I’m so busy! When somebody asks, “How are you doing?” I realized my response is often, “Busy”, or  “I have so much to do”. Could there be another way to look at this?

One Sunday afternoon, I was feeling anxious about my day. How could it all fit together? I went to mass, stopped at the grocery store, made lunch, went to a bridal shower, had plans to lead a prayer group in the evening, and my friend’s biggest race of the year was that same day. And it was a Sunday! Wasn’t this supposed to be a day of rest? I found myself wondering this more than once. Did I plan too much into my day? Was I over-committing myself? Did I need to stop all activities so I could slow down my life?

I’ve tried to slow myself down in the past. I’ve tried doing less activities. But somehow I found myself continuing to pack activities into my day. The feeling of anxiety was coming from all of these thoughts:

I have too much to do.

I’m over-committing myself.

There’s no way that I can get this done.

I took a moment to ask myself, “Is over-committing myself a fact or a thought?” Believe it or not, the sentence, “I’m over-committed,” is just a thought. So many moments of my life, I’ve wanted to say, “The fact that I’m over-committed is a fact! I can give a lot of reasons to prove that this is true.” But there is no rule saying what being over-committed looks like.

A quick google search will tell you the word over-committed is defined by(1) “to do more than one is capable of.” What is one capable of? Each person has a different capacity. Therefore, “I’m over-committed,” is just a sentence in your brain. Additionally, I found that saying, “I’m over-committing myself,” wasn’t leading me to stop “over-committing” myself. In fact, I really enjoyed all of the things that I was doing. I wanted to be able to do all these things.

As I was driving to my friend’s race that day, I watched the runners run past me. Not only was this a race, but it was an Iron Man. In an Iron Man, the racers swim 2.4 miles, then they bike 112 miles, and finish with a full marathon, 26.2 miles. These racers were on the last part of their race, and they were still moving. They had started at 6 AM and now it was 4 PM in the afternoon. They hadn’t stopped moving for 9 hours. This is impossible. There is no way they can finish this race. How is their body capable of moving this way for this extended amount of time?

As I was reflecting, I believe the Lord spoke to me… “They were made for this! And you too are made for this. I’ve created your bodies in a way that it is possible to complete this race. And you too, with the proper training, are capable of this same thing.” My mind turned back to my day. Could it be that I am capable of doing all the things that are in my busy day? Yes! I’ve done it before when it didn’t seem possible, why would I not be able to do it now? I began to recall times in my life where this statement proved to be true. God made my body capable of doing all the activities I’ve committed myself to.

If I just started running in the Iron Man race that day, it is likely that I would not have been able to finish. However, for those racers, they had been training. Their bodies learned how to respond on these intense race days. By the time they got to the running part of the race, I’m sure they were tired. However, “Can I give just a little bit more?” should be the question they ask.

And for Jesus too, He would have had to ask that. How much more can I give? The fact is: our bodies are made for giving. We too are made to receive, but Saint John Paul II often quotes from Gaudium et Spes that (2) “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” It is in giving that we truly can understand who we are and how we were created.

So, the next time you find yourself saying, “I’m too busy,” I invite you to say, “I was made for this. I can give just a little bit more.” For if we haven’t given of ourselves to the point of dying on the cross, then we haven’t fulfilled our mission as Christians yet.

Now, I’m not saying that we should just commit ourselves to things for the sake of committing to them. But I do think that after assessing and discerning the things we’ve decided to do, we can confidently say, “I was made for this!”

So I ask you, where in your life has this proven to be true? Where have you seen your body capable of the impossible? Where have you completed the tasks of your busy day before? Recalling these moments help us to remember how capable we really are.

So, to bring this full circle, when someone asks me how I’m doing, instead of saying tired or worn out, I try to respond with: I’m living a full life, I’m taking care of the details one step at a time, there is never a dull moment, etc.

For you really are capable of more than you realize!

“I am not afraid. God is with me. I was born to do this!” – Saint Joan of Arc

(1) –  Google search, overcommit. Accessed 6 June 2023.

