Can a Faithful Life Be Balanced?

In this episode, Carly and Raleigh explore what it means to pursue a Christ-centered life while juggling prayer, work, relationships, rest, and wellness.

A balanced life isn’t about perfect proportions — it’s about right priorities. When Christ is at the center, everything else aligns with greater clarity, peace, and purpose.

God’s Promise from Matthew 6: 30-33 God tells us “that God clothes the grass of the field…will he not provide much more for you…Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you." 

1. The Myth of the “Balanced Breakfast

”We grew up hearing about a “balanced breakfast”: sugary cereal, toast, fruit, and a glass of OJ or milk.The message? “Yes, buy our cereal — but make sure you add the good stuff.”

In the same way, we often try to pack our lives with responsibilities and only later wonder why faith feels squeezed in on the side.

Key Question: If you look at your morning plate, have you set aside anything intentional for prayer?

2. Finding Balance: Prayer, Work, Health, RestWork: Avoiding Burnout (Especially in Ministry)

Even holy work can drain us when we don’t root it in Christ. We talk about how burnout happens, why it matters, and what healthy boundaries look like.

Family & Friends: Pursue Relationships that Pursue GoodnessNot part-time pursuit — full-time.

Surround yourself with people who strive toward virtue, who sharpen and support your desire for holiness.

Rest & Wellness: Sabbath as a Gift, Not a LuxurySmall habits matter: hydration, movement, silence, intentional breaks.But the deeper question is: 

1. Why am I doing what I’m doing?

2. Does this glorify God?

3. Will it help me glorify God in the future?

Your Sabbath matters:

Physically — let your body rest.

Spiritually — bring everything to Jesus and leave it with Jesus.

3. Time, Intention, and Investment

Writer Dana Gioia viewed each hour of the day as a dollar he could invest. 

With 24 “dollars” available, he had to choose wisely where they went.

Reflection Questions:

1. Where am I currently investing my time and energy?

2.  What daily habits steal time from what truly matters?

3.  What deserves to come first instead?

4. Seeking Christ Above Everything

C.S. Lewis: “Look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

Our Challenges For You: How do I actively seek Christ? How would I like to seek Him? What intentional steps can we take to put Him first and allow everything else to fall into place?

Have a “grind” you want us to discuss in future episodes?

Send us a DM on Instagram @thegloryandthegrind or email us at thegloryandthegrindpod@gmail.com

Have a “grind” you want us to discuss in future episodes? Send us an email or DM on social media! 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to the Glory and the Gride, the podcast where we explore the beauty and the troubles of living your Catholic faith.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

I'm your host, Carly Flint, and I'm also here, Raleigh First Day. Hi. We're just two friends finding grace in the grind of motherhood and ministry while dodging nerf darts, hacking snacks, and trying to understand youth culture while not killing our remaining brain cells. It's a challenge. It is harder than it sounds. So each week we're gonna take some questions from our viewers, our listeners, our friends about the grind of all of the things that we can um relate to, like motherhood and teaching and being a wife and being a friend, and look for the glory woven into your stories and our stories. So let's dive into some moments where holiness and hot messes coexist.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Absolutely. So, Raleigh, I have an icebreaker for you today because one thing we know about the universe is that everyone loves icebreakers, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Right? It depends. So, like when we do retreats for like little kids, they will eat an icebreaker up. They love it. When we do icebreakers for anyone like 24 years and older, they're like, you could actually leave the room. They just hate it. And I don't blame them. I don't blame them.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Even sometimes the 16-year-olds can't handle it, they don't want to be known. But I do have an icebreaker for you, so I'd like to hear your answer to this. Raleigh, if you had to compare us to any duo, who are we? Let the people know.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Okay, so I've said this many times, and I know you disagree with me, but Brooklyn 99, Rosa Diaz, and Amy Santiago, you are the human embodiment of Amy Santiago. You've got a binder for everything. I mean, you're a vice principal, you have to have a binder for everything. But you are just like bubbly and welcoming and organized. And I am Rosa Diaz with that like resting face and seem unapproachable, but you get to know me and I'm really soft, but I'm usually the scary and you're usually the ray of sunshine.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yes, but I don't know that I've ever seen you in like a black leather jacket. It has to be a little bit more than that. I can't pull it off yet.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

I can't pull it off. Looked for so many. Like I have looked through many thrift stores trying to find a black leather jacket. I just don't think they're I don't think that's meant for me. I'm not meant for that.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

