Summer Fun!

We’re like, gosh, I, I don’t know. I don’t really do things that aren’t that much fun anymore. And I don’t know how to have fun anymore. Our concept of fun has changed over the years. I mean, definitely what we thought was fun. Maybe when we were kids or teenagers or young adults it is certainly not what we think of as fun anymore. However, it’s really important for us to have fun in our lives to have enjoyment in our lives. And I’m so excited that we’re gonna focus an entire month on this. And even in my own life, I am really looking forward to getting intentional about it. And in a way, up-leveling my fun meter, making more space in my life for fun, getting more intentional, thinking about it more, all of it. So that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. This is gonna be a fun episode and I’m gonna kind of just share with us the reasons why we need to have more fun, how we need to bring more pleasure and enjoyment into our lives and how in doing so it can lead us closer to God that it can be good and holy and that we can look to scripture into the saints, into the church to understand why it is so important.

Okay. So to get started here, I looked up some definitions of some words that I wanna share with you. I, first of all, looked up the definition of the word fun, which I think is just kind of funny because we all know what fun is, but here is the definition, enjoyment, amusement, and lighthearted pleasure. So from there, I decided to look up the word pleasure, and this is the definition for pleasure, a feeling of happy satisfaction or enjoyment. And from there, I looked up the word delight or to delight in, and that definition is the source or cause of great pleasure. And then finally the definition of joy. And although there’s many, this is one that I really loved: the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good. So as I continue on, you’re gonna hear me kind of utilizing these four different words, fun, pleasure, delight, joy.

As I talk about these beautiful emotions and these beautiful experiences that God desires for us to have. Now I wanna be clear. I’m not saying that we should always be striving to have fun and to have moments that are constantly filled with pleasure or delight that we, you know, are human beings. And we wanna make sure that everything is in its right order. So for example, pleasure in and of itself like good pleasure is I believe from God, like he has given us this beautiful world so that we could delight in it. He’s given us everything, food and drink relationships. He’s given us all this goodness for us to enjoy and to utilize for his glory. And so obviously in the right context, having pleasure and delight and fun can be a really good thing. And it can be holy like so often, like it should be holy.

Unfortunately, a lot of times we as human beings in our own sinfulness, in the, in the fact that we live in this broken world, we will take fun and pleasure out of the context within which God wants it. And we will use it in a disordered way, which actually leads us to greater pain. So for example, pleasure in and of itself, many things that bring us pleasure. Isn’t bad. It’s actually good. But when we overindulge in it, when we overdo pleasure, it often leads us to great pain. We can see this in so many things like eating in and of itself is good. And we can delight in eating and enjoy eating good foods. But if we overeat a lot, it leads us to pain. And it’s not good for us, same with drinking or pretty much anything we overdo if we do it too much, or if we are doing things that are obviously sinful, even though it might bring us pleasure, it will lead us to paint.

It will lead us to enslavement. And a lot of those, the reasons for this is because we are putting it in the wrong context, we’re taking it out of the way that God intended it to be used, or we’re using it to try to fill something within our souls that only God can fill. So if we put anything that’s pleasurable or enjoyable or fun, and we put that above God, or we put it in the wrong order, above, above God or above the people in our lives that God has called us to love and to take care of, then obviously that’s gonna lead us to a lot of pain and to a lot of suffering. And so the church is very careful. I mean, the church asks us oftentimes too fast and to deny ourselves because that’s a really good practice as well. We want to have a good balance.

We wanna have a healthy balance. We don’t wanna go too extreme where we live a hedonistic life, where all we’re doing is trying to satisfy our desires for pleasure. So we wanna be careful of that. And the church obviously cautions us from that and it’s good to have self control and it’s good to practice self denial at times, those are good things. It builds those virtues in us, but at the same time, we also want to be intentional and aware about actually enjoying the great gifts from God that he’s given to us, the great things that should bring us joy, that we should take time and be intentional about enjoying the great blessings in our lives. And so how do we find that balance and how do we as moms live this out in our own lives and model this for our children in a really healthy way, because we can find God to enjoy, obviously the saints.

