And so I wanna walk you through how you can figure out if it’s too much, or if you’re just not managing your mind, okay? ‘Cause that’s kinda step one, is it may be you’re just having lots of thoughts that make your life feel full, but really, you are handling it just fine.

And then, if it is too much, I’m gonna walk you through how I would evaluate each of the things that I was doing to then decide which things I was going to say no to if an opportunity had presented itself, or to back out of if I had already committed to it.

So first, a lot of times the stress that we feel is because of the thoughts that we’re having. So let’s say that you drive your kids to school in the morning, and then you come home, you clean the house. Maybe you have a part-time job that you do from home.

Maybe you are on the board of some sort of committee or doing some nonprofit work or volunteering at the school, and then your kids do some mix of music and sports or drama or whatever they’re doing after school. And then you have friends and family, and so there are birthdays, and there are anniversaries, and there are just things. Okay?

And you are living your life with chaos in your mind. So in the morning, when the kids are being totally normal kids in the morning, your brain is already thinking, “I have so much to do. I’m so behind. I can’t handle this.”

And now you’ve created a bunch of tension in your body, ’cause your body’s gonna have a physiological stress response, so we’re already jacked up in the morning, and that is draining your battery. We’re draining your battery, and it’s making you feel tired, but not actually because of what the kids are doing in the morning. It’s the morning, and nothing’s really happened even.

But your brain is off to the races, and so your body is expending all this energy, and so you would feel stressed, and then later tired. Does that make sense? Then you’re getting in the car, and kids are. Why are kids so ridiculous in the car? I don’t know, but they are. Kids are ridiculous in the car.

And then you’re gonna have a whole nother set of thoughts about the kids, and being in the car, and I’m out in the car so much, and I have to drive so much, and this isn’t right, and it shouldn’t be like this. And how am I gonna get that cake made for blah blah blah’s birthday? Whatever it is.

Again, your mind is over-committed. Does that make sense? Your brain is over-committed to thinking about your commitments. If this is you, you probably don’t even have a commitment problem. It’s just your brain is such a hot mess in there.

And then basically that’s just happening all throughout the day. I don’t feel like I need to step through the timeline of the whole day. You’re just having a lot of negative and stressful and pressurey thoughts that are draining your energy and feeling terrible.

And then, of course, you’re gonna feel exhausted. You’re gonna feel so stretched thin because you stretched your brain out all day. And this is what I find fascinating. A lot of you, I think, are living a balanced life, but you don’t have a balanced mind, and so the life that you’re living, which you are executing well, feels terrible.

So you could just live the exact same way. You are feeding the kids, you are cleaning the house, you are making it to the things on time, but you’re telling yourself in your mind all these stories that make it feel like a terrible experience.

And if you’re wondering if that’s you, just look at yesterday, you know, or the day before, and think, “If I had been very calm and managed my mind, but I didn’t do anything else differently, I lived through the exact same day yesterday, but I was just had was in a better mood, I had a better attitude, I had better thoughts.”

And I’m not saying, by the way, that’s so easy. I think that is the great work of our lives. But my point is, it’s work worth doing because if you look back at yesterday and you actually do like how you spent your time and the outcomes that you had, it was just that the feeling of living through the day was terrible, that’s great news.

Now we don’t have to change our commitments, we just have to redirect our brain so it’s not putting us in a constant stress state and draining our battery too soon. So step one is to just evaluate this: am I overthinking my life to the degree that it feels like there’s too much going on, but really maybe there isn’t, my commitments are fine?

Now, let’s say that you think you’ve got some handle on your brain, or not. Maybe you do also, your, you know, your brain is still a mess, but you legitimately know that there is just too much on your plate, which we know. I know that in my body when I’m like, “Whoa, it is too much.”

I rarely get there now, by the way, just so you know, once you get good at planning your life and, and being thoughtful, and loving yourself enough to do this for yourself. To say, “Hey, I love you so much that I’m not gonna stack your fall to be too busy.” Then it doesn’t come up as often.

So for me, I say no more on the front end now so I don’t get into that place. But if I found myself in that place, feeling like, “Whoa, this is too much,” I would list out everything that I was doing, and I would list some of the mom homemakery things in big buckets like meals and cleaning. And I would put those on the list to show my brain, “Hey, we are already committed to those things.” Because if you’re just thinking about the extra commitments like a soccer practice or you know, some kid playing in chamber orchestra, whatever it is. Maybe a book study for you. I mean, some of the things may be you things.

We could of just evaluate those things, but I wanna show your brain, “Hey, you are actually also signed up to just take care of the house and feed the kids and keep their clothes clean.” That is first on the list.

Now, for me personally, my husband does a lot of meals, which is interesting. So for me, that I’m not making dinner most of the nights. And listen, everybody has pros and cons to their husband and to their life. So don’t listen to that and think, “Oh, that must be nice. I wish my husband made dinner.” But you know, there are pros and cons to all of the things.

