And that we, you know, will be really looking at the ways that the gifts of the holy spirit are showing up in our daily lives as wives and mothers and women that are called to do God’s work here in this world and building up his kingdom, it’s going to be an incredibly powerful eight week series, where we as women are gonna be coming together, supporting each other, learning about the holy spirit, praying more to the holy spirit, becoming more aware of the promptings of the holy spirit in our own lives. And ultimately being aware of the miracles that God is doing in our lives. When we really are open to the holy spirit, working in and through us, this series is called miracles, abound and Sterling. And I am so incredibly excited to be focusing these few months on really diving into our relationship with the holy spirit.

We know 100% that miracles are gonna abound as we do this. They are already starting to happen to Sterling and I, and even in the last week or two, we’ve just been kind of blown away with what the holy spirit is doing in masters and in our own lives. It’s like, oh my goodness. And so we wanna invite you to journey with us through this. As we are cultivating a community of Catholic moms that are walking daily with the holy spirit. And again, we know that when we do this, miracles will abound. Miracles will happen in our midst, in our families, in our lives, in our marriages. And so again, I want to invite you to come and be a part of this powerful work that we are doing in masters. Okay. So now I’m gonna dive into this week’s episode and I have to say this.

I had a completely different episode that I was going to record today, but this is June 28th. And if you are listening to this, you know, around the time of, of us putting this out, we are embarking on an extraordinary event, which has been Roe versus Wade being overturned by the Supreme court. And there’s so much going on that I felt in my prayer life. And in particular this morning when I was praying that just, I felt a strong conviction to share with you. What’s been on my, on my heart and in my prayers the last few days, particularly because as someone who’s been really involved in the pro-life movement and working in the church for so many years in the last few days, I’ve been experiencing so many different emotions as I’m sure you have as well. The first being just a complete sense of overwhelming praise and gratitude for our Lord and kind of sitting in awe thinking, oh my gosh, we’re actually living this experience like so many of us question, would this ever happen in our lifetime?

And so here we are in this reality that Roe versus Wade has been overturned and all of the, the joy and the just crying out and gratitude to God, especially the fact that this all took place on the FEAST of the sacred heart of Jesus. And I mean, just so many powerful correlations with that, but then there’s all sorts of other emotions as well. I mean, we’re being bombarded with the media and if you’re on social media, you know, lots of different posts, different people and trying to navigate through all of that. The real sense of persecution that is kind of coming at the church right now that also creates a lot of different emotions and just trying to process through all of it, all of it. And for me, I’ve had, you know, people reaching out to me from, you know, people that are pro-choice, or maybe they’re even pro-choice Catholics reaching out to me personally, some that are very angry, upset, they are hurting and they wanna meet or talk to me or hear my response and things like that.

So I’ve just been kind of in the midst of, of really thinking and processing and praying through. And in this episode, I don’t wanna get into politics. The court ruling, all the media, all of that stuff. What I really want to dive into is what has been on my heart with my prayer life and particularly this morning, I was out for my morning walk and I was praying for guidance from our Lord on how to respond to certain people or to certain questions. But ultimately I found myself asking this what I think is a really important and powerful question in the midst of all that is going on. How do I want to show up? How do I want to respond? How do I wanna act, how do I want to be perceived through all of this? And that has been the question that I’ve been taking to our Lord.

And I think what is so profound to me is that I was praying about this and asking this question and asking our Lord to help me as his follower, as his disciple, as his daughter, his beloved daughter, like Lord, how do you want me to show up in this world in response to all that is going on right now? And I prayed for that. And then I believe he answered a lot of that question for me this morning. And that’s what I wanna share on this podcast, because I think that’s one of the things that’s so important for us as his disciples in this world is what are we doing and how are we showing up and how are we acting? How are we thinking? How are we feeling in the midst of all of it? And I believe that this morning I experienced a little bit of an answer from our Lord in the gospel reading today.