Talk about that all the time. We’re called to have fun. We’re called to laugh. Like there’s a time there’s a season to laugh and to dance and to experience joy. There’s also times where we’re called to experience silence and quiet and peace. There’s a time to mourn and to offer up our sacrifices, all of it. But this is what we talk about. Like living a full life, where we get to experience it all. And a lot of times I think that we, as women, as mothers, we can get so caught up in all of the responsibilities of our lives and we’re going a million miles an hour where we’ve got a lot that we’re consumed with worry stress, sometimes we’re overwhelmed. And so I really like stopping to have, and to build in more fun into our lives. Like we have to work on that. We have to slow down a little bit to savor and to delight and to enjoy the very many beautiful things that God has brought into life.

I believe so much that in doing so, we get to honor our Lord in a very special way. And I think that when we put fun and delight and pleasures all in the right context, in a lot of ways, it gives us a glimpse, not only of the goodness of God, but it also gives us a glimpse into eternity, into heaven where we know that we are gonna be in heaven where it’s, there’s no more pain, it’s gonna be a place of complete and total joy of complete and total delight of fun. I mean, I just like more than anything that blows our minds. And this is so like when we have those moments in our own life, when we bring more joy, more fun into our life, I think it’s a foretaste of heaven. And as someone who has taught the faith to teens, like I’ve spent 20 years of my life teaching the faith to teenagers.

And one of the biggest priorities I’ve always had, like whenever I’m teaching the faith is how can I make this fun? How can I make it enjoyable? How can I make it engaging? Learning about our faith should be exciting and helping our children and teenagers grow in their relationship with God should be seen as the greatest adventure of their life. Like there’s nothing more beautiful and exciting and yes, even fun than having a relationship with a living. God, I want to invite you to think for a moment about the last time you had a lot of fun, like pure, wholehearted, total fun in your life. Can you think of it? Can you remember that was it last week, last month, last year, when you just had this overwhelming sense of fun and laughter and your heart felt overjoyed, even if it wasn’t necessarily like a church related event or a spiritual event, I bet you in one way or another, you had an experience with God, whether you even realized it or not.

And it’s funny because I can think, I mean, there’ve been a number of times in my recent past that I had these moments of just total fun. One of them was at a Garth Brooks concert, not too long ago, my husband and I went to, and I remember being at the concert and just being surrounded by 35,000 other people, everyone singing in the crowd. And of course, Garth Brooks, who’s an amazing performer and he’s so talented and he is singing and everyone’s coming together. And I remember just feeling so good and so alive. I mean, I wasn’t at church, but in some ways it kind of was like, oh my gosh, it was so beautiful. And so life gives. And I remember thinking about God in that moment, like, this is definitely an experience of God that I was having. And just witnessing someone like earth Brooks who has this incredible talent and just thinking about how God had blessed him with that talent and how through his talent.

So many people have experienced so much joy. Like it’s just so cool. I also think about a time, not too long ago, my husband and I went to a, we went and saw a comedian and he was a clean, it was a clean comedian and he was hilarious. And I remember sitting there for two hours, just laughing hysterically the whole time. And I remember having this moment where I’m sitting there laughing, like my, my cheeks were hurting so bad. I was crying cuz I was laughing so hard and not only were the comedians jokes hilarious, but I was getting so much joy and delight and listening to all the people around me laughing. Like there was this one guy in the crowd sitting by us and his , his laughter was hilarious. Like I was dying, just listening to him, laugh. And I remember thinking how good it felt to just laugh like that and how it was such an experience of God.

And again, being in awe of this man, this comedian who had been given this gift, this talent by God to make people laugh. And in a way through him just doing his gift, bringing his gift into the world, he was blessing other people with joy. It’s so cool. And it’s so powerful and it’s so beautiful. And it reveals to us the nature of God and how he wants us to delight in the things that he has created. I think it’s fascinating. If you look at all of the things that we need to survive as human beings, all of those things that we need to survive feel really good. They’re very pleasurable. So first of all, let’s talk about breathing. I just want you for a moment, like, hold your breath, hold your breath. you hold it for 30, 45 seconds. And then you breathe and you take a deep breath.

