And their brains thought that it really affected their inability to do something today, to focus, to know what they wanted to do. Particularly, I was asking them, “Hey, you know, what do you wanna do this summer? Let’s acquire some skills.”

So I looked at them, I said, “Girls, do you think that because I know that my vocation is to be a wife and a mother, I know that, that I don’t have any questions about what I’m doing with my life, and I don’t wonder how to spend my time?” And I said, “Literally, girls, you watch me ask this question all the time.”

And I started listing off some things that I wasn’t sure about. I said, for particularly my oldest, I said, “We have no idea what we’re doing for school with you in the fall, and it’s my job as your mom to think about that.” And we live in the country and we kinda wanna move to town, and so I’m thinking about that sometimes, like, “Oh, are we gonna move to town? How could I make that work?”

And so they thought if you lock in this major thing, right, for them really it’s nun or mom, okay, that then you’re gonna feel a certain way. But if you’ve been here for a minute, my friends, you know that your feelings come from your thinking.

So you could be really, really satisfied in a chapter of your life, even if the future is uncertain. And isn’t it always, really, was kind of the point I was trying to make to them. I was like, “We don’t really know what’s coming, even if you check off the biggest box that says vocation.

But no matter what is coming, I know that today and five years from now, my thoughts will create my feelings, and my feelings will determine my emotional experience of my life.” So I can feel really settled right now in a chapter.

Let’s say, you know, you’re 21, and you’re not married, and you’re trying to figure out what to do with your life. I just love this question, what am I doing with my life? I think my dad used to ask that question, and we would joke about that question.

So let’s say you’re 21, and you are, you’re like, “Do I throw myself into being good at a job? Do I go to college? I’m, like, kind of dating, but where are all the good guys?” And your brain is having these thoughts.

And one of the things I think that’s so funny about single people is single people think that they’re gonna be so happy If they get married, like everything’s gonna figure out, be figured out. And then all of us who are married are like, “That’s so cute.” Right? And it’s not that being married makes you unhappy, but being married doesn’t get rid of the certainty of having a human life.

I was also explaining to my girls when I was dating my husband, we were living in Hillsboro, Oregon, which is about an hour outside of Portland, and he was working at Intel with his corporate job and had a track. He was like very clear what he wanted to do.

And we could not have foreseen the amount of moves that we would make, that we would end up in Idaho. Idaho was not even a state to me at that point, okay? Like, the number of times in my life that I thought about Idaho before we moved there was very, very little. Just like, “Oh, potatoes or something.” Okay?

And so there was a lot of uncertainty that came up, and a lot of moments when we had to discern things, and that is still true, and it will always be true. And this is what I was trying to tell my girls, which is like, “Hey, discerning what God wants you to do is your job for the rest of your life.”

Is it the Baltimore Catechism that says that our job is to know, love, and serve the Lord? To know, love, and serve the Lord. So to know him, we have to spend some time with him, and to love him, we have to have a relationship with him and value that enough, right, that he is more important than the distractions around us.

And then to serve him, we also have to know what he wants us to do. So I was telling the girls that it’s a trick to distract your brain to get really obsessed with the uncertainty of the future, and then it gets you to not live your life right now. And this isn’t a 15-year-old girl’s problem. All of us have this.

All of us have this option, right, where we can wake up in the morning, and we can use our brains to create stories about the future, and our brain is living in a made-up future which is creating an emotional experience in our bodies, which you can do in a good way or a harmful way. Okay?

Maybe you’re looking forward to a trip. Maybe you’re training for a race, and so you’re looking at the future, and it feels yummy. It feels good. You’re like, “Yeah, I’m training for this race, and we’re gonna run it in the fall, and it’s gonna be so great.” So not all the ways that we think about the future are negative, but a lot of them are because the brain has a negative bias, right?

So most of the time we’re like thinking about the future, and we’re like, “Oh, no. What if this happens? What if that happens? This is terrible.” So we are having an emotional experience about a future that we’ve totally made up in our minds, and we’re not being present in the life that we have today.

And most of the time when you are worrying about the future, you’re not talking to God today. And so I was telling my girls, and I wanna tell you, that if you want to have more peace in your life, you need to spend five minutes talking to God. I’m a big fan of, like, 10 to 15 if you can do it, but five is enough.

