And in my job, women come, and they tell me what’s stealing their peace. That’s their job is to tell me, “This is hard. I’m struggling. I’m frustrated. This person’s driving me nuts. This kiddo is really difficult. I’m drowning in this way.”

They bring these sentences to me, and then we sit with them, and we work through them together until they can find a way to be at peace about whatever they brought, which is possible in all scenarios. We know this as Christians, that we can have peace in any scenario.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s not difficult or something, you know, hard fought for, but it is possible. And so we stick together until we can get to that place where we could at least see how a person could be at peace in this situation.

I kind of think about it like knowing that you’re going to forgive someone, but maybe you’re not quite ready to do it. Sometimes there are those situations where you see the thoughts that you could have and the beliefs that you could have in order to be at peace with whatever you’re going through, but you’re just not quite there yet.

And so I’ve been pressing women more on not just having awareness of their thinking and what’s keeping them from peace, but really reaching for it, really going for it. And I said it kind of offhandedly, you know, “I wanna be a blanket of peace in my home.” And the moms really resonated with that phrase.

And the more I’ve been thinking about it, I really like it because I think about women in the home, moms, that we have this ability to take our energy, our feelings, like our emotional state, and blanket the room with our emotional state. We bring the calm.

Now, sometimes we don’t, and sometimes we’re frustrated, and we’re bringing anger or stress or something else, but we completely have the power to bring peace and calm to a room. And I want to be that kind of mom. I wanna bring peace to my husband’s heart. I wanna bring peace to my children. I want to create a peaceful environment in the kitchen, and in the living room, and in the car.

And I fully expect the children to be a crazy circus, but that I am bringing this strength and this dedication. I think that’s what feels like a new way that we’re talking about it, is like you’re on a mission to be a blanket of peace in whatever room that you’re in. You bring that energy. I would say you bring that vibe. Did I already mention that my daughter says that only old people say vibes? And I’m not letting it go. I like the word vibes. I’m keeping it.

But that’s what I want. I want to bring this feeling of, we’re okay. This is okay. We can handle this. We love each other. We’re here together. And I’m just asking myself to do it in harder and harder situations. So there are many situations where I’m able to stay calm and be the peace center of my home. You guys have heard me say that phrase before.

But something about this visual of being a blanket of peace, it’s like covering everyone, and like the peace is coming out of my body and into their bodies. I mean, this is not actually what’s happening, although humans do pick up on each other’s emotional state.

So you can, to some degree, influence somebody else’s emotional state by your emotional state, positively and negatively. right? So when somebody’s anxious, somebody near that person can start to feel anxious. But we can do the same thing with your presence of being really calm, grounded, and peaceful.

And so in the mornings, so two mornings a week, I’m getting the boys ready for the farm school, and then two of my girls are getting ready for their homeschool co-op. And so there’s getting dressed, and lunches, and breakfast, and did I grab my paper?

And on this particular morning, my 13-year-old was the child giving the presentation in front of the whole co-op. They gave each of the children a turn to do that, and so she was presenting about her puppy, and so she was having some feelings about that.

And I just went into the morning thinking this, thinking, “I am going to be so calm that everyone around me is gonna be calm.” And I would watch them. They would come in with not calm energy, something a little bit frantic, something a little bit anxious or sharp, and I would speak to them in this voice that was just so grounded, so confident, so calm, and then they would calm down.

And I’ve said this before, but I’ll keep saying it. I think this is the kind of powerful that we really want. I don’t know that women in general are programmed to think, “I’m so powerful.” Men kind of go out into the world and they conquer and a lot of them seek this feeling of power. But I think the power that women have is the ability to do this, is the ability to set the tone for a space. To take hearts that are troubled and give them a sense of safety and connection.

And again, this is just a deeper level of what we’ve been talking about here for five years, which is we have control over how we show up emotionally. But I wanna take this to the next level, which is not just do I wanna have peace in my body, but I want it to be my mission at home to ground everyone else in this feeling.

And it’s okay if they pop off a little, ’cause I’m gonna meet them with this calm, grounded, peaceful energy. Even if it’s bananas. What did he do yesterday? Sweet little Forest bear did something yesterday, just naughty. I’ll just… You know, one of those things where you’re like, “Bro, don’t do that.” and I just went, “Hey, we’re not gonna do that in this room. Okay?”

