And when we calm down, we stop living in our fight or flight part of our brain, which is kind of dumb and makes bad decisions. And we bring our prefrontal cortex online, which is our logical, critical thinking part of our brain. We can have access to that and we can make better decisions, and hopefully we do. Hopefully we’re good problem solvers and we create systems in our lives to help set us up for success and to minimize some of the chaos that’s happening.

But even if you do that, my friends. It will not mean that your life is easy. One of the things that I often say is that no one escapes the cross. No one escapes the cross. Part of being a human is that in God’s goodness, he allows us to participate in the passion in the crucifixion of our Lord. He doesn’t need us to. 

It is literally a gift that he says, I will allow you to take your suffering and combine it with the suffering of Christ on the cross to participate in this redemption story of all salvation history so that all humans may go to heaven. It’s so powerful. I think when we die and we go to heaven, we’re gonna understand it on this like crazy way that we can’t. Actually understand it with our small human brains right now. 

And we call this redemptive suffering, right? We call our ability to suffer and offer it up and unite it to Christ’s suffering on the cross, redemptive suffering because it matters. It counts for something. And it’s such a beautiful concept, but built in to that, I want you to know that your life will not be easy. It will not. 

You will have to carry a cross. Maybe a couple and there’ll be different sizes. I love the story that kind of gets shared sometimes around the guy who meets the Lord and he says, oh Lord, my cross is so heavy I can’t carry it. Please, please, please help me. And the Lord says, okay, I’m gonna take you to the cross store. And I’ll let you pick out a different one. 

And so they go to this magical store in my, that I’m imagining, and the guy is there and there’s all sorts of crosses and he sees them and some are big and some are beautiful, and some are plain. And then he pushes a couple aside and he reaches straight into the back of a corner and he finds this little wooden cross, and it’s the smallest one that he can find. And he picks it up and he says, Lord, I want this cross. 

And the Lord says, that’s the one that you already have. Of course, we want a life with no pain, but we all know that that’s not going to happen. And so I can teach you how to be calm, but the best case scenario is that you carry your cross well.

Now I think a lot of us are carrying crosses that God did not ask us to carry. I think a lot of us are carrying a cross poorly. We’re like kicking and screaming and throwing a fit and making it heavier and harder than it needs to be. I think some of us are carrying imaginary problems that aren’t even real problems. We’ve just made them up in our minds. I have a whole video about that.

But I promise you because of God’s goodness and because he loves us so much, he also gives us. The grace and the strength and the time and the resources to carry that cross. It is never beyond you. And I just mean physically and literally. It is never beyond you to make it through the day. If he wants you to make it through the day.

Now we will all get to the point where there is a day that we don’t make it through and he calls us home. And I wouldn’t say that is the same thing as not carrying the cross. Well, it’s just time to go home. But all the other days, literally all the other days, you will have enough time and money and resources and grace to carry what he gives you. 

And I have been through some extremely painful things in my life. One of them was three, back to back bedrest, pregnancies where I could not get out of bed. I needed help going to the bathroom. I was in a searing amount of pain and I had three pregnancies in three years. It was a dark time. It was physically painful. It was emotionally painful. It was so hard on my marriage.

And every day I would tell myself, girl, you got enough for today? No, I pouted a lot. I was a pouty Catholic for some of those three years, and I railed against the Lord and said, why? And this isn’t fair and I don’t like this, but I knew that that wasn’t the answer. The answer was, alright, Lord, you and me today, it’s gonna be okay. 

And so I don’t want you to come here and listen to all my super awesome mom hacks and tips, both for calming your body down and planning and creating systems so that your house runs more smoothly. And think that if you do enough things, you can escape the cross. ’cause you cannot. 

But the cross is the way. That is the way that we make it to heaven. That is our sainthood story. Whatever the Lord wants us to carry, and he will ask us to carry something and he goes, this is the way. He has picked the best one for you, the one that makes the most sense, and you can carry it.

So I love you. Sometimes when I see my friends or my kids and they’re going, how’s your day? I go, I’m having a really human day today. And sometimes that means it’s painful. I’m carrying my cross today, but I believe that God is good and that he loves me and that he chose it intentionally. He didn’t forget me. He didn’t get it wrong.

And I want you to have that kind of relationship with him too. I want us to carry our crosses well, and then that literally is. The way to having the easiest life that we could possibly have. It isn’t easy. It will still involve a cross, but if we carry it well and we don’t resist it and fight it, then it is literally the easiest path.

All right, my friends, I’m praying for you. Please pray for me and have a blessed day.