In five minutes you can complain. Takes about two minutes to complain. “Lord, and the kids, and my body, and the money, and my family, and the house, and we should get rid of this dog,” like all the things. Whatever’s going on with you.

Swirls up, and then you give it to him, and you say, “But Lord, I trust you. I love you. I know that I’m safe right now.” And then you say, “What do you want me to do today?” And you might ask him bigger questions about discerning, a move or what you’re doing with the kids for school. I don’t always discern really big things in every prayer session, but in every prayer session I say, “What do you want me to do today?” And it’s clear. It’s simple.

And then you have everything you need to do that. Isn’t that crazy? So I did that with my girls. I said, “Okay. I don’t know if you’re supposed to be a nun or if you’re supposed to get married, but what do you need to do today?”

And they both thought it was funny. They were like, “Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.” And I was like, “I know. I know. Your brain really wants to know what we’re doing in the future, but today, what are three things that you know you need to do today?” And it was so clear to them.

One of them is still wrapping up school, one of them is done with school. They both have chores, and they both have things that are important to them. Then I said, “That’s it. That’s the game.”

And I said, “When you get married, if you get married and have six kids like me, and you have a house so you don’t need another house, you’re in your house, you’re still gonna need this skill, which is talking to the Lord, loving the Lord, and asking him, ‘Hey, Lord, what are we doing today?’

And it’s so simple that you’re not doing it, though. It’s kind of like drinking water is simple, and a lot of you aren’t drinking enough water. Although I do think we’ve over-hyped water, by the way. Tangent for a moment. When I talk to AI, it’s like, “Look, you don’t need to drink that much water.” Like, just enough water. Drink water when you’re thirsty.

So we don’t need to be obsessed about carrying water bottles everywhere, unless you are thirsty. But a lot of you aren’t drinking any water until 11:00 AM. That’s not good. So I want you to drink a glass of water when you wake up, ’cause your body is made of water.

Anyway, and then I want you to talk to the Lord. It doesn’t have to be first thing in the morning. Just once a day I want you to say… I want you to dump out your brain and complain, and I just write out all the things. He knows already, but I think he loves it when we tell him. So I just tell him everything. It doesn’t take that long.

And then I say, “But I love you and I’ll do whatever you want. What do you want me to do today?” And then I just wanna be a woman of obedience. I wanna be a woman who does what God tells me to do. And then it just doesn’t even matter what anybody else thinks around, anyone else around you thinks.

And kinda all this human stuff doesn’t matter anyway except for where we end up for eternity. So we tend to, like, I think, underplay the salvation thing and spend too much time amplifying things of the world that are passing and really don’t matter.

And we have to live in the world, and we have to feed these kids, but a lot of the things do not deserve the amount of life force energy, is what I call it, your life force energy that you’re giving into them, giving to these things.

So I love you. Just like my 15-year-old daughter, you don’t know what you’re doing with your life for the next five to 10 years. We don’t have crystal balls. We don’t get to see. I don’t think it’d be good for us. God wants you to be present today.

And if I calmed you down and I told you that everything’s gonna be fine, I go to the future, everything is fine. I want you to love people today. I want you to be present in your own life, and, like, what are three things that you need to do?

And some of those things might be uncomfortable. It might be like, “I really need to clean the bathroom today.” And that’s not a good time. That’s not fun, but you know. You’re not confused about what needs to be done, what is in front of you, what God has given you to steward that needs to be taken care of today.

Okay? I just love this question, what are we doing with our lives, Lord? What are we doing today? I love you. I’ll do it. And it’s the best way to live. It is the least anxious way that I have found to live.

Okay. Collection two of our emotional stories is out, so probably wherever you’re listening to this, you can click the link below. I think they’re at calmcatholickids.com. And I love collection two. We have Martin, the anxious rabbit, who is doing a recital. We have Brigid, the bee, who goes to a birthday party, and she can’t calm down, and she’s, like, too buzzy when she gets home.

We have Crispin, the crow, who’s kind of a know-it-all crow. And he kind of snaps at his friend and has to repair. And then Claire, oh, little Claire, she’s so sweet. Claire is a fawn, and she gets disappointed many times in the morning, and then in the last disappointment, she, like, cries, and we teach her that it is okay to feel the feeling of disappointment.

And they’re just, they’re so great, you guys. So those are really designed for, I don’t know, three to six-year-olds, and I’m coming out with some, some things for older kids a little bit later.

All right. Have a blessed day.