You haven’t yet crossed over into really being part of a group of friends or working and, and wanting to do things outside of the house. So I think this is a really sweet time and I wanna do something with all of my kids around 12 or 13, some sort of rite of passage. And my husband read a book about this for boys, and I want to create something that’s similar for girls. This kind of, Hey, you’re, you’re getting older, you’re not quite an adult, but you know, in most cultures there’s a coming of age moment around 12 or 13 where they’re just no longer a little kid. They’re kind of a bigger kid. And with that comes more privileges, but also more responsibilities. And so I don’t think it’s something obviously that I’ll do on their birthday because her birthday is tomorrow, but I think something within the year and I’m thinking I wanna to go away, maybe stay at a hotel or a bed and breakfast or something for a night or two and talk about, I don’t know, faith life.

I think I wanna teach her about how to hear God’s voice and that you have a voice in your head and it doesn’t always speak nicely to you. And I want to begin to teach her about that. And I wanna teach her to love her body because the world will teach her not to. And I wanna start that early and I wanna teach her about how short life is and that it’s important to follow the dreams that God gave you. And I feel like I’m really doing that with my life right now. And I wanna share with you that following your dreams sounds so sparkly, doesn’t it? Like, oh, you’re gonna follow your dreams and then it’s great, but actually kind of like us, when you have a mission on your heart and you go do it, it’s just fraught with peril. There’s just a lot of challenges along the way too.

And so you feel this sense of conviction like, yeah, we’re doing it. I’m, I’m sailing these seas. But then also you’re sailing the seas and, and it’s challenging too, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong in our brains. You know, they want happy stories. And so when they think about having children or being married or going on vacation, we always just think of the happy version of that instead of the realistic version, which is gonna include, you know, really amazing, wonderful moments and also really challenging events as well. So I’m gearing up to have a teenager, you guys, I’m not sure what that’s gonna be like, but I enjoy speaking with her and I talk to her about life coaching things when she lets me. Sometimes she’s not into that and I really respect that. I just go, okay, we don’t need to talk about that.

But I’ve been feeling lately, like, life is short. Someone in my husband’s family died very suddenly and unexpectedly at a young age of a heart attack. And, and they’re still really not sure what happened cuz he was very healthy. But it really just shook everyone. And everyone I think is realizing, oh, we just really don’t know how much time we have. And I sat down and I thought, okay, if I, if I had five years to live, what would I wanna teach the kids? And, it was those things I just mentioned, right? How to hear God’s voice, how to love your body, how to speak kindly to yourself and that God really does have a plan for you. This isn’t just a free for all, this isn’t randomness. The culture will make you believe that everything is by chance or you can manifest anything that you want. Like there’s no order to it all or no purpose. Like you just get to decide that’s not true. You were created by God, you were thought of, he thought of you before time began and he has a plan for you. And he gave you gifts and he gave you adversity for you to accomplish those plans.

And so I want my children to know that. I want them to know that all of this, it’s, it’s not an accident. You’re not a pinball being bounced around in a pinball machine. And so I also want them to know though, that when they hear from the Lord and they feel conviction to, to follow this dream that he’s placed inside of them, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be smooth sailing. That was another thing I wanted to teach them was how to read and how to learn. I want them to know that they’re gonna be problem solvers and that problems will happen and that’s okay. We are good problem solvers. I want to teach them to be generous. Really love that word, generous with their time, generous with their money. Just generous. Let’s just be humans who help each other. Let them know that something is different when they see us. And when they ask you why, say, because I’m Catholic and want them to see that we are set apart, that we are generous people, we care for others.