Just like that. Like, I didn’t have to, I didn’t. In my mind, right? I was like, “Why, though? Why do you have to do that?” But I know that speaking to him like that doesn’t ever help. He, when I’m flustered, he gets flustered, and then we’re just feeding off each other’s bouncy energy. Just, “Hey, we’re not gonna do that in this room. Okay? Love you.”

When I am really grounded and I am at peace, that is how I sound as a parent. And I don’t just wanna teach you how to do that, I want to create a community of women who are primarily dedicated to this being their mission.

And I think, obviously, we all have the mission to be saints and raise saints, but I think the way that we measure that is how often we are in a state of being at peace and receiving the life that God has given us.

And so I just really wanna encourage all of you to step it up, to challenge yourselves To really be dedicated to this idea of being the blanket of peace in your home or in the car or at your job. Like, you are the one.

You know, when we think of Mother Teresa like that, like she just changed the energy of the rooms that she was in. People would lower their voices. People would just be quiet. They were just in awe of her. They just wanted to be around her. They would listen to her. How did she do that?

I think it’s because she walked so closely with the Lord, she was so willing to just accept whatever he brought her, and then she was filled with this, like, light of Christ and this holiness, and it was so radiant and attractive. I wanna be a mom like that, and I wanna stop making excuses for why I can’t be.

Now, I used to make a lot of excuses, right? Years and years ago before I learned these tools. I do that less now, but I still do it. I’m still like, “Oh, today was really hard,” or, “I’m tired,” or, “This happened.”

And something this week just really brought me to this place where I wanna drop in. I just wanna drop in and be like, “No, I am so dedicated to being a peaceful presence in my home. And what’s interesting is it takes fewer words, it takes less energy. You’re able to be more present with your kids, and I think it’s much more effective.

You know, when you get frustrated and you snap at a kid, it’s not usually that situation goes well. Usually, your energy then is high and his energy is high, and neither of you are at peace for however long it takes you to calm back down.

So I want you to either pick a time of day or a place or a situation where you have been tolerating chaos, where you have been tolerating people bickering or frustration, either from yourself or from them.

And I just want you to challenge yourself and think about how can I be so grounded and at peace in this situation that everyone responds. They just respond to my presence. And I think we’re gonna be speaking slowly, in a lower voice, saying fewer words, and we’re putting more love into those words. Let us be moms like that.

It’s been really powerful to walk along so many of you who are doing this work, and we have a call in the community every month to share wins. And I just love hearing people say, “This difficult situation came up, and I was so calm through it, and I’m so proud of myself, and I’m really doing it,” or, “I caught myself faster, and I didn’t spiral,” or, “I thought through this event that was coming up, and I just planned it really well, and it wasn’t stressful.”

And this is what Catholic Mom Calm is about. We are the moms who are fighting for calm. We are fighting for peace. We will not accept that life has to be stressful and chaotic. Now, are three-year-olds always chaotic? Yes. They’re wild, crazy monkeys, those three-year-olds. Maybe lots of the ages, but in particular, I’m thinking about three-year-olds.

It’s okay, though, to have a child that brings chaos. You bring the calm. You bring something steady. You bring something safe and secure for that child and for your family, and you bring a peaceful energy into the room.

And I think about Mother Teresa, like, having this golden light around her that represented just the peace that she carried with her, and I wonder how far it went. Was it 10 feet? Was it 30 feet? If she was at a conference, could she push her peaceful light into that entire conference room? I don’t know, but I like it as a visual because I wanna think about my presence like that. Can I fill up this room energetically with peace? Let us be moms like that.

All right, my friends. This is your mission. I’m sending you off today hoping that you will double down on this concept and work even harder to bring a calm, grounded version of you to your family.

Okay. Two announcements. One We are officially launching the One Million Rosaries Challenge. You can go to onemillionrosaries.com. And for the month of October, which is the month of the rosary, we are trying to get one million rosaries prayed by Catholic families.

So in particular, we wanted this to be a kid challenge. We really wanted to get kids praying the rosary in October to celebrate Rosary Month, and we thought, “Yeah, let’s just get families to do it.” So if you have a family of five, and you pray the rosary together, you would count that as five rosaries, and you’ll be able to go in and log your rosaries.