(2) – Scola, Angelo. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: Gaudium et Spes ; Introduction by Angelo Cardinal Scola. Catholic Truth Society, 2012.

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Cor 12:9

I’m so thankful for my struggles with weight!

Through them I finally understand this Scripture from Saint Paul telling us that we are strong in our weaknesses because it is there where we cry out to God for relief and we go to great lengths for a cure. I kept searching for an answer to weight loss and God finally revealed his power in my life as I learned how to permanently lose the weight through spiritual fasting.

Spiritual fasting is simply a delay of food for a period of time with a deep and meaningful spiritual purpose attached. This is mostly done during Lent, but I learned that it could be done all year round with great success for both body and soul.

What are diets missing? They are missing the power of prayer and the sacraments as applied to health. Catholic mindset coaching and the understanding of our body-soul composite and nutrition information are also necessary. Diets don’t work because you must invite God into your struggles to ever find peace. It’s about biology, neurology, and theology.

It’s also about coaching! I learned that all of these pieces are important through graduating from two life coaching schools where I was able to develop a spiritual fasting program called Delay and Pray: Permanent Weight Loss through Spiritual Fasting. This program has changed my life and the lives of many clients forever. I lost 30 pounds and gained faith while serving the souls of others!

It all started in 2020 when I had reached my highest weight while entering into my fifties. I had been listening to The Life Coach School podcast since 2017, and then COVID hit. I decided to go all in and enter The Life Coach School to be a Life and Weight Loss Coach. The program lasted a year and I learned much about mindset coaching and weight loss.

Within that same year, I wanted to make sure that what I was learning aligned with the Catholic Church, so I Googled the words: Catholic Coaching. That’s when I found Erin Ingold from Metanoia Catholic. I quickly scheduled a coaching session, and after coaching with Erin, immediately entered into their Catholic Coaching Foundations to supplement the secular program I was a part of. It was an answer to a prayer!

I learned from Erin and Matt Ingold that the Thought Model, which is the key to mind management from the secular school, actually had a Catholic anthropology and was first designed by Saint Thomas Aquinas. It was also present in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is even more than a Thought Model—it is the Reason Cycle that enables us to think about our thinking with our souls. I became a Catholic Mindset Coach that same year, quit my corporate job, and started a spiritual fasting business called Beth, The Catholic Fasting Coach where I teach Catholics how to permanently lose weight through spiritual fasting.

Catholic Coaching Foundations taught me the workings of the soul—which has been the key. Two years later, I have a thriving business, permanent weight loss, and am working as a Coach Instructor for Metanoia Catholic. I am forever grateful to the Lord for leading me to this amazing Catholic business.

Metanoia Catholic is serving all of us in the body of Christ by helping us to reason through our thinking, and lifting our minds and hearts to God on our way to Sainthood. It’s all about virtue.

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I want to give you a glimpse into the interior life I have started to experience since beginning the Metanoia Catholic Academy.

The theme of “safety” has come up a lot in my journaling over the last year. Usually it comes out as the phrase, “I’m not okay,” or, “I won’t be okay.” It took me a while to be able to even define what “okay” meant to me, but I now understand it to be emotional safety. To feel seen, known and loved.

I have come to learn that God speaks to us all differently, and I believe that He often speaks to me in breadcrumbs – a little something here, a half-thought there, and an image over there. I often get to play with these things in my mind, noticing themes, but not putting things fully together. Every once in a while though, this amazing connection happens that is so clear and so air tight that I know it is God.

I mentioned the theme of “safety.” One of the first thoughts I uncovered while doing EMDR work with a therapist was the phrase, “I’m not safe with me.” This wowed me. Talk about having a cracked foundation! This was one of the first breadcrumbs that I noticed along this theme.