So I’ve been feeling like life is short and I’ve been watching this kid, you know, about to turn 12 and thinking about what I wanna teach her and the others. My next youngest is nine, nine and a half. She’s been playing the violin and she wanted to play the violin. And then I got her one and there was a wonderful homeschool girl who gave her lessons and then she didn’t practice. And that was very confusing to me because when I was young and I got a violin, I was so excited and I practiced all the time. I just loved it. No one had to tell me to practice. And so I struggled with that. I thought, well, do I need to, to sit with her? Do I need to get her a sticker chart? But in the end, I kind of let her manage it. I mean, I would remind her sometimes, but then we got to the place where I said, Hey, if you’re not gonna practice, I’m not gonna keep paying for lessons. And so she took a break over the summer and then she came back and said, you know, I think I wanna try again. And, and I said, all right, but you have to love it intrinsically for you. You have to want to practice.

And she’s been doing a lot better.

It’s ski season. So they’ve also been skiing which is also wild to me by the way. I did not grow up in a skiing family or even really near a mountain. I guess mountain hood was a little bit drivable, but I didn’t grow up in a skiing culture. And so we live near Schweitzer Mountain here. And so, and then I just have this amazing and affordable homeschool program. And so my three girls go skiing every Wednesday and they see all their friends. And it’s just funny because I don’t know anything about that. I’m not a skier and I stay home with the boys and they seem to really enjoy it. And I tell my husband, I don’t really want to know what they’re doing because I know he wants to come home and tell me that they’re going down black diamond runs. And my mama heart has a hard time with that. I think that I’m really calm and chill, but I’m really not. I’m really not. And skiing really freaks me out. So I guess the way that I am calm and chill is that I just say, yes, you can do it, but I don’t wanna talk about it. And so they just give me the highlights. They don’t tell me the scary parts when they come home.

So I don’t know, I’m, I’m feeling it out with lessons and, and practice and you know, do we require kids to motivate themselves or do we, do we hold their hand? And until they’re proficient enough? Because once, once they’re proficient in things, then they enjoy them more. So I, I can see it both ways and we’re just kind of feeling that out as a family because she’s really the first one that’s wanted to play an instrument. The next one really wants to play the flute, but when I googled it, you had to be physically big enough to play the flute. So I think she’s getting close to being big enough to do that. My seven year old who’s very precocious, I love her. She has a brain that wants to solve puzzles. So it’s a big part of my mom’s life to think, okay, what kind of puzzles can I give her and kind of work what kind of games she’s got a brain that really wants to sink into things and solve puzzles. So it’s been fun getting to know her and figuring that out. And sometimes I do a good job and sometimes I don’t resource her very well and that’s okay too. I don’t think being bored, it’s a bad thing. And then the boys now are

Five, four and three almost to the half, almost five and a half, four and a half, three and a half. And that’s incredible to me that I don’t have an infant. I’m not breastfeeding anyone. We’ve like 80% potty trained Peter, so he still wears a diaper overnight.

And I don’t know, that really blows my mind. I think my mind doesn’t feel diaper free cuz we still have one. But I think when we really put all that stuff away, my mind is gonna be really blown cuz we’ve just lived that life for 12 years and they like to play outside. They like to do things in the garage with their dad. They love to get in the truck and go to the dump. We live in the country so we have no trash service, so we have to take our trash to the dump, but it’s not very far. And the boys love doing that. They think it is fantastic.

I really, really enjoy them. It’s a lot to hang out with all three of them at once. And by that I just mean it’s loud. So I either coach myself before hanging out with all three of them and I’m like, Hey, you’re not really gonna enjoy this. It’s just gonna be loud and they’re gonna climb on you and that’s okay. We’re choosing to do that. Or I will, I’ll bring one of them into a different room and read books to them or blocks or something like that. I still don’t super love hanging out with little kids, but I feel more wistful about it now because I see that those years are maybe coming to an end. I may not have to do that forever. So it’s interesting how I give myself over to it more freely. Now we also have a bounce house. For those of you who have not followed me for a very long time, we have a pretty big bounce house in our basement and it was one of the best investments we ever made.