It feels so good. A lot of times we forget how good breathing feels until we’re short of breath or we hold our breath or we need to catch our breath. Like, and we’re like, oh, breathing. It feels so good. Same with eating and drinking. We need to eat and drink to survive. Right? And God has given us so many pleasurable foods to enjoy strawberries and chocolate and fruits and vegetables and meats and dairy and all the things and in their right order and their right context. When we eat foods to nourish our bodies and to, you know, enjoy it like it’s so good. Obviously we can overdo that. We can turn that pleasure into something that’s not good, but in general to stay alive, God made eating pleasurable so that we would do it so that we would eat and that we would stay alive. Our body desires it because it’s necessary for our survival, same with sex, right?

Isn’t it fascinating that the thing that we need to do to procreate and to keep humanity going is incredibly pleasurable and especially within the right context within the sacrament of marriage and between one man and one woman coming together, that union is so beautiful. And even in John Paul, two’s theology of the body, the unit of act and the procreative act of, of man and woman, husband, and wife coming together in this extraordinary exchange of love where God is at the center, you know, with who has the opportunity to do his most creative act in that moment of bringing a whole nother soul into the world. Like it is so good and it is so beautiful and it’s, you know, God’s most favorite thing to do is to bring another soul into the world. And he created that act to be good and beautiful and holy, but it’s also very pleasurable and in a lot of ways, reveals to us the nature of God and the catechism of the Catholic church is very clear that it is good for a husband and a wife to enjoy the marital union.

That that is a gift from God that we’re meant to enjoy. And of course it doesn’t always happen. It’s not always super enjoyable for both people, but it’s intended to be right. Like God made it enjoyable. And in that act, God reveals something to us. That is so, so good. One of my favorite scripture stories is the wedding Festa Kana. And there is so much theological context to that story. All about our blessing mother Jesus’ first public miracle on the foreshadowing of the last supper of when he’s gonna turn his, turn the wine into his precious blood, all of that. But one of the things that I love about this story that I personally love reflecting on is just the simple fact that Jesus’ first public miracle, he’s changing water into wine so that the celebration of this wedding can continue. And it also speaks to the, to the joy and to the delight of this wedding of the couples.

A lot of people don’t realize what’s going on, but like how many times in our own lives does Jesus do these miracles behind the scenes? Maybe we’re not even aware of what he’s doing, just so that the celebration or the party or the joy in our lives can continue. I bet we have so many of our own wedding Fe Kana moments that we’re not ever even gonna know about this site of heaven, where in eternity, it will be revealed to us all the amazing miraculous things God was doing behind the scenes, just so that we could experience a little bit more joy or even possibly a little more fun in our lives. Now this is the deal, even Sterling and I in a number of our conversations, we’ve talked about the challenge that we as moms face sometimes in having more fun in our lives.

In fact, we’ve presented this question a number of times to our master’s members. And a lot of times women will say things like, I don’t really know how to have fun anymore, or it’s just too challenging to try to come up with new creative ideas on how to have fun. So this is, this is the thing, this is why we’re focusing on this this month, because it’s really important for us to be intentional about creating time and space for us to have more fun. And I was thinking about why when we’re children, is it so much easier to have fun than it is sometimes as adults? And I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons why that is our brain development. Our, you know, when we’re younger, our imagination, the way our brain works is so much different. And then as we develop, we grow up there’s just so many factors, but I think that one of the main things is that when we’re children, most of the time, our basic needs are completely met by other people.

So we’re not worried about so many things like how we’re going to eat or how we’re gonna take care of ourselves. Like all of those things are taken care of for us, they’re provided for us. So for most children, in most circumstances, they don’t have to worry about a lot of things. And if you think about the emotions of fun and joy and delight, those are, those are emotions. And we know what we teach in masters is that all of our emotions come from our thoughts. And so as children, if you’re not thinking about a lot of thoughts about worry or having to be stressed out, it opens up your, your mind to have a lot of thoughts that are thoughts, thinking about things that make you happy and joyful things and things you wanna do and things that are fun and exciting, right? All of that kind of stuff.