But I do think that God gives us the formula to be at peace in our own lives and to have everything that we need. But it requires receiving what He gives us and not being in resistance and thinking it shouldn’t be like this and this shouldn’t be happening.

So we’re taking care of the home, we’re taking care of the kids, supporting them through their things, whether we’re schooling them outside of the home or in the home. And then there are the extra commitments. So you wanna list all those.

And then I really pray over each one. I put my finger on everything I wrote down, and I pray over it and I say, “Lord, what do you want me to know about this?” I don’t say, “Lord, do you want me to keep this? Check yes or no.” That really boxes Him in. He can’t give you a ton of information, especially if His response is nuanced.

So I touch every single one and I say, “Lord, what do you want me to know about this?” And he might say, “It’s time to let this go. I’m not asking this of you this year.” And he might say, “I’m asking you to do this for me. You can handle it.

So the first step is to pray over everything and see if God says something to you about them. He may not. A lot of them may end up being kind of neutral things to the Lord, like we talk about here buying a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna, and God may say, “Hey, this is just not a moral issue. You can become a saint either way. It’s up to you.” I do think some commitments can be like that and fall into that category.

So we prayed over everything. We get the information. The next thing that I like to ask myself is, and I’ve never said it this way before. But now the way I would pray over each one, or I would just go over each one with a prayerful heart and say, “Does the healed version of me take this on?”

And what that means is, did I commit to this out of woundedness? Woundedness could be wanting to compensate for my kids. Feeling like in order for me to feel like a good mom, I need my kids to play the piano well, because that makes me look good or makes them look good, and then I can feel safe and okay like I’m a good mom. That would be choosing piano lessons from woundedness.

And it could be, “I’m volunteering to run the co-op because if I don’t do it, no one will do it.” That could be coming from woundedness. There could be a healthy version of you that just says, “I really want this, and I can tell I want it the most, more than anyone. I’m gonna do it.” But that is very different than, “If I don’t do it, no one will do it. Everything’s on me. I always have to take things across the finish line.” That is not a healthy response.

Another version could be, you know, my identity is wrapped up in being productive or a leader, and so I kinda feel like I have to be the one that does this. There’s, like, a weird pressure to maintain some sort of image that you have, but the image was created from woundedness.

And again, there are healthy versions of all of these things, right? There’s a healthy version of you that is a leader, and that says yes to things, and that runs things, and that enriches your kids with activities. There is a healthy version of that, but there is a disordered version of it as well.

And so I would go down the list and, and really just sit with myself and just say, you know, “Would the healed version of myself say yes to this?” Because the healed version of yourself does not care about social pressure, or the story of things, or the optics of things. You genuinely just care about being the peace center of your home.

So let me give you an example. I felt very strongly in the spring that I wanted to create a homeschooling option for my kids because we didn’t wanna go back to Classical Conversations. And again, we had a wonderful experience with Classical Conversations, but we wanted a Catholic version.

And I knew that there were enough people that wanted a Catholic homeschooling co-op thing. Now, what I didn’t know is what format they wanted. So back in the spring, I created a survey, and I took it around to all the moms, and I said, “Hey, fill out this survey.” And I asked them things like, “Do you want core subjects? Do you want just extracurriculars? Do you want one day or two day?” All these questions.

And then these other two moms popped up, and they were fired up about creating an option and they wanted to copy a very successful homeschooling co-op that’s an hour away. And one of them had been driving an hour to go to this co-op. So she says, “Let’s do what they’re doing. They’re gonna help us.” And we, after the survey, felt like there was enough interest in it.

And so we spent six months creating a two-and-a-half day homeschool hybrid option for these kids where they come to the parish, we are renting space from the parish, and then we have teachers. We can’t call them teachers, we call them tutors, and we pay them.

And so it really feels like real school, but just half the time, and made up of Catholic families. I wanted to do it the whole time. I felt good about doing it. And sometimes we would meet, the three of us, at a time that was a little bit inconvenient for me, or we would meet and say it was gonna be an hour, and it would end up being two hours.

There were some, I would say, negative feelings mixed in, but they were very small compared to how confident I was that God was asking me to do this, and that it needed to be done, and I wanted to be the one to do it.

And I actually for this didn’t have the feeling if I didn’t do it, no one would do it. I figured they could tap somebody else. Because we had these other two women. So I could have stepped away, and we could have added. I think any other third mom, and they would have done it. So all around, that has felt like a very healthy commitment to me.

And again, I wanna go back to a healthy commitment doesn’t mean that it isn’t, like, annoying or inconvenient sometimes. That isn’t enough for me to think, “Oh, this is bad. I’ve overcommitted myself,” or, “This is hurting my family,” something like that.

So that was a very enjoyable commitment for me. But as the school year got closer, there were many factors, I don’t want to talk about them all here just ’cause I think it’s not relevant, but there were many things that were going on at my parish related to kids, sacraments, this co-op, timing, evenings, driving into town.