We bought one when I was on bedrest the second time, and I think it was $170. I mean, it was something like, it was definitely less than $200. And I remember thinking, oh, I bet it’s cheap and it will rip and it won’t last. Kind of like a lot of pools. But man, that sucker, it lasted at least three years, at least three years. And then when it finally died, it was just not even a question. We were like, of course we’re gonna get another bounce house. They use it all the time, especially in the winter, and you just have to clear the floor enough for it to inflate and then they play on it and then it deflates. And you could either shove it back into the corner. I mean we rarely put it back in the bag. It’s kind of just out.

But if you only had one playroom, I guess what I’m saying is you could, you could push all these toys to the side and use it. But in this house we have a pretty large, unfinished, but a pretty large unfinished basement. And we put just a carpet out. We got, oh, what’s it called, like indoor outdoor carpeting, like a really cheap giant cut of it from Home Depot and just threw it underneath that. So the boys did discover Paw Patrol. We did not do any Paw Patrol. I don’t know, it just wasn’t on my radar. We were kind of an Octonauts family and then all of a sudden we gave Paw Patrol a shot and they don’t watch it a ton. Mostly on Sunday, but sometimes if my husband’s gone and I have a call and I don’t have any help, I’ll put that on for them.

And they just love it. I don’t even know what it’s really about. Just dogs, dogs doing stuff. And so that’s very popular at the moment. My oldest has been reading Brandon Sanderson novels. I really love Brandon Sanderson. He is kind of a fantasy author and his books are really clean. He used to be Mormon. I don’t think he’s Mormon now. But he’s still just, I, you can just tell, has a lot of respect for women and just good values and he’s a family man. And so my husband and I really love his books and they’re very long and very intense and we have not let our 11, soon to be 12 year old read them all. Some of them have more war in them than I think we want her to read at the moment. But he did just release one called Tress of the Emerald Seas. And we all very much enjoyed that one. And it was fun that it came out and we all read it at the same time. So that feels new to me as a family member. You know, we’ve, we’ve been watching kids read books that we’ve read previously, but to have a new one come out and to read it all at the same time was really special.

So if you like fantasy novels, you should check out Brandon Sanderson. He has a series called Stormlight and another one called Ooh the Reckoner and another one called Mis Born. Oh, look at me. I’m remembering all of them. They’re very long though. So this is for people who really like reading large fantasy novels, which is not everyone. Okay, I have been reading the Interior Castle and also The Fulfillment of All Desire by Ralph Martin. And then I’m always kind of reading Same Fussiness diary. So those have been really interesting and good. I’ve been really enjoying the business side. Ed Mylet and Alex Hormoze, I read a lot of their things and listen to them. They both say things in a really plain and straightforward way and I, I really appreciate that.

I still listen to the Life Coach School podcast. Some of them aren’t, are not for me. I can usually tell by the title that it’s, it’s gonna be a little more woke than is my preference and I’ll skip those ones. But she’s still very great. I mean, she’s always reading and learning and I have learned so much from her and she has given me so much freedom in my life. And really what I mean is the freedom in my mind. My mind used to just be such a mess. It was such a dark and scary place and I just thought it had to be like that.

And it still does that sometimes. But now I know how to get out of that place. And so kind of circling back to what I wanted to mention, life is short and the work involved to do healing or to pursue your dreams, it sucks. It’s painful. It feels very uncomfortable. Your body will say, get me outta here. I don’t like this. Let’s do something else. So nothing is wrong with you when you try to do something new or you try to heal something or you try to improve you know, yourself and grow and virtue it feels pretty difficult to do that.

I’ve heard it called the river of misery. Meno Catholic. They call it the Purgative way, like swimming through the Purgative way. And that is an App description, but it is worth it, my friends, if you’re tired right now, if you are disheartened, if you want something and the wanting comes from inside of you, and I want you to know, know that God will give you the strength to do the work. And even if it is uncomfortable, it is worth it. I’m now, I don’t know, a little more than two and a half years into this life coaching journey and I just keep going deeper and deeper. What else can I clean up in my mind? That’s kind of how I think about it. Like maybe I’m wearing glasses that have smudges on them when I look at this part of my life and I’m willing now to do the work to clean off the smudges.