I'm believing you though, and I'm gonna take that as a a compliment, even though she is pretty insufferable for like most of the show. Yeah, she has original. No, she does, she's good, but she's good at her job, and that's what matters is that she's here for the people. That's right, and that's what you want, Rosa. I'm trying to be. Um, and so speaking of being here for the people, what we want to do here on the podcast for you all, for the listeners, is we want to start every episode with that little bit of fun, with that icebreaker, but we also want to remember that whatever struggle we're facing, whatever grind we are in, we are also always met with God's promises. We've always got some glory, some good thing going on, whether it's in the background or in the forefront, because we're paying attention or we haven't noticed yet. God's always giving us something. Um, so we're gonna start with that today. Uh, we're gonna be jumping into a little bit of a grind story, but we're gonna give you some encouragement first. So we're gonna start with God's promise. Amen. Go get it. We're gonna get it. We're gonna start in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter six. And I love Matthew six. Matthew six is where I always go when I need to explain to someone that you are abundantly loved and that you have some relatively simple instructions to follow in order to sort of reciprocate and understand that love, you go to Matthew six. You're gonna get a lot of really just straightforward goodness. Um, and we're gonna look specifically at verses 30 through 33, um, where God tells us, God clothes the grass of the field. Will he not provide much more for you? Your heavenly father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Amen. Amen. Um, so why don't you tell them, Raleigh, what that has to do with our grind question of the day?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Today's grind is about balance and how difficult it is to find balance in our lives. Um, and I'm excited to talk about this because since we decided that this was gonna be our first episode, God's just been really pouring a lot of his wisdom and his insight on what my life would look like if I was a little bit more balanced. So, specifically, balance in our spiritual lives and how that's gonna trickle into the other aspects of our lives. So, we're gonna tackle today's question on balance. Specifically, can a life rooted in faith truly be balanced? How do we find balance between prayer, work, health, and rest? What small habits or hacks help create space for God and daily life?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yes. And before we dive into our answers for that, um, just know, first of all, this was a listener question. This was someone who we know is asking this question in real life and that we've actually heard from several people. So we think it's something that both Raleigh and I want to tackle and learn more about, but it's also something that we think a lot of people are struggling with and that we've heard from a lot of people. And we want to say before we give our answers as well that we are highly fallible. We have um a lot of wisdom that we've gained from our personal education and from educating others. Um, and we know that the Holy Spirit is working on us and helping us to grow. Um, but we want to encourage you, whatever you hear today, take it with a grain of salt, take it to discernment and prayer, hold it up against the church and against scripture and tradition, um, and see where it sits in your heart. Um, but hopefully we do have some inspired words for you today that will help you to figure out how you are going to tackle this particular grind, if that's what you're experiencing today. So, Raleigh, I'd love to hear what are your thoughts on can a spiritual life be balanced? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Yeah, and thank you for getting all the legal stuff out of the way. I always want to follow that up with listening to our podcast may cause nausea, diarrhea, heart throbs, you know, things like that. Um disease. No. Uh, sometimes my brain broke.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

It's great. Keep going. Tell us what you're thinking about balance.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Pursuing crate, honey. No, and crate.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, this is me in my binder moment, right? This is my um Amy moment for you, Rosa. You got this. Keep it up.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

I appreciate you. Um, I think that when thinking about balance, I always go back to when I was a kid watching commercials, especially like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, things like that, when you'd have to watch commercials in between the scenes of your show. Kids call them ads now. But every cereal commercial, every like sugary, yummy cereal commercial always ended with a part of this balanced breakfast. And they had the bowl of cereal surrounded by orange juice or a glass of milk, some type of citrusy fruit, a carb, like a bagel or a piece of toast. Right. Just like so much sugary carb yumminess surrounding this bowl that they're trying to advertise. And like I was a cereal kid. Sometimes I'd eat cereal for dinner, I ate it for breakfast. If I ate cereal, it was not surrounded by anything else balance. It was just the cereal. So when I think about the word balance, it never really made sense to me because like it's promoted as something, but it might I would never balance my cereal. So, like, how the heck am I supposed to balance my life? Right? Yeah. A little bit about Carly and I. We're both mothers of I have three kids aging from two to five years old. My youngest is still home with me. My other two are in school. And my youngest just woke up from her nap, and I bet she's wandering the house looking for where I am. Claire, Claire, open the door.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

And I also have three children. Mine are two to eight years old, and mine are currently all still at school, but I'm sure they'll make an appearance one of these days.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Hi, Claire, Claire. You want to come sit by mommy? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

I think that when it comes to balance, it's a little bit of a myth. It's a little bit hard to consider that. I think that balance is a little bit of a myth. Like you were saying before. Oh, yeah. So about the serial and having all of the things, it's not realistic that you're gonna have all the other things.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