So as I was walking, I turned on my hall app, like I normally do and listened to the gospel reading. And it was one of my favorite gospel passages, one of my PA favorite gospel stories. It’s the story of the disciples. They’re in the boat with our Lord and he’s asleep and there’s this massive storm. And it’s, you know, this huge storm and our Lord’s sleeping and the disciples are scared and they’re terrified. And they’re calling out to the Lord, crying out to him, literally saying, Lord, save us. We are perishing. And our Lord wakes up and he responds to them and says, why are you terrified OU of little faith? And then he rebukes the wind and the sea, and there was a great calm, oh my gosh, I cannot tell

How many times in my life have I gone to this scripture passage and just meditated on it, focused on it, prayed through it so many times, but isn’t it so profound right now? Doesn’t it just feel like this, like, we’re kind of in this, in this battle, in this storm, that’s just raging and it’s not just a storm. That’s been raging in the last five or six days since the Supreme court ruling. This has been a storm that’s been raging and raging for decades, if not longer. And yet here we are in the midst of it. And it feels kind of like that. And yet I believe that this short scripture passage, the story has so much profound wisdom and insights and that our Lord is speaking those same words to us right now. Why are you terrified? Trust in me, trust that I am here.

And sometimes we feel these storms around us and we’re like, Lord, you’re what are you doing? You’re sleeping. How can you sleep through this? And he’s like, I’m not sleeping through this, but just trust in me when we are close to him, we have nothing to fear. And so this is the theme of this episode today. And I wanted to share with you in the midst of praying through this gospel passage and really asking this question, how do I wanna show up in the midst of this? I came up with a couple things that I wanted to share with you, because I think we all should be asking this question, Lord, how do you want me to show up? How do you want me to be your vessel to be your instrument in the midst of a world that is in a storm right now?

And for all of us, if we ask this question, we’re all gonna get different answers from our Lord and rightly so, we’re at different places in our lives. We have different gifts and talents. God wants to utilize us in different ways. And so the things that I, I came up with a list of five things that I believe God is calling me to respond to when I ask this question, and when you ask this question, you might have a different list, or maybe we might have some similarities on our list, but I wanna share my list of things that came up for me. And maybe some of these things might also be on your list. I’m sure they will likely show up on your list in some capacity as well. But let’s dive into this. First of all, when I think about how I wanna show up in the world in regards to this and other things?

My number one thing is that I want to show up as a woman of prayer. I want us to think about this. Like when we’re, we feel like we’re in a storm and we’re in the boat, like a woman of prayer is a woman that is clinging to our Lord to God. And we do this through our prayer, through hitting our knees through to turning to God throughout the day. You know, starting our day off with prayer, ending it with prayer, but little moments throughout the day. How are we talking to God? How are we seeking him? How are we offering little things up to him throughout the day? I wanna be a woman that is immersed in prayer throughout my day. And when I think about being in the boat and being in the storm, I know that I could cling to a lot of things.

Like I could cling to the side of the boat. I could cling to an, you know, an or I could cling to some sort of life preserver, but really I wanna cling to our Lord, even if, sometimes it feels like he’s just sleeping. I just wanna be right there because that’s like, he’s the answer. And so, first of all, I want to be a woman that is immersed in prayer and trusting in God. But that is also experiencing a sense of calm in the storm, right? Like our Lord, he actually calmed the winds. He rebuked the winds and the sea, and then there was a great calm, but I believe that he wants to, like, this is what prayer does in our own lives. Every time we pray, it’s like the storm that’s raging, even within us is calmed and the winds and the seed die down.

And like all of a sudden our bodies and our soul feels this calm and this peace, that is the power of prayer because why, because every time we engage in prayer, we’re, we’re experiencing an encounter with God himself with the divine. And he has the ability to calm that storm. And also in that, when we pray, it’s our way of getting, taking captive, our thoughts, you hear Sterling. And I talk about this a lot. And there is a scripture passage that St Paul says in second Corinthians that we as Christians, we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. This is the work that we are talking about here at made for greatness and in masters. And the work that we wanna share with women is that we are called as followers of Christ to take captive every thought and put it into alignment, into obedience, to Christ.

And one of the surest ways that we can do this is by entering into prayer. When we enter into prayer, all of the thoughts that are swirling around in our, in our minds and all of the emotions that come from that they get put into their right order and, and in a way our Lord calms them. And he helps us to, to sort through those thoughts, to work through them and to truly take responsibility for those thoughts. Instead of allowing our mind to just run out of control, like we’re seeing so many people like are in that state right now, where they literally act and look and sound like they’re losing their minds because their thoughts are completely out of control. Our Lord is calling us to take captive every thought, and we do this. Like every time we enter into prayer, we are saying, Lord, I want my thoughts to be ordered to your thoughts, my will, to your will.