And I know it will involve discomfort and vulnerability. And I know that sometimes it’s a two steps forward, one step back kind of process, which my brain really doesn’t like. I like quick fixes and all or nothing thinking . And so if somebody said, Hey, we’re gonna do this work, but you’re gonna make progress and then you’re gonna lose some ground and then you’re gonna make progress and you’re gonna lose some ground. I wouldn’t like that answer at all, but I just want you to know that it’s worth it. It’s worth learning about trauma. It’s worth learning about stress responses. It’s worth learning how to breathe and how to pray meditative prayer where you clear out your brain and you steal your body and you listen to the Lord. And the reason we don’t do that is we’re scared of what we’re gonna hear.

But it doesn’t need to be scary. God’s voice is always comforting. And what you want more than anything is to do the will of God. Because if I offered you the red pill or the blue pill, right? If I was like, Hey, do you want this life? And you get to eat whatever you want and drink whatever you want and watch whatever movies you want and do whatever the culture tells you and it’s gonna be super fun. Or do you wanna do the will of God and be a saint in heaven? You would always know the choice. Even when we hesitate, even though we go, oh, that party over there looks pretty fun, it’s not satisfying and we know it now. I don’t think very many of you are choosing the party option. I think you’re choosing this other option in between where you’re looking at the party and feeling like, oh, that’s not very great. But then you’re looking at the path to sainthood and you’re thinking, I don’t have what it takes, or it looks too painful and I’m not willing to do it. So you’re kind of sitting in this third option of sadness or depression or heaviness, hopelessness, which is a strong word. It might just be a little version of that.

But I want you to know that it is worth it to reach for your dreams. And I’m, I’m living them now and I feel so alive. I feel so alive and I just keep going deeper and deeper and saying, Lord, what else do you want me to do? And I ask him so much more now than I did before. And I don’t always like what he tells me, but it still always feels good. It feels peaceful when it comes from him. And I go, all right, I’ll do that for you.

I bought a puppy in the spring, some of you saw her on my Instagram account and bought a golden border Collie. I didn’t know they made that color. And it was really hard for my family. The last time I had entering to dog, I had no kids and I knew that it was gonna be harder, but I also have six kids and my husband and I are home all the time and I’m a dog trainer. So I was like, it’ll be fine. And it wasn’t fine. It was really, really difficult. And none of the kids really are dog people yet. Maybe my seven-year-old, but seven-year-olds are too young to take care of dogs. And I know that even just physically they can’t do some of the things. And then the other thing that I really did not anticipate was we didn’t have a fence.

We have five acres but no fence. And so I had to leash her up and take her to go to the bathroom all throughout the day. And you know, when I got this dog, I told my husband, I said, I’ll take care of the dog. And so it was me doing it, but it was really hard. And I remember praying and I got this dog in this magical Holy Spirit way. I’m not gonna tell the story right now cause it’s a little long, but it was just the holy spirit sparkles all over. We weren’t supposed to get this dog, someone else was supposed to get her all sorts of things. So I really felt like it was divine providence. And I ended up with this just adorable border collie puppy. And she was wonderful. She was so good with the kids and she wasn’t even, I didn’t, she didn’t potty in the house that much and she didn’t chew that much.

It was just, I didn’t have a ton of time to train her. And none of the kids were that into her. Like I really thought they would, they would wanna play with her more. And then we had no fence. Those were really the problems, but it was causing so much stress that I got to the place where I was telling my husband like, Hey, we might need to rehome that dog. And, and that would’ve been really hard for me. I mean, I was filled with shame thinking about it like a dog trainer who can’t take care of her dog, you know?

