was terrible. Right.

Sterling (31:51):

I was like, listen, you’re getting it wrong.

Emily (31:55):

Yes. And I’m going to hit you upside the head a million times until you figure it out.

Sterling (32:01):

Okay. So you got married, you had seven kids. You’ve been homeschooling them for most of the time, really? Right.

Emily (32:07):

For the last three years, we have had homeschoolers. So we’ve done private school. We’ve done public school. We have, we’ve done a little bit of everything. Yeah.

Sterling (32:15):

I love that. I love, I love just the openness to that. And I encourage our masters members who always, you know, they want coaching on schooling decisions and I’m like, listen, you don’t have to decide forever. Right. You’re going to decide per kid and every year and what your family is going through and we get to change our minds.

Emily (32:31):

Yeah. And you know, what’s right for your kids. Yeah. And building that trust with yourself is amazing. So when

Sterling (32:38):

Did you first feel this

Emily (32:39):

Inkling in your heart, this calling to coaching and really, I want to say ministry is so similar to coaching that I feel like, you know, those of you who have been in ministry for a long time, you’ve been coaching without calling it that. Right. But when you

Sterling (32:54):

Talk to like, no, I think I really want to coach.

Emily (32:57):

Yeah. so let’s see. Well, like you said, I’ve always I’ve always had a heart for serving others. But I’ve, I’ve always done it in a new, we kind of backward way and the way the, what I mean by that is that I have gone through a lot in my life. It’s been what I call hard. Others would probably look at it and think, oh, that’s not as hard as what I’ve gone through. And I would probably agree with you. But that’s, of course, it’s not a competition, but we all have a story. Right. We have a story. And I didn’t feel like I had a lot of support in early motherhood. And even just as a teenager, I had a youth group and I had wonderful mentors. But I didn’t really have anybody like walking hand in hand with me on such a regular basis that for it to be consistently helpful, it was like helpful once a week, but like an intern intermittently, if they were not busy or if I was not busy or whatever like it was just super sporadic.

Emily (34:06):

Not a lot of check-in and accountability. And so I’ve just always had this heart for helping others because I want to, I want them to avoid pain. Like I don’t want, that’s really what I’ve always thought of it as like, let me help you avoid the hardness. Let me help you avoid the, this it’s the, I want you to grow without having to feel the discomfort. And here, let me tell you how I did it here. Let me tell you how you know, what I changed or what you should change or what you should do instead. Right. Like I just, I was trying so hard to grasp because I knew I was supposed to be helping people, but I had no clue how right. And so I just fumbled around and I, you know, totally inserted myself in people’s lives where they didn’t really want my help.

Emily (34:55):

They were not asking for help. But I just knew I was supposed to be helping. And I love that the holy spirit uses the people around us and even our feelings and are those deep desires that he gives us to give, to, to bring his goodness out into the world and the timing and the way we go about doing it is not necessarily like this move it’s processed. But I really think that that the timing is incredible, all of it. And so I had gone through some counseling a few years ago. I learned cognitive behavioral therapy skills were so powerful for me and emotional processing as well to help me with the accident and things like that, that I hadn’t processed for really, truly for a long time and were causing me a lot of anxiety and sleeplessness and I mean, just lots and lots of problems.

Emily (35:55):

And so I finally got, you know, some help with that. And my counselor at the time said you would make a great life coach. And I think I laughed at her as we all do because we all feel the first time it really does. And so I really just didn’t believe her at all. And about a year and a half went by and I had that in the niggling, in the back of my head, kept trying to help people the way that I thought I was supposed to. And then I heard you and Laura said who I’ve known Marissa since my early youth ministry days, like early, like as I was a teenager. And she was a fairly new youth minister like we go way back. And I was so excited to hear that she was doing a podcast and I knew a little bit about you.

Emily (36:39):

And I was really excited to learn more. We had met a few times at some various conferences really briefly. And so I was so excited that what you guys were doing. And I was, I was really curious what this life coaching thing was. So, I joined masters for a month and I learned about the model and I really got excited about it. But I knew that I wanted to do that. I knew I wanted to be the coach and help people with this way of helping them because it takes all the guesswork and all the pressure off of me. I don’t have to have the answers because you have the answers already and I just have to help you see them. And, and so, but when I found out, you know, what it would take and what I would have to do in order to become a life coach, I just allowed that, like that discomfort that confusion and that self-pity, and the doubt and all that fear to just completely stop to complete, just put an end to everything.

Emily (37:41):

And so I just, you know, throughout earlier this year, 2021, I just had it in the back of my head. Like, this is something I really want to do, but it’s obviously not going to work out for me. It’s gonna take away too much for my family to do this thing. And I just kind of set it on the side and just really went like a dove all in, on homeschooling and ministry work and continuing to do all of the things except for pursuing this dream. And God just used that tire. It’s like, what’d you say that holy spirit though, he does. He used that time. He doesn’t like, he, he just was like, he was making that desire in me even more and like deeper. He just ingrained it deeper in me. He let it grow. I was listening to all the podcasts you guys were doing.