And let's be honest, balanced is not gonna look the same day to day. Like a quote unquote balanced day on Monday is not gonna look like the same on Tuesday because Monday's problems are not Tuesday's problems, right? Each day has its own, its own worries. And if I looked at my quote unquote day, right, as a breakfast plate, I would have theoretically, you know, everything that I would need to get done that day. And I would prioritize the things that in my mind were the most important. But I have to ask myself, have I set aside any time for intentional prayer? Right? Like that good, yummy, sugary cereal that I really, really want is great. But have I balanced out the fun that I want to have and the distractions I'm going to have and the doom scrolling, but also the checklist? Am I going to put all of that together and incorporate Jesus into it? So when I look at that, I have to ask myself, what is it that's keeping me from focusing on that, from focusing on prayer for me, right? It's you're you're a full-time vice principal.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, working mom.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

I'm a stay-at-home mom.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yeah, but you have a business. That's the other thing about Riley that she didn't tell y'all. She runs a business while staying home with her child.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Okay, you go get the iPad for that, Claire. Yes, I um started a balloon decorating business and it's I got it, Claire. I got it. Yeah, it's popping. It's I I try to make that a thing, but it's just corny. Um it's not good. You would love it though. You're so encouraging to me. But I do have like work, you know, I have that and I do like speaking events and things like that. So I do have things that like take my time and I have to prioritize outside of my home. But I think the big time grabs from prayer are probably our work, um, spending time with family and friends, even though that may not seem like it's something that pulls our time from God, it can. And the idea of resting and living well. I was before I became a stay-at-home mom, I was a high school teacher. I taught religion and English for 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

And she was great at it too.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

I was I was decent at best. I uh I had fun with my friends, and that's that's pretty much what kept me there for most of the time. Because like I like my friends, and I do love working with kids, especially high school kids, because they are really easy to mess with. But work, when I was working as a high school religion teacher, it was literally in my job description. We had seven classes a day. I may have taught five of those classes, and for let's say five and a half or so hours a day, I would be talking about Jesus and scripture and you know, sacred tradition and the magisterium, and I would be teaching about the sacraments, and I would be giving all of this head knowledge of theology to students and praying with them and walking with whatever student came into my classroom that needed some form of guidance. And it was like Jesus all day long, all day long. And you would think, oh my gosh, she has such a well-balanced life, surrounded by God's love and mercy. But towards the end of my time teaching, I noticed that I would get exhausted of prayer and just talking about Jesus all day. It's like a dentist looks at teeth all day. The last thing they want to do is look at more teeth or help their kid who's got a toothache, right? Um, I would get home and like I'd be like, okay, Jesus, I talked to you all day. So like I'm not gonna do any personal prayer because like we we need a break, we spend a lot of time together. And the idea of a personal prayer life totally took a backseat because it was my professional, quote unquote, professional, you know, job. And that was probably the most unbalanced part of my life because I had, you know, I had a loving husband, we were, you know, healthy, healthy, we had a great house, we have great, you know, dogs before we had kids, we were living very well and we were enjoying each other's company, but I was very unbalanced in the sense that I had no personal prayer life. I had no intentional time set out except for Mass on Sunday. So getting burnt out on ministry, if you are ever someone who works in ministry, it's a very real thing. You think just because they talk about Jesus all day or all the time, they are, you know, on fire. And maybe they are, and praise God. But for me, that wasn't the case until I was able to take a step back and kind of have a hard talk with myself about being more intentional in making time for prayer.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Right. And I had a similar experience when I started having kids and realizing when you leave work, you have more things to do when you move home. And I'm sure that's true for people, even when you don't have kids, right? Like there's still to take care of. You might have other responsibilities or family requirements, but I felt it particularly when I became a mom that there was not going to be this chunk of time where I could do something leisurely, I could eat dinner, and then I could think about like what am I gonna read before bed or whatever it is. I had to dive in to a new set of responsibilities when I left work that were in many ways more demanding than my work, right? Yeah. Motherhood was more demanding than my job. So all of the idea of having whatever was gonna be the me part of the day or the God part of the day just got wrapped up in the overwhelm of responsibility. And that hasn't really changed as I've added more children and I've added more responsibilities at work, that it doesn't become less of a demand on your time. And that was the part where I felt like, okay, you have to know what you're gonna do with all of this time and all of this responsibility. You said before about the breakfast plate. I thought of it as one of my favorite writers wrote in an essay that when he was young and he was starting a family, he had a job and he was trying to be a poet and he had a family, he thought of his day as a budget, that every hour of his day was a dollar, and he could invest his dollar into whatever it was gonna be, right? So if I have $24 a day, how much money am I putting towards myself, towards my career, towards my family, towards my prayer life, towards my creative outlet and all of these different facets of his life? And he had to figure out where am I investing it all? Am I putting it am I putting all my dollars in one basket? Or am I spreading it out evenly? Like what's the priority? And he had to figure that out. And that helped me to think of it that way because if I had $24, I wouldn't spend all my $24 on one thing, right? No, we are physically responsible. We are. I need to be able to buy something for LNKs. Exactly. Like, how am I going to get a Starbucks drink and a lunch and gonna like buy my kids something to eat too? We gotta figure all this out. So you gotta give, you gotta sacrifice, you gotta prioritize. And that's what I think is true of the the life of the spiritual life as well. That when we think about the idea of balance, I don't know if that means the same thing for everyone. Because I think when some people say balance, they really mean that they need a break, or they really mean that they need to pray at all, or that they would like more time to pray, or that there is some other thing that they want to spend more time doing that they're not making the time for. So they want more balance, which just means I want to do less of the thing that stresses me out.