And anyway, one day one of my kids was walking her and just dropped her leash and then a car came into our property, not going fast, but we have a barn. And so the dog ran in front of the barn and so the person was driving up next to the barn, so couldn’t see her, and she ran right out and was killed. And it was really sad and I’m still really sad about it. I’m like, Lord, why? Like, what was the point of all of that? And I also am really sad about not having a dog in the house.

I just, I can see that that is one of the ways that I’ve soothed myself for much of my life is that I’ve had a dog and I feel safe connecting and bonding with a dog. And so it’s been really interesting to not have that and to just sit with my feelings. And I’ve been really trying to, when that feeling comes up where I just think, oh, I wish I had a, a dog in my lab right now, I’ve been really trying to lean on the Lord and just be like, okay, Lord, you can give me whatever it is that I really want, right? I can find from the Lord. Is it comfortable? Is it being wanted? You know, there’s such an innocence in dogs. There’s just, they love so freely, they’re not like there’s no strings attached. Maybe a couple treats, sometimes , but in general, no strings. So that happened to me this year and I’m still a little sad about it.

We just had a team meeting with Larissa and me and our Director of Operation Kelly and we went to San Diego where Kelly lives. And it was beautiful and it was just a dream come true for me. I’ve always had this vision of, of women kind of sitting around planning really, really big things with the Lord, really asking the Lord, Hey, what should we do? What big things can we do for you, Lord? And it was exactly how I envisioned it. And I think it probably took me, you know, 10 years to get there. That doesn’t happen overnight. But it was so wonderful and I wish I could grab myself 10 years ago and just say, what you want is coming, just hang on. I’ve got these other things I need you to do right now, but what you want is coming. And I’m so young and the company’s so young and I know that we’re gonna do even more incredible things. And I will feel like that at many other steps of the way where I’ll just think, wow, this is just so much more incredible than I even imagined it.

And you know, very few of you actually are gonna be called to business. That’s kind of an unusual calling, but you are all called to something and God wants to fulfill the desires of your heart. And I want you to be brave enough to ask him what those desires are. You should be brave enough to ask and even if they sound scary and even if they sound unlikely, he is not a trickster and he loves you. And one of the ways that you may do that work is by stepping into healing, learning about managing your mind, working on forgiveness, buying a book about anger, and building some skills. Sometimes we actually just need hard skills, which might be, you know, managing a house or meal planning.

But life is short, my friends, I know the days feel long and I know sometimes we’re in a season and it’s very painful. But I want you to ask yourself really, if you had five years or 10 years to live, I feel like when it’s one year my brain shuts down. But like five or 10 years, what would you want to do? What would you want to teach your children? What would you want to write something down? Would you want to help someone in your life? Is God calling you to, to build something or create something and then trust what you hear? So much of what we teach in Masters is we teach women to trust themselves, which sounds like such a simple thing, but for most of us, we’ve broken trust with ourselves so many times that we don’t even trust ourselves. That was a big part of my work. I think I’m gonna do more camping this year. There’s a hot spring apparently, I think within three or four hours of where I live. So I think we’re gonna go there this year. I’m not even sure what that means. Is it a day trip? But I’m feeling a little more free as the kids get older

And I don’t think we’ll get another dog for a couple years. I think I saw that very clearly for what it was. It’s just not a good time.

And I’m just learning to have more peace in this life and be more present. Everything feels better when you’re just present, when you’re not pulling in the pain of the past. And when you don’t chew on the worries of the future, it feels much better. And I wish that for all of you, right? That’s kind of our mission, is to teach Catholic women how to have more peace. And I hope that this podcast helps you with that. I hope you tune in and you hear just a little nugget or what you were supposed to know today on the day that you’re listening. And if this podcast has been helpful for you, I want you to share it, share it, and rate it on iTunes. You know, podcasts are free. Nobody makes any money. Really. Most people don’t make any money on a podcast. They just do it from their heart.