A second breadcrumb I gathered was a quote which is often shared on the Abiding Together Podcast from the book,The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When Susan asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan the lion is safe, he responds,

“Safe?… ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

I’ve heard the ladies of Abiding Together say it many times, and it always caught my ear. This paradoxical description of the Christ character of Aslan. I liked it. There seemed to be truth there, but I also didn’t quite understand it. Then, one day, I realized the association I was making that had been confounding my understanding of this description. I equated “safety” with “goodness.” Truth be told, I had unknowingly made emotional safety, being seen, known and loved by those I desired to see, know and love me, an idol. I mistook it for my greatest good.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a good to have that security, but ultimately I had to look at where I was going in my thoughts and actions when focusing on not receiving what I desired. It wasn’t pretty: anger, passive aggressive behavior, resentment, and bitterness. Vice. Like we’re challenged to ask ourselves in Exercise 5 of the Metanoia Catholic Journal, “Am I moving toward God or away from God?”I could see without a shadow of a doubt that I was moving away from God.

It was sometime after uncovering this unprettiness that Erin and Matt interviewed Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. on the topic of virtue on their Catholic Coaching Podcast. In describing the virtue of fortitude, Fr. Pine describes the courageous person as one who “knows there is a thing to be done…and yet while mindful of the fact that I am scared, I need to do the job.” He later describes the capacity to honor and maintain the balance of these two tensions as having “levity of spirit,” which, in the Christian mind, comes from the understanding that, in a way, through Baptism, we have already died to this world, therefore, nothing can be taken from us. As he so plainly puts it, “You’ve put off the old man and breathe deeply a new and resurrected life. So what can the world take from you? It can’t take anything from you. You’re already dead!”

It’s a bit abrupt, but I marveled a little at its depth.

What if you have nothing to lose? What if emotional pain is simply something that is? I see it. I notice it. I acknowledge it. I attend to it. But then that’s it.

It is this detachment from other lesser goods of this world, aka, anything that does not draw us to God, which allows one to boldly pursue greatness in the face of danger.  Fr. Pine mentions that this is done in the face of fear, not the absence of fear.

To me, fear and danger implied a lack of safety and lack of safety = bad. But does it? Look at the martyrs. They were not “safe” marching off to their mortal end, but they were full of joy. Talk about a paradox! If Christ is good, but not safe, and fortitude implies action in the face of danger, then is it necessarily bad to feel that emotional insecurity?

I had to wrestle with the Lord on this one, and that’s where Exercise 7 of the Metanoia Catholic Journal entered in for me. Upon reflecting with Him on the thought, “I am not safe,” under which lies the implication that to not feel safe is a bad thing and that “I should feel safe at all times,” it dawned on me how unrealistic this expectation was. The idea that in order to be “okay” I must feel safe, makes me a victim to my circumstances at every moment. “Am I safe now? Or now?? Or now???” This is not freedom.

The fact that safety can never be guaranteed is a fact of life, but it is one quite hard to accept without a bedrock to stand on that lets you know you are “okay” no matter what. That bedrock has become my faith, my identity in Christ, and yet, I still forget and get caught up in it all. I didn’t realize this attachment I had to emotional security until I noticed my behaviors in its absence come up in my journaling.

The final breadcrumb on this journey was a screensaver on one of the hospital TVs at work. A scripture passage from Psalm 18:32, “God who arms me with strength, And makes my way perfect.” I passed it several times before I noticed I was reading it wrong, but I think that was God’s way of speaking to me as it gave me immense solace. I read it as,

“God’s arms are my strength.”

So I’d like to invite you into a moment of my interior life. The following journal entry was my Exercise 7 on this topic of emotional safety. It incorporates much of what I included above. This is what came to me. Read it as if it is God speaking to me.

“You have already died to this world. You have only to gain if you are put in any peril. You get to trust fall on Me. You get to be with ME. Nothing can harm you, but only serve to strengthen you.  This is what I have been trying to tell you – your purpose for the pain is not to suffer and hurt. I did all that, it is not the plan I have for you. Your heaven is to start here on Earth…The purpose for the pain, the struggle is meant as an opportunity to know my strength. Your strength lies in My arms. The more freely you fall, the more vast will be your experience of my power and you will know the elation of a soul resting in my arms. On this side of heaven, that is the closest place you can be to dwelling within the Trinity…The more freely you fall, the more securely you rest in My arms.”