And at the end of it, I really decided not to teach Catechesis of the Good Shepherd this year, to not be an atrium teacher. And so for those of you that have a parish, you know what that program is.

And it was a difficult decision because there are only two of us that are certified to teach it, so I knew that if I said no, the other teacher who just had a baby would likely say no, and then they wouldn’t have an atrium teacher for level one for this year. And you could sit with that and really think that there would be a lot of pressure to do it.

But remember, pressure comes from your thinking. So yeah, if you’re sitting around thinking, “Oh no, if I don’t say yes to this, then the program won’t happen, and it’ll be so bad for all the kids and the parents, and this is such a huge deal, so I have to do it,” that would feel terrible in your body, right?

But I didn’t do that. I felt that creeping in, by the way. I saw those thoughts, but I prayed about it, and it is not my responsibility to overcommit my family in order to keep a program going at the parish. It’s not my responsibility. God has not called me to carry out parish programs as my main directive. He has called me to be a saint and to raise saints.

And for me, this year, that meant not saying yes to this. And I think it will only be for a year. I think I will go back to doing it next year. And then I think my friend who just had a baby will also go back to doing it next year. I don’t think the program will die, but I don’t think they will offer level one atrium classes this year at our parish.

And so I made that decision knowing that there would be some disappointment, some disappointment from the parish staff who probably would have wanted us to teach that, maybe some disappointment from the parents, some of whom are my very good friends, and they might have been like, “Oh, I’m so sad we’re not having that this year.” And they might have said that to me, to my face.

And I was willing to tolerate all of that discomfort because I felt like it was the right thing to do for my family, right? And we’re not gonna die and be judged on how many volunteer opportunities we took advantage of. We’re gonna be judged on the peace and love that we put into our lives, and I think starting at home.

And this will be hard for some of you to hear because you’ve built your identity around being out into the world. And listen, being out into the world is extremely rewarding. What we don’t receive in accolades as moms, you receive by being out into the world and doing things.

And people go, “Oh, Ms. Sterling, we just love that you teach this class, and my daughter, it’s her favorite thing. She loves coming to Atrium.” I’ve heard that so many times, which isn’t totally about me. I mean, the Atrium program’s just so amazing.

I’m like, “Yeah, I know.” That feels amazing to hear a parent tell you that. It feels good to do things that are appreciated. And so some of the stories that you might believe in your mind is, “I don’t get any of that at home, so I have to go out into the world in order to get that.” But that also is just a story that you’re telling yourself, because I choose to get that from the Lord.

So when I do work at home, I just ask the Lord to say, “Good job, Sterling. I saw that you did that.” I cleaned the microwave the other day. I was all by myself, and I cleaned the microwave the other day, and I just wanted to feel seen about it, ’cause no one likes cleaning the microwave. Nobody likes scraping the weird funky things that have exploded on the top of the microwave.

And so I just said, “Lord, tell me that I’m doing a good job.” And he will. He’s always just like, “Good job. I’m proud of you for cleaning that microwave. I see that you did that, and you didn’t want to, and I’m proud of you.” So you can just go to the Lord for that anytime

So I wanted to share that because I feel like this fall had two really good examples in my life of a huge, giant commitment that I said yes to and felt good about, and then a commitment that I love, by the way. You guys know I love teaching that class.

But I said no to it this year because it just didn’t fit with the rhythm of our family and how many times we would have to drive to church, and I just knew that wasn’t for us this year, and it was a hard thing to say no to.

Now, I will say, and you can’t know this, several weeks later they said, “Hey, because we didn’t have that many kids enroll in one of the grades, they’re combining two of the grades.” So basically, the two teachers who are level two certified are basically gonna just pull up the younger kids into their class.

So it’s gonna work out. I still would have made my decision even if they didn’t do that, though. But I want you to know that God is good and he’s with everybody in the story and he’s going to make things work out, or he might sunset certain programs. Like, if you don’t step up to lead your homeschool co-op and then it doesn’t happen, that might be what God’s will is for that year.

So one, check in with yourself. Do you actually really like your life and your commitments, but you’re just not managing your mind? Which is amazing. I can help you with that. Come join us in catholicmom.com. I will teach you how to clean that up. Step two, pray over every commitment and say, “Lord, what do you want me to know about this?”

And then step three, after we’ve listened to the Lord and there’s stuff left on the list, say, “Does the healed version of myself say yes to this?” You don’t even have to be the healed version of yourself, by the way. You just have to know, “Actually, no, the healed version of myself says no to this.”I’m still working on the healing, right?

But I know that this version of myself would not take this on because it’s coming from some sort of disordered thinking or attachment or stress or anxiety or pressure, it’s a wounded version of yourself, and we don’t wanna make commitments from them.

All right. I love you guys. Check out our rosary challenge at onemillionrosaries.com. The response has been so amazing. I’m just so excited. It’s just a really fun project. It’s really fun. I hope you’re a part of it, and please tell people. Please tell your parish or your school group or your friends. Please post them in places. I need your help to do that.

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