And when we do it, it’s incredibly powerful. So for me, number one, I wanna be a woman of prayer. I wanna be clinging to Jesus in the boat, and I want him to be the one that, through prayer, helps me manage my mind and manage my thoughts in such a way that they are in alignment with his heart. This is super powerful. All right. Number two, I want to be a woman who is well informed in the last few months. And in, especially in the last few days with all of this breaking news and all of these developments happening, as you know, there has been so much misinformation put out and isn’t that just like the devil to do that. He is the author of lies and destruction. He wants to spread lies and misinformation, and he wants to stir up people and he wants to confuse and cause division and all of these things.

And we can just see it, like we’re having front row seats to all of this unfolding right now, because that is how he works. And the media is just pumping out so much misinformation and stirring up so much fear and people are getting really worked up with it. Their emotions are rising and all of that. And it’s, and there’s a reason for this. There’s something that happens when people are overcome by fear, they are easy to control and they are easy to manipulate. So it only makes sense that the devil works, that the enemy works in this way to stir up as much fear as money lies, as much misinformation, as much division as we possibly can in the midst of all of this. And again, I think this is why our Lord, even in the scripture passage of the boat, he’s saying, why are you terrified?

I don’t want you to be afraid. And our Lord tells us this throughout scripture. There’s so many scripture passages about do not be afraid, do not have fear, trust in me, have no anxiety, play, have peace, all like, have hope and trust in me. All of it keeps coming back to not being afraid, but the devil, he likes people to just be drowning in fear. And that’s how he works. And we’re seeing a lot of that right now. And so how do we combat that? Well, we need to be women who are well informed, like as Christians, as Catholics, we need to be well informed on these topics. Like the media right now wants to tell women that they’re losing all access to healthcare and that there’s no resources for women or children and my sisters in crisis, just a lie. That’s not true.

I have again, worked in the pro-life movement for 25 years. I have had the extraordinary opportunity and blessing to journey with teenage girls and women through crisis pregnancy situations. And the thing that I have witnessed firsthand time and time again, is the extraordinary amount of resources that are available to women and to children. I mean, things that I do, things that I wasn’t even aware of, I was blown away to discover that there is so much to support women. And of course, when women go to planned parenthood or they go to an abortion clinic and they’re faced with this huge decision to make, they’re not told that they’re basically told that there aren’t any resources and that they’re gonna be alone and that there is nobody there that’s gonna help them or journey with them. And that’s just not true, but we need to become informed about what is, what is the truth and what are the resources and how can women get the help that they need?

Like all of that stuff, the more informed we are, the more we can advocate for the truth and speak up for the truth, because so many lies are just being, you know, blasted out there. And there’s like this mega microphone right now in the world, in the secular world for all the lies. So we, we really do have to combat that for me, with the women that I’ve had the opportunity to journey with. I mean, there has been unlimited resources, health doctor visits, everything paid for women like diapers, warehouses and formula warehouses. There’s access to so many things, both in the government, in the church and in nonprofit organizations on and on and on. So again, I want to continue to grow as a woman who is well informed. I want to like when, when people are coming at me with these other arguments, I want to be informed so that I have the ability to accurately speak the truth in an articulate way.

Now, if I had two hours for this podcast episode, I would share with you miracle stories, upon miracle stories of how God provided for women in crisis pregnancy situations that I’ve witnessed firsthand things that would absolutely blow you away. And these are the types of stories that people don’t hear. This is not what the media of course is reporting on, but this is the dill God provides. We know that and miracles happen. And when we trust in God and when we choose life, God blesses us. And he blesses those who, even in the midst of great suffering or loneliness or even fear, he always takes care of them. So the more informed I can be, not of like the resources of the situations of the ways in which women truly are being served in the pro-life communities and how, you know, the realities and the truth of how women are being negatively affected by abortion.

Like the more I am informed I am the greater advocate I can be for life. All right. So now number three, I want to be a woman that is guided by the holy spirit. And again, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, this is one of the reasons why we’re focusing on the holy spirit this summer, because we wanna be women that are, that are guided by the holy spirit, in, in how we act and respond and how we show up in this world. I want the gifts of the holy spirit that were given to me and my baptism and strengthen within me and my confirmation to be the gifts that are guiding my thoughts, my words, and my actions, so that I might be truly an instrument of God, even in the midst of some really challenging conversations or challenging situations. And so I need to be always asking the holy spirit to be present in me to guide me, to work through me.