In a nutshell, this has been my inspiration to enter the Purgative Way program and begin coaching. I want to help people find God in their mess and see it as their means to holiness. I hope to do for others what the Metanoia Catholic Academy and the Metanoia Catholic Journal has done for me – given me the keys to unlock the door toward Interior Freedom.

“Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” 1 Samuel 3:10

Have you ever sat with the Lord just waiting for him to speak. “Hello, Lord? Do you hear me? I could use some answers down here.”

…. Silence.

“Jesus? Abba? Holy Spirit?”

…. Nothing.

“Okay Lord, I know you really are trying to teach me something here, but I’m not getting it. I need CLEAR answers. I need neon flashing signs, blaring sirens, and an idiot-proof message that I can’t mess up. You’re also going to have to throw in some instructions on how to follow through with said message, and a full dose of courage if you’re asking me to do something out of my comfort zone.”

So many times, when I have been struggling in life or simply stuck in buffering mode and inaction, I have cried out to God for help. I waited patiently – or not so patiently – for God to simply tell me what to do. I knew in my heart that he heard me, but on my end, I got one of two things. Either resounding silence, or pure thought chaos – which at best, was coming from my own mind. Neither of these were the answers I was looking for.

The truth is, being a disciple is hard. While we are never left alone, God often uses the silence to reach us in ways that we cannot comprehend. It can feel frustrating or sometimes, downright painful.

“During painful times, when you feel a terrible void, think how God is enlarging the capacity of your soul so that it can receive Him – making it, as it were, infinite as He is infinite.” -Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity

The truth is, the closer we grow to God, the more painfully aware we become of the void when it arises. According to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Lord withdraws himself from us for one of three reasons: we have grown lazy in our spiritual practices, to try us, or to help us grow in humility.

In these times, it becomes all too easy for distractions to creep in.

So, the other night, there I was with a mind full of distractions. I sat in adoration at 3am reflecting on this question, “Lord, what do you hope for in me?”

I cried out to the Lord to answer me, and once again, I heard nothing but the cycling and recycling of my own voice. I called upon the saints to come to my aid, to help me fill my heart and mind so full of Jesus that it would push out all the nonsense that seemed to be rising to the surface.

Again, I asked, “Lord, what do you hope for in me?”

I sat. I waited. I persevered. I heard nothing. No bubbly feelings emerged. There were no tears of joy or sorrow, no images, not even a random word. Just silence.

My mind wanted to wander, but in my freedom to choose, I gently pushed my thoughts and preconceived misinterpretations of God’s lack of response to the side.

I took a few deep breaths and waited, trusting that the Lord was there. Trusting that the greatest graces were yet to come, even if they didn’t come in that hour. I trusted that even if I heard or felt nothing, he was working.

I raised my heart and my mind and repeated, “Lord, what do you hope for in me?” Suddenly, he took me into the deep and whispered… “Not now, my child. Just let me love you.” And in that moment, I was able to set aside all my ruminating thoughts and worries.

I was able to sit and simply be. No longer a Martha, but for a time, Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus.

When I first joined Metanoia Catholic with the desire to be a professionally trained coach, I often got caught up in the busyness of, not only my day, but of my mind. I didn’t know how to navigate the thought spiral that often arose from every pocket-sized emotion or letdown.

Scripture says that we are to take every thought captive, that we are obey the law of God in the mind and not in the flesh. Yet, knowing we are supposed to do something and having the skills and developed habits to do it, are two very different things.

Little did I know how teaching my mind to obey the will of God would not only enhance the virtuous nature of my day-to-day actions, but it would enhance my prayer as well. I would discover that I had a lot of preconceived notions and beliefs about how I was being called to be a Saint, how I should be living, and even how I should be praying. I believed and consented to the lies that I wasn’t good enough or didn’t know enough to teach others about how to pray, to witness, or to live out their faith.

So, rather than pursuing my desires to do so, I stayed stuck. I remained in the shadows devoid of confidence and courage to do the work that the Lord was calling me to.

It wasn’t until I better understood how to take my thoughts captive and was prepared for the battle of the mind that I was better prepared for the spiritual battles that came with prayer as well. I grew in my love of silence. I grew in my discipline of prayer. I grew in awareness of what is true and good and holy.