Emily (38:39):

And I started reaching out and doing more research about life coaching and then the most beautiful part about all of that is that he, I, when it was time for me to kind of make a decision about whether or not to do it, my husband and I together did a novena to St. Padre PO and he came through, I mean, it was like clutch, like last second here. I want you to do this. I wanted you to surrender this to me. And Jesus just totally provided the way. And so we just, we jumped and it’s been the most incredible journey. And I loved every single minute of it, even the super uncomfortable parts because I know.

Sterling (39:27):

Yeah. So what Emily’s talking about is it is a significant financial and time investment to go to the life coach school. So there are a lot of different ways that you can become a life coach school, but you know, we are all life coach school coaches that were going to always be a requirement for working for us. It made for greatness because we think that they turn out elite coaches. And it is, it is a really big investment both in time and money, but what’s so powerful about the program is that you start coaching from day one in front of other coaches, you’re coaching other coaches and you’re getting lots of feedback. And that’s why we feel so confident. Like when somebody comes out of that program, they are such a strong coach. And then, you know, we of course add some of our Catholic tools on top of that. But the training that a life coach school coach receives is, is just so fantastic. So how did you find that you grew, how has it affected your kind of day-to-day life, or how you manage your mind since you’ve become a coach and started coaching?

Emily (40:31):

Yeah. I, oh gosh. I mean, I’ve changed so much. I feel like it’s been night and day in this process. And I would say that I’m calmer. I would say that I handle things that normally would have been a super stressful situation or a very busy week. Or, I mean, there’s just been so much that has happened in these months that I’ve been doing training in and the tools that I’ve learned and, and are mastering. Like the model is incredible. I absolutely love it. I put it to work every single day for myself and for others. I use it with my kids, like even my, my teenagers and my, my almost teenagers are, it’s fantastic for me to be able to ask them, why are you feeling that way? And they take a minute. And then they say because I’m having the thought Great.

Sterling (41:30):

It is great though. It is really fantastic. It’s fantastic.

Emily (41:33):

I would have loved to be able to have this knowledge and this experience these tools, I should say when I was a teenager and as a young adult, because it really helps you to see that, you know, you are the owner of your feelings, nobody else, and nothing else around you can cause them. And that is something that young people are just not taught. Right. And so, yeah, and then emotional processing between the model and emotional processing, like those two things were things that I had learned to some extent in my counseling that I had done. But the thing I love about life coaching is that you’re not digging into your past, looking for answers outside of yourself and for like answers from other people you’re with life coaching, you are looking within yourself in the present moment and asking yourself, well, what am I making this thought mean?

Emily (42:25):

Or what am I making if I’m thinking about something from the past, like, what am I making that mean about me right now? And what am I feeling from that thought? Which is so powerful, it’s so powerful. And so I can, I know I do that at the moment. Now I can sit, I can stop and pause myself at the moment and say, what am I, why is this a problem for me? You know? And some, most of the time it’s like, well, that actually, it isn’t a problem. I don’t need to get all worked up about it. But also like just naming the feeling that I’m having is an incredible tool to just bring awareness to what I am feeling. I can name it, I can change it. And I don’t ha I don’t, I’m not subject to those feelings and the overwhelm and the anxiety.

Emily (43:13):

I used to be just overwhelmed and anxious all ton of the time and like spinning my wheels and trying to do, trying to do everything all the time. I wasn’t managing my mind. I wasn’t managing my time. I was not confident in hardly anything I was doing. I was doing a ton, but I felt terrible. I was doing it. And I was kind of causing others to feel terrible around me while I was doing it. So I think that’s the biggest difference is I’m still doing a ton of things. My life is extremely full, probably more full. And I would say actually than before, but I’m handling it in such a calm way. And I’m able to process those urges to freak. Yeah. And not given to them, I’m allowing them to be and allowing them to fade. And then I’m able to just move on with my day and not allow that anxious or overwhelmed or fearful feeling or confusion to like take over my entire day.

Sterling (44:14):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s, you know, the reason I, obviously we share that on the podcast so many times that our lives are even more busy now than they used to be, but we’re so much more calm and we have so much more control over how we show up. And it doesn’t mean we get it perfect all the time. But I just feel so confident I can handle whatever the day is going to bring. And we hear that from our master’s members all the time. Just, I didn’t think I could have this much peace or I could be this calm. And I think you’re right, Emily, I think our lives on the outside sometimes look the same where we’re still kind of just handling the to-do list and taking care of the kids and whatever it is, but on the inside, we’re doing it with so much more peace and we’re so much more grounded and we feel more in control of ourselves, which I think is the holy kind of control that God wants us to have.