And then of course, as we grow up and we become adults, we start to experience the weight and responsibility of life. Like all of a sudden we become very responsible for ourselves. And as we become parents, we become responsible for other human beings. And there are so many demands and stressors that are involved in all of that. So often we find ourselves as adults being consumed with all the responsibilities and things that we have to take care of. Oftentimes we’re consumed with worry or stress, the emotions of overwhelm sometimes fear, anxiety, all of that. And so when we’re feeling those emotions, it’s really hard, nearly impossible to experience the emotions of joy and light hardiness and happiness and pleasure, delight and fun. Those are what we call competing emotions. Meaning if our emotions come from our thoughts, it’s impossible to have thoughts of worry or stress or overwhelm while at the same time, having thoughts of peace and joy and pleasure they’re competing.

You can’t have them at the same time. Now you can have, like other emotions that are non-competing emotions. Like you can feel peaceful and happy at the same time, or you can feel angry and frustrated at the same time, but you can’t have competing emotions. And so it’s really important for us to get clear with like, what are the emotions that we tend to fill on a day to day basis? Are we feeling a lot of stress and overwhelm, anxiousness, worry, all of those thoughts or those emotions? Are we having those a lot? Because that’s really an indication of the thoughts that we’re thinking. And a lot of times we believe that we’re feeling all of those emotions because of the circumstances that we’re in, but really it’s the thoughts that we are thinking and the saints in so many ways, point us to the reality that even in challenging times, even in moments of suffering, when we really take captive our thoughts and we find ourselves living more intentionally and being more in tune with the will and the heart of God, we can actually experience the emotions of joy, even in difficult times.

Like we can be aware of that. And it all comes down to the thoughts that we are thinking, but this is the guilt. If we want to have more fun in our lives, if we wanna have more pleasure and enjoyment and delight and joy, it all starts with our thoughts. And we have to become more intentional about the thoughts that we’re thinking and about building in moments and opportunities and experiences into our lives that are gonna generate moments of joy, more opportunities, where we can have fun and create lasting memories. All of that. Most of the time, we’re not just gonna have fun accidentally. We’re not just gonna have pleasure and delight and joy just accidentally. It’s going to come as a result of us being very intentional about it, intentional with our thoughts, intentional with our emotions, intentional with our actions, all of it.

And when you put all of this into a model like we do, when we’re coaching in masters, we can see that if we want to experience fun, the emotions of fun and joy, like it’s gonna start with a thought that we’re thinking, and then it’s gonna lead to that emotion that we wanna experience. And then from there, the actions are gonna come from that because our actions are always driven by our emotions. It’s so incredibly powerful. And that’s why we are focusing on this in the month of June, we wanna focus so much on getting intentional about living our lives with a little bit more joy and fun. And the more we do this, the more we practice it, the easier it becomes. Like I don’t wanna be a woman that sits around thinking to herself. I just don’t know how to have fun anymore.

Like, I’ve just forgotten what that feels like. I don’t wanna be that mom. I wanna be the mom who is looking for ways to bring fun into my daily life and into my life and my family. I wanna be the type of woman that slows down and it, and delights in the food that she eats and savors the bites and enjoys it. I wanna be someone that recognizes all of these little beautiful gifts in her life and takes delight in it just like the other day I was on Memorial day, my family, we took a drive out to my husband’s father’s grave site. He died not too long ago. And so this was a pretty emotional day and his mother came with us. So she was sitting in the front seat and I was sitting in the back seat and I was sitting next to my four year old daughter.

And as we were driving out in the country, I was just trying to savor the experience because my sweet little four year old daughter reached her hand out to me and held my hand as we drove for about 30 minutes. She just held my hand. And usually when we’re driving, I’m sitting in the front seat, so I’m not sitting next to her, but this was a moment that was so beautiful for me. And it was such a moment of God and delight. And I just sat there taking it in. I know my sweet little four year old she’s gonna grow so fast and this moment is gonna be gone. Right. and so I was just delighted in holding her sweet little soft hand in mind as we drove. And this is why I think that we need to create more moments in our lives where we’re paying attention to these types of things.

Life is passing us by so fast. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the urgent things and rush from one thing to another. But I believe that the holy spirit is inviting us to slow down, to pause, to create space where we can have these really beautiful moments that we can like they’re meant for us to enjoy. And they’re also meant to reveal to us the beauty and the truth and the goodness of God that he wants to share with us. I think there’s so many moments throughout the day that I know for myself. Like I so often overlook. I also think of God so often as just the good, good father who delights in giving his children good things. And when I think about this, when I think about the things that I love to give to my children, not only do I, you know, appreciate it when I give them something that they are thankful for, like, that’s always nice, but I also want them to really enjoy it.