I want to ask about the gifts of wisdom and knowledge and understanding the gifts of fortitude, piety, fear of the Lord, all of those gifts. I want those to be strengthened. And within me, I want to be aware of them. I want to be focused on them and I want to be really utilizing them. Our Lord has brought us into this world. He has equipped us with the gifts of the holy spirit. He told his apostles, I’m gonna send you the advocate, but why, because I’m gonna send you out into this world to, to build up my kingdom. And I don’t expect you to do it alone. I’m gonna equip you with my divine nature. I’m gonna equip you with the gifts of the holy spirit and how do we do that? How do we experience more of the gifts of the holy spirit and how do we stay so connected to him?

Well, we need to be connected to the source of grace of God, through the sacraments again, through prayer. And so for me, like one of the things I’ve been asking myself even in the last few days is where do I need to amp up my connection to God’s grace? I think I need to go to confession more. I want to just be this open vessel of his grace. I need to go to mass more. I need to spend more time in front of the blessed sacrament so that I can become even more open to the grace of God flowing in and through me. And so that I can be even a greater vessel of his holy spirit. So that is number three. All right, now, onto number four, I wanna be a woman that loves life. We as Catholics, like we know that we are called to uphold the dignity of life, but I wanna be a woman that truly loves life, that we love and uphold the dignity of life from the beginning of natural, from natural conception to natural death and everything in between.

And so we are called to love life. Life is the greatest gift that God has given to us. So how do we love it? How do we honor it? And I know that this might kind of sound funny, but like I have been spending a lot of time in the last, particularly the last few months, looking at my own life and saying, how am I loving my life? The life that God gave to me, like I have just this one life. This is my life. And do I really love it? Do I love the life that God has given to me? And so as a woman who loves life, like how do I love my life? How do I treat myself? And how do I talk to myself and how do I honor and uphold my own dignity and my own worth and my own value.

These are things that I’ve been focusing a lot on lately, because to be honest with you, there’ve been a lot of beers in my life that I really didn’t do a very good job of. And I’m actually kind of relearning how to do this, how to honor and uphold the dignity of my own life. But it’s in doing this, I believe, that the more we actually love and embrace the life that God has given to us, then we naturally start to see it and recognize it in the lives of everyone that we encounter. And so as a lover of life, like, what am I doing to truly love and embrace this, this beautiful life. That’s sometimes difficult and challenging and even steeped in suffering, but how am I truly embracing it? And then how am I loving the lives of God, of, of those that God has called me to serve my, my husband, my children, others that God has called me to serve.

And even there, like in a way it’s easy to love my life and others, but then we take it a step further. And how is God calling us to love those that are difficult to love? How is God calling us right now to love those whose views are so vastly different than our own, whose perspectives, who experiences are so different and how recall to love those who maybe are wanting to persecute us or who hate us, or who hate the church who hate God, people that are adamantly opposed to upholding the dignity of life. This is the real challenge. And so I’ve been asking myself like, Lord, how do I show up loving people who maybe don’t even want to be in a relationship with me, but like, how am I to show up in this way? And so that’s been a big question of mine and something that has been significantly on my heart.

And I believe that as we ask that question, God continues to reveal to us those answers, because we are called again, to be people who love Christ, like we are called to love others in a deeply profound way. How are we offering up our sufferings for those who persecute us? How are we fasting and praying in and offering those things to our Lord, for their hearts, their conversions, because ultimately into the, at the end of the day, we all want to be together in heaven. That’s our ultimate goal, our ultimate desire. And even if people that I know that that adamantly say that they don’t believe in God or that they don’t love him, or that they want abortions on demand. Ultimately, God still loves them. He loves them just as much, as much as he loves me and he’s calling and inviting me to love them as well.

And this is how people can tell we are Christians, right? These are the fruits of the holy spirit. These are the fruits of our love. And our Christian works in action. Like they will know us by our love and the fruits of the holy spirit. And so this is that hard work. And so for me, even in some of the challenging conversations, I’ve found myself in my prayer continues to go to Lord, how do I, like I may not have the perfect answer or know like, exactly what to say in this situation, but I just ask you to help me to love this person, help me to have an encounter with them, where they might experience just pure an apologetic love. And if I can help them to maybe experience a little taste of your love, then maybe that’s better than any answer I could give them.