Emily (45:03):

Yes, absolutely. And I’m being the wife that I’ve always wanted to be where I’m smiling at my husband most days. And like actually every day, I’m, I’m able to smile at him instead of just kind of grunt at him when he comes home. Like, I can be so happy to see him because I’m just, I’m not bogged down by all the things and all the thoughts that I’ve been carrying around all day. I just don’t carry them anymore. And then I’m being the mom that I always wanted to be when I’m getting down and playing on the floor with my kids, which is not my thing. I’m not a big play on the floor kind of person. I’d much rather clean up the living room where, you know, sort the laundry or something and be productive. But I have time in my day and I have time in my mind now I know those things will get done.

Emily (45:53):

And so I’ve made space to be the playful kind of mom and to be creative and set time aside in my, in my prayer life as well to dedicate to like, how do I want to be today? How, who, what kind of, kind of mom do I want to be today? And, you know, I can choose to be the productive mom where I’m not playing on the floor. And I feel really good about that. You know? So I think I totally agree. Like when, when we are putting our relationship with God like this is, this is the other thing, like I’m, I’m spending more time listening to God and less time negotiating with him.

Sterling (46:33):

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a great way to put it. And I think so many of us have like hustle energy with God or that negotiating energy. And it’s so loud that we can’t hear him. Yeah. I think we’re praying. And cause we spend a lot of time praying, but we’re just spending a lot of time telling him what to do or complaining or freaking out. And we don’t have as much space to just hear him. And when you drop into trust, you guys, when you really kind of feel that, that grounding in that peace in your body, and you just sit with him, you just sit with your father, you sit with him who loves you so much and created you for this time. You can be so much more open to hearing him say small things. I hear him so much more now than I ever have in my entire life. And he tells me silly things now like read some books to violet today. I’ll just feel that movement in my heart. And I’m like, yeah, I should do that today. Right. And I just, I have always wanted to live that way. I’ve always wanted to live letting the Lord guide my, my day. And I feel like managing my mind, just quieted my mind enough that I could finally hear what he was probably always trying to tell me.

Emily (47:48):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also allows you, to start wanting what you already have. I know I, I talked to women a lot and I, I asked them, what do you want? And I’ll make it, I’ll have them give me a list, make me a list of 25 things that you want. And almost never, the first time we do it. And they almost never say something that they already have. And so I think being able to manage our mind and being able to bring our desires to the Lord, he shows us how we’re already living the life that we’re desiring. And it just, we just haven’t been seeing it. And so we can start having that gratitude and that just deep, like thankfulness in our hearts for what we have. And it doesn’t mean that we can’t desire more because he gives us those holy desires. And then he gives us the opportunity to fulfill those dreams. Especially when we hand them back to him saying, Lord, this is obviously coming from you. So here, take it back and, and, and do with it, what you will. And I just love that. I absolutely love that. He always fulfills our desires. The ones that come from him. And I have to remember that I desired this life. I desired to be a wife and a mom. And sometimes I forget that,

Sterling (49:12):

Right, absolutely. Now. And I think that is one of the biggest gifts of life. Coaching is just teaching you to love what you have. And listen, you guys, for those of you that are feeling like you’re in so much pain right now, sometimes that sounds like bad news, right? If I say, you can love your day-to-day life. Exactly the way that is. If your brain is not ready, it hasn’t learned these tools that can sound kind of terrible. Like no Sterling, you’re wrong because I’ve got all of this stuff. I couldn’t possibly be happy where I’m at, but well, what we want to tell you, the promise we want to make you. And the hope we want you to have is that if you can take off your glasses, you’re wearing these smudgy glasses right now. And when you take them off, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to change anything.

Sterling (49:57):

But when you start to see your life, the way that God sees it, and your heart gets filled up with gratitude and thankfulness and just love for what’s in front of you, you will naturally grow and start doing some of those things. You’ve always wanted to do like losing weight or managing your time better or having less anxiety. But you will do it from a place of calmness instead of a place of frantically trying to fix something that’s broken because it isn’t broken. You have a beautiful life and God has you exactly where he wants you right now. And I really promise that, you know, managing your mind is going to help make whatever pain you have right now feel so much more like you can handle it and you’ll see God in that pain. Just, just like we’ve heard Emily, Sharon, her story.

Emily (50:50):

Yeah. I completely agree. And I feel like the trust that I’ve had through this whole growth process you know, since he’s called me back to him, when I was 14, I’ve just had this unwavering trust that he has got me in the palm of his hands. And that I don’t have to question. I mean, I do all the time, but I don’t have to. I choose to question his plans. And I think that one of the best life coaching tools that I’ve learned is just this thought that, you know, life doesn’t happen to me. It happens for me. And he has a plan for me and I have seven kiddos running around my house who are my daily witness of the goodness of his plan, even though it was so hard to get here.