Like when we give our children gifts at Christmas, in our minds, we’re giving them the gifts because we want them to enjoy it. And I think about that so often in my own life, like when I go to eat something, when I go to eat dinner, you know, we, as a family, we pray a Thanksgiving prayer, thanking God for the gift of the food, but how often do I really sit and enjoy it? There’s so many times that I’ll eat and I’ll just eat really fast or I’ll, you know, maybe I’ll be eating lunch and I’m eating, standing up just putting food in my mouth without really delighting in it without really experiencing it. And how often do we do that in our lives? Because I think it’s a great gift to give back to God, not only our Thanksgiving, for all the good things.

He gives us the gift of our families, the gift of good food, the gift of our home, the gift of our relationships, all of that. But how often do we really stop to delight in all of those things? Because that in and of itself is giving a gift back to God. And that’s been something I’ve been really thinking about lately is just, how am I delighting in all of the really amazing things that God has blessed me with for my friendships, to the work that I get to do, the laundry that I get to fold all of it, because all of that’s a gift from God. And how am I delighting in it? When we shift our thoughts to be thinking about these things, all of a sudden we find ourselves appreciating things more. We find joy more in the small things when we stop and really think about it.

And so, again, these are the reasons why I’m so incredibly excited about the month of June in masters. If you are not in masters, I really wanna invite you to come and check it out, come be a part of it. Sterling. And I have some really fun things, planned, some fun challenges and competitions and prizes to really motivate us, to get us thinking outside of the box, trying new things, having fun with our families, our kids, our husbands, our, you know, making more time in our own life for yourself to experience more fun. All of it, it is going to be awesome. And I wanna close out this episode with some beautiful quotes. Some of these are some of my favorite quotes, some of these I just found in just looking up joy quotes about joy from saints, and then in scripture, which I would like to invite all of you to do at some point today or the next few days go and look up Saint quotes about joy.

There’s so many, in fact, we’re gonna be posting them throughout the month of June on our Instagram page. And I just, I can’t wait because they’re so, so good. But one of my all time favorite quotes, I actually used it as my signature line in my email for probably 15 years, is by father Pierre Tahar day shirt on. And it is this joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God. Oh, it’s so good. And then here is a quote by John Paul. Secondly, I have never heard this quote before, but oh my gosh, it makes my heart wanna explode. This is it. God made us for joy. God is joy. And the joy of living reflects the original joy that God felt in creating us. Oh my gosh, that makes me wanna cry. It’s so beautiful. And then here is this other quote, the true way to advance in holy virtue is to persevere in holy cheerfulness.

That was St. Philip Neri. We just celebrated his feast day recently last week. And he is the patron Saint of joy. I did not know that , but I found out last week, I was at a mass with our Bishop and he shared that. I was like, what? I did not know that there was a patron scene of joy. And now I am in St. St. Philip, Mary. And I love that quote. The true way to advance in holy virtue is to persevere in holy cheerfulness. So good. And then here is another one, the soul of the one who serves God, always swims in joy, always keeps holidays and is always in the mood for singing you guys that is Saint John of the cross. . I love it. It’s like these saints are telling us like it’s okay to, to swim and enjoy and to be in the mood to sing and to have fun and to keep the holiday and to go on vacations and to enjoy the goodness of life.

And then from Romans chapter 15, verse 13, may the God of hope, fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the holy spirit. And finally from Psalm 37, take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. How beautiful is that? And again, when all of these things are in their right order and when we put God above all of them, then he all, the more gives to us the things that our heart truly desires, because they’re in alignment with him and it’s there that we will find great joy. It is there that we will experience the overwhelming joy and delight that he wants to give to us in this life. And of course, in all of eternity, this is what I have for you.

My sisters in Christ, I hope you will come and join us in masters, where we’re gonna be cheering each other on and walking with one another as we just focus on these things a little bit more, it’s gonna be awesome. And of course, remember mama, you are Made for Greatness.