So, the next time you find yourself crying out to God for answers and he just doesn’t seem to respond, take your thoughts of what he is or isn’t doing captive. Turn them toward his infinite love and mercy. Remember that it is in the silence, the often painful and beautiful abyss of silence, that God speaks. It is there that he also loves and transforms and renews.

So, persevere. Persevere in silence. Persevere in prosecuting your thoughts. Persevere in the battle of the mind. Persevere in spirit. And, as always, persevere in prayer.

“Persevere in prayer. Persevere even when your efforts seem barren. Prayer is always fruitful.” – Saint Josemaria Escriva, The Way 101

During the first few months participating in the Metanoia Catholic Academy, I witnessed the transformations taking place in the group coaching calls, which occurred as we all learned how to challenge our thoughts. This made me ponder the question, “Could praying and asking a person questions really change the way they think?” With that in the back of my mind, I signed up for the Purgative Way coach training program taught by Matt and Erin. I was not exactly sure if I was up to learning this new way of approaching my own thoughts given the years I have lived thinking it’s all about my circumstances and not what I think about those circumstances.  But I quickly learned that coaching is not consulting, mentoring, or counseling. Instead a mindset coach assists a client in recognizing, questioning, and revising their thinking as they choose.

Built into the Purgative Way training was the huge umbrella of Catholic anthropology that provided a new foundation for understanding the human person, and incorporating prayer into each and every session was an incredible testament. Being the oldest in my cohort, I noticed many different styles of coaching and was wondering how I would fit in. I learned each client will also seek out a coaching style that fits them best as well. So with that knowledge, I embraced my gentle way of coaching and saw the talents God gave me as my unique assets. The training also focused on bringing God into each session and for me to just be the conduit for His work.

Now, a few months after graduation, what I hear most from clients is affirmation of my own coaching approach. My clients have shared sentiments like, “Oh that was so gentle while so transformative to my life,” or, “I didn’t know my thoughts were controlling me and the gentle tweaking has lifted a huge burden.”

So how does asking clients questions lead to such transformation? The simple answer is the Holy Spirit’s guidance and prompting dispose both the coach and the client to such grace during each session. With the Holy Spirit doing the heavy work, I can use simple pulleys and rope,so to speak, to move a big heavy thought out of the way so the light of Christ can shine into their mind and bring curiosity, light, hope, and a new point of view.

A recent client who was not aware that she associated the word “tired” with a dark period in her life.  As she was speaking and just saying the word “tired”, I saw through her body language that it troubled her thoughts. Since she is newly pregnant, her body is showing the natural signs of fatigue and tiredness. No amount of sleep will make her body feel fully refreshed, yet her thought when she says “tired” triggers heaviness and difficult memories. So instead of feeling excited about being pregnant, the conflict in her thoughts, mixed with the reality of the physical symptoms of fatigue, were taking her mind to memories of a dark period.  

In the Purgative Way training, I learned that thoughts are sentences in our minds that are optional. The sentences are just made up of words put together in a certain order. So examining some of the words that are the heaviest in the sentence is helpful to unpacking what is going on in the client’s mind.  In reality “tired” is just a 5 letter word, which could be used in the popular game Wordle. Using a technique from my training to have the client define a word and what it means was helpful to pinpoint why “tired” was a very negative word to her.  And asking, “What are you making this mean about you?,” opened the floodgates to the difficult period of life.

To find a healthier path, I read synonyms for “tired” and I asked her to pick ones that fit pregnancy better, were more neutral, or even made her laugh. The words “drowsy” and “knackered” brought both lightness and laughter to the conversation. These two new words also brought recollections to her mind of happiness around being so fatigued. With the session shifting from heavy burdensome thoughts, she was able to notice the shift, be curious, and also attentive to her body as her baby grows inside of her.

With a new thought around her pregnancy symptoms, my client is letting herself be transformed by the renewing of her mind and noticing the beautiful gift of life from God is good, acceptable, and perfect!