Sterling (51:46):

Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could have told myself that, you know, 10 years ago, like, Hey kid, hang on. It’s going to be a long bumpy 10 years. And then your God is just really going to answer all of your prayers and, and you’re going to live the life of your dreams. And I just want to say, as you were saying that Emily, it is not a requirement that you have a bucket of kids to come for greatness coach. I dunno how we’ve all ended up that way. No, that was not part of the ministry that we do. It just happens to be that the three of us do have quite a lot of children. But really it was just that we prayed that God would bring us the right coaches. And Emily is just the first one. You know, we are definitely going to grow and go out into the world.

Sterling (52:27):

And our mission is to teach 10,000 Catholic women how to manage their minds so they can do what God is calling them to do. And I’m watching it happen over and over again in our master’s community. They’re learning these tools and they’re just blossoming. They’re like blooming into this person that God has just been waiting for them to step into. And I just, I cannot imagine what we can accomplish in the world when we start doing that on a really, really large scale. So, Emily, I’m just so excited that you answered the Holy Spirit’s call for you and that you’re coming to join our team.

Emily (53:03):

Well, thank you both for having me is, is truly a dream come true for me. This was a goal that I had, but I did not expect that goal to be able to come to fruition anytime soon. And so God is so good and providing just providing the way and providing like lighting the path, I think for all of us to find, to find each other. And I am so excited to see what he does with this amazing work. It’s I’m, I am beyond honored to be part of this work.

Sterling (53:37):

We have big plans for Emily. I think, you know, I’m really excited to do more, to create more resources with you about, you know, grieving and homeschooling and time management and anxiety. Like I think you can bring so much to all of those topics. And so for those of you guys that love Emily and her story, and you feel like something really resonated with you come to join me for greatness and you can come coach with her and she will be doing group coaching for us, as well as doing private coaching. And so we are just really excited to have you. It’s just a great gift that you bring and I’m excited for all of the women that you’re going to help.

Emily (54:15):

Oh, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. I am counterweights meet everybody in masters in a more official way. It’s going to be wonderful.

Sterling (54:25):

Absolutely. Yes, this was, this was our big like, nah, and now you’ll see Emily everywhere. And so that would be really fun. And if you want to follow Emily, what’s your Instagram handle?

Emily (54:36):

Yeah. So my coaching Instagram is it’s called Fiat life coaching and FIA is F I a T life coaching.

Sterling (54:45):

And then your website is the same too, right? It’s Fiat life coaching.com.

Emily (54:49):

It is. Yep. So

Sterling (54:51):

Awesome. Your Instagram is awesome. I’m a little jealous. You’re crushing it. I love your posts. So everyone should go follow Emily on Instagram because you do such a beautiful job.

Emily (55:01):

Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

Sterling (55:03):

All right. You guys, we’re praying for you and I hope you got something out of this. Just some ideas of different things that you can think of and ways that you can really view your pain. What Emily was saying is in our coaching language, your past is just a circumstance it’s already happened. So now it’s in the sea line, right? We’ve taught you guys how to use the model on the podcast. That was one of the earlier episodes. You can go find it. But your past is in your circumstance line. And the only thing it becomes in your present is what you think about it. So you’re either going to view it through the lens of that was amazing. That created me to be who I am. That was God’s training ground for me. I, I had so many blessings out of it. Or you can have thinking that keeps you kind of stuck looking in the past, being dragged down by that story, feeling negative about it, but you have the power to tell yourself whatever story you want about what happened. It is just a neutral thing until you make it mean something. And so I just want to encourage all of you you know, through listening to Emily’s story, that you can really look back and view things that were really, really challenging and view them in a really beautiful way.

Emily (56:17):

And I can I just add to that, that your, your past cannot hurt you right now. It’s not actively hurting you right now. And that’s why you can, it suddenly feels like it just comes out of nowhere. Maybe sweeps you off your feet when you just suddenly remember this hard thing or this painful thing from your past. And that’s why it hurts right now. It’s not because it’s, it’s come back and is currently happening to you again. It’s because you’re having a thought about it. And what I love about coaching when I left coaching women on, in pain and grieving especially is that that you can choose whether or not you have those painful feelings and how you want to feel about it. And maybe sometimes you want to, you want to sit with that sadness and that’s okay. But sometimes that’s not serving you and it’s totally okay to listen to God who wants to help you feel better.

Sterling (57:17):

I love it. I love it so much. Well, thank you Emily for being here and we’re praying for all of you. And remember ladies you are made for greatness.