But one of the best ways to support someone and say thank you, thank you for this work that has helped me is to rate and review their podcast and to share it. A lot of podcasts grow because people open it up in their app and they click that little box or the three dots and they just share it as a text message with a friend. And, you know, I feel sometimes like we’re made for greatness, we’re bringing our, our loaves and our fishes to the Lord and we just need him to multiply them. And one of the ways he does that is through you guys, cuz we know that he’s calling us to build a very big company. And I don’t have the roadmap for that. We’re gonna try lots of things, but it will only be because of God that it really lights the fire and reaches, you know, thousands and thousands of Catholic moms. So that’s just a little bit about me and what’s going on. And I love living in Idaho. I love the snow. I’m just happy. My marriage is still painful and difficult, but I have so much peace around it. Like I’m learning how to be me within it. I’m learning how to be calm within it and I’m learning how to trust God that this is where he wants me to be right now. And that’s an incredible thing to me. I just want you guys to know that, that that freedom is possible.

So remember, the world offers you comfort, but you are not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.

And you know, very few of you actually are gonna be called to business. That’s kind of an unusual calling, but you are all called to something and God wants to fulfill the desires of your heart. And I want you to be brave enough to ask him what those desires are. You should be brave enough to ask and even if they sound scary and even if they sound unlikely, he is not a trickster and he loves you. And one of the ways that you may do that work is by stepping into healing, learning about managing your mind, working on forgiveness, buying a book about anger, and building some skills. Sometimes we actually just need hard skills, which might be, you know, managing a house or meal planning.

But life is short, my friends, I know the days feel long and I know sometimes we’re in a season and it’s very painful. But I want you to ask yourself really, if you had five years or 10 years to live, I feel like when it’s one year my brain shuts down. But like five or 10 years, what would you want to do? What would you want to teach your children? What would you want to write something down? Would you want to help someone in your life? Is God calling you to, to build something or create something and then trust what you hear? So much of what we teach in Masters is we teach women to trust themselves, which sounds like such a simple thing, but for most of us, we’ve broken trust with ourselves so many times that we don’t even trust ourselves. That was a big part of my work. I think I’m gonna do more camping this year. There’s a hot spring apparently, I think within three or four hours of where I live. So I think we’re gonna go there this year. I’m not even sure what that means. Is it a day trip? But I’m feeling a little more free as the kids get older

And I don’t think we’ll get another dog for a couple years. I think I saw that very clearly for what it was. It’s just not a good time.

And I’m just learning to have more peace in this life and be more present. Everything feels better when you’re just present, when you’re not pulling in the pain of the past. And when you don’t chew on the worries of the future, it feels much better. And I wish that for all of you, right? That’s kind of our mission, is to teach Catholic women how to have more peace. And I hope that this podcast helps you with that. I hope you tune in and you hear just a little nugget or what you were supposed to know today on the day that you’re listening. And if this podcast has been helpful for you, I want you to share it, share it, and rate it on iTunes. You know, podcasts are free. Nobody makes any money. Really. Most people don’t make any money on a podcast. They just do it from their heart.

But one of the best ways to support someone and say thank you, thank you for this work that has helped me is to rate and review their podcast and to share it. A lot of podcasts grow because people open it up in their app and they click that little box or the three dots and they just share it as a text message with a friend. And, you know, I feel sometimes like we’re made for greatness, we’re bringing our, our loaves and our fishes to the Lord and we just need him to multiply them. And one of the ways he does that is through you guys, cuz we know that he’s calling us to build a very big company. And I don’t have the roadmap for that. We’re gonna try lots of things, but it will only be because of God that it really lights the fire and reaches, you know, thousands and thousands of Catholic moms. So that’s just a little bit about me and what’s going on. And I love living in Idaho. I love the snow. I’m just happy. My marriage is still painful and difficult, but I have so much peace around it. Like I’m learning how to be me within it. I’m learning how to be calm within it and I’m learning how to trust God that this is where he wants me to be right now. And that’s an incredible thing to me. I just want you guys to know that, that that freedom is possible.

So remember, the world offers you comfort, but you are not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.