So that has been, that’s like my number four thing. And then finally, number five, I want to be a woman who uses her gifts and talents and blessings to love and to serve others. And this is, you know, ultimately like this is the call of a Christian to use the gifts and talents that God has given us to serve others and to build up his kingdom. And so how do we do this? And in light to these pro-life issues, and again, this is gonna look different for, for all of us. We’re at different stages in our lives. We all have different gifts and talents. And so God is going to use us in different ways, but always for his service, right. That’s what we, you know, are called to. And I remember early on as a young adult, before I got married and then early on in our marriage, my husband and I, we did a lot of, you know, like boots on the ground.

Pro-Life were like praying outside of abortion clinics and counseling women and working with women in that capacity. And that was like, we were in a time in our lives where we could do that. And then shortly after we started having babies and it was like one baby after another, after another. And I had five babies in under five years. So that ultimately became our pro-life work was in just our openness to life and to raising babies. And so I didn’t, at that time, have the capacity to be doing a lot of work outside of clinics. Like my work at that time. And even still today I am raising my children and raising my family. And I just wanna say this to all of my fellow mothers out there. This is some of the most important, significant pro-life work we can do is just raising and loving our children and leading them to Christ and helping them to fall in love with his church and, and all like, like that is where we are called to serve right now.

That’s where God is calling us to use our gifts and our talents. And our blessings are in raising these children. And yet, you know, some of us are called to work at clinics or in PR in pregnancy centers, crisis pregnancy centers. Some of us are called to, to make donations to pro-life charities and organizations. Some of us are called to just be advocates and to wear pro-life t-shirts or put water bottle stickers or bumper stickers on our cars and license plates and to just pray, right? Like all of that is doing the work of God to promote life and to support women and to help children and to help families. And so this is, you know, I think just an opportunity for all of us to, to pray about it and to, to really say, okay, God, right now with the, like where I am in my life and maybe where we are in our marriage or in our family, like, where are you calling us to serve?

How can we serve you most in serving life? And I do believe when we ask this question, God is going to make it known. He might like to reveal some sort of charity or organization that could use our help or our support. He might bring a woman into your life that needs help or needs a friend or needs just someone to walk with. I mean, there’s so many ways that God can use us in this time, but nevertheless, we should be unapologetically looking and asking this question and striving to continue to build a culture of life. Because right now we all know that there is a battle waging between life and death. There’s a battle waging between the light and the darkness and the more that we step forward and very intentionally live for life and live to be the light, the more it will generate life and love and truth and goodness, all the things that we are called to build up in building his kingdom.

And finally, as I wrap this up, I just wanna say that I’ve also found myself just with this great spirit of gratitude and Thanksgiving that I am on the side of life, because I look at everything. I look at this battle and this storm, and I think to myself, oh my goodness, there go. I, if not for the grace of God, I am so thankful to be one, one that is in the boat clinging to our Lord. One that is standing for life and praying for life and being an ambassador for life because I could so easily be on the other side, if not for the grace of God, truly, there was a time in my early teen years where I remember boldly and in a very outspoken way, proclaiming that I was pro-choice that I believed that a woman had a right to have an abortion.

And then shortly after that, I had a really profound conversion experience as a 16 year old girl. And thankfully through that conversion, the scales fell from my eyes and all of a sudden I saw abortion for what it was. And I saw the church’s teachings on this issue in a completely new light. And that was ultimately when I first started, even as a teenager, going to pro-life marches and getting involved in pro in pro-life work and reading, you know, pro-life articles and all of that. And I’m just so incredibly thankful. And so this great spirit of gratitude and, and knowing that it’s truly the grace of God and to whom much is given much is expected. And so I know that with this great gift of, of understanding the true beauty and dignity and gift of life and how precious it is and how we have to fight for it. Like I am also just so eternally grateful that God has revealed this to my heart. And I know I’m sure if you’re listening to this, that he’s revealed it to your heart as well. And so let us be women that strongly walk with gratitude. 

And thanksgiving, and that we walk with the holy spirit, that we are ambassadors for life and for our Lord. And even in the midst of this great battle, we know who wins. We know the victory because we know the one who is the Victor. And so we cling to him and we trust in him and we stay close to him and he will give us everything we need to do the work that he is calling us to do. And I wanna close with this, this reminder from John chapter 10, the thief comes to kill still and destroy, but I have come to give you life and life to the full. This is the promise that we hold onto. And we know that this life is not always gonna be easy. And we certainly know that it’s not always gonna be comfortable. And yet my sisters in Christ, you know how this goes, we are not made for comfort. We are made for greatness and we are made to live fully alive. Let’s be saints. God bless you. I love you. And I cannot wait to talk to you again soon.