And we have all these different milestones with prizes. We’re gonna do a daily drawing, and then as we get through certain milestones, we’ll give prizes to everybody. Like, if we get to, you know, 2,500, then everybody will get an email with kind of a digital gift.

And you can do it with your school, or your parish, or your friends, or your homeschool community. You can start a group, and you’ll get a code, and then you can make your own group goal.

So for our homeschooling co-op, we set the goal of 3,000 rosaries, and then we’re gonna do a cute pumpkin bread party for the kids at the end of October if we pray 3,000 rosaries in the month, which I think we’ll be able to do.

And it’s completely free, super fun. If you want, you can track your rosaries through the dashboard. You can also track the rosaries through our Calm Catholic Kids app, which is free. Or we have paper ones, so you can, like, print out a piece of paper, and your family can keep track of it on paper.

You would wanna log them at least once at the end if you wanted to keep track of them on paper the whole time. Then you’d log it once on the site so we can get to the million. And this is just a really sweet challenge, and I partnered with three other companies.

The Little Rose Shop, who I love; Into the Deep, who has those beautiful picture rosary studies that I love so much; and then Gather in Prayer, who has just really unique takes on the rosary, just toys and things like that.

So we are encouraging individual families to also get a prize for their kids. So, you know, if your kids pray the rosary every day in October, then give them a beautiful rosary or some prize that they would be excited about.

So please, I need your help. I am, like, a little guy. I’m a little fish. I’m a little fish amongst the Catholic influencers, okay? I am not Chris Stefanick, okay? I am not Bishop Barron. I’m not Jen Fulwiler. Okay? I’m like a little fish. I’m a fish. I’m in the pond, but I’m a little fish.

So I need your help to rally your school, to rally your homeschool community, to post in Facebook groups. This is such an easy thing to talk about because it’s free, and it’s fun, and everybody wants to pray the rosary more with their kids. I mean, we all have that desire in our hearts, and we’ve just made it really easy to do it.

We also have outlined a bite-sized rosary for little kids where you pray, like, the beginning prayers on Sunday, and then maybe the Our Father on one day, and then one mystery a day. Anyway, you end up praying all the mysteries one time throughout the month. So it’s for little guys who can’t sit for a whole rosary.

And we have the digital files of me praying all of these things, so all you have to do is hit play on any of the options that we’ve given you. So go to onemillionrosaries.com, sign up. Please share this. I kind of think. I think I did the math and I need 30,000 families to hit a million. It was something like that. I forget what average family size I picked.

But I really actually think we’re gonna hit a million, and it’s just gonna be so fun. So go sign up. The second announcement is the Catholic Mom Calm app is almost ready. Just, it’s so close, you guys. It’s so close, and so I think next week it’s gonna be live, and you will be able to get it.

So just hold your breath. That is completely for moms, and I’m sure I will tell you about it in great detail, but I will just say that I designed it to help you calm down. I just thought so many apps stress you out and steal your peace, and I wanted to make an app where its number-one purpose was to give you peace.

And so everything in it is designed for that, and it’s so beautiful and it’s, I think, very easy to use. That was so important to me, why it took so much longer to finish it than I thought, because just the user experience was so important. So hang tight. I want you, in great anticipation for the Mom app, to use this week to tell every person that you know with kids to sign up for the Rosary challenge. And then next week, we will talk about the app.

All right. I am going to France for two weeks. I’ve never been to Europe, so please pray for me. I don’t know if I’m gonna document it on Instagram or not. Haven’t decided about that. But I will be gone, and everything for the Rosary challenge is set up. Every email is written, all of that. My team will still be here helping everybody with everything.

But please pray for me, because I’m hoping that God has a special message for me. I’m hoping that I’m gonna be sitting in a church with a journal, and the Holy Spirit is going to move my heart, and that’s really how I end up creating any of the things that I create, is I just pray a lot and I listen to God and He says, “Hey, I want you to do this thing,” and then I bring it to all of you.

So pray that I hear Him clearly and that I’m brave enough to do whatever He tells me. And for all of the people who are going, I think there are 38 of us moms and daughters going, and I don’t know, I’m excited. It’s on Gnome. I feel like fun nervous, if that’s a thing, fun nervous. So cover me in prayer as I go, and I will see you all when I come back.

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