unknown 16:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah, and sometimes you can't because it's your your occupation, or you have like a or your sick family member that you're you know responsible for caring for. It's some of us can't escape the things that are stressing us out the most. And that can be very daunting and very scary, but we know, right, like it says in Matthew 6, and if you read the entire chapter, at the end of it, it says, Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil. And I wrote next to that thesis because I'm like, okay, this is basically what you know, Matthew's entire like first 10 chapters are about. It's about bringing things to Jesus in prayer and leaving things with Jesus in prayer and not trying to take it back because we know that we have to trust his timing and allow him to kind of take the burden from us and allow him to lead.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Absolutely. And that particular scripture that you just read about one day being enough, that became like my mantra. That became the thing that got me through so many days when I was having more and more kids and I was having more and more things to do at work. And I just kept thinking, I don't have to have, like you just said 401k, I don't have to have my retirement figured out today. I don't have to have, you know, um, how are we gonna pay for braces? I don't need to know that today. You know, like I don't need to know anything today except that my kids need to eat three times. I need to eat at least twice. That would be great. Um, I'm gonna need to go to sleep at some point. We all need to bathe.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

And this is the unless it's summer and they went swimming, then they do not need to bathe. They don't. I'm gonna I'm gonna die on that hill.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

I'm with you. I've also hosed my children down before. I'm just gonna put it out there.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Summer day in Louisiana.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

It's a summer day. They've got some grass on their feet, we're gonna be okay. But these are the things that need doing, these are the things that are priorities for other people that I have a responsibility to, and these are the things I want to make sure get done today. And that's all I need to know. And tomorrow will have its own new things that I'll have to deal with. So having a sort of truncated timeline of your balance, like I don't need to balance my whole life. I need to balance today. What are my priorities today? And that's a really healthy mindset that will actually, I believe, increase your trust in God. Because if you can say, you've given me my daily bread and I'm going to, I'm going to consume my daily bread, I'm going to bring my daily needs to you, and we're going to do that every day for forever. You know, and that is um a mindset shift against a lot of the um popular theories of like have your five-month plan, have your five-year plan, have it all listed out. What's your next thing gonna be? When's you're gonna, when are you gonna change jobs? When are you gonna have that kid? When are you gonna buy that house? And it's all structured and you can control everything. It's like, no, I am the Lord's. This is what I need to do today. And he will help me to do that. And we're gonna move forward to the next day. And that is actually what balance looks like to me that I would hope for from my life.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah. And it's not always like sometimes we don't follow our own advice, right? Like I will ask myself, like when I'm trying to prioritize things, because like last night we got home from family dinner. I had a baby.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

But y'all do family dinner every Sunday, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:46

We do family dinner every Sunday with my in-laws. My in-laws are wonderful, they cook for us every Sunday, and I get to see my my husband's one of three. So out of all of us, there's 11 grandkids. Um, and it's wild. Like my kids have a whole like mafia of children to grow up with, and it's hilarious. And we do it every Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

And that's a form of balance because you know that you're gonna see them all every week. And but you've got to build that in it because that's a um investment of time that you know you have to count on. You're gonna be over there and you're not gonna be there.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, and it's um, I want to follow back up on that later about yeah, prioritizing things in our schedule. But when we got home, I had a dirty load of lawn, a dirty load of dishes in the dishwasher that had not been washed yet. So I had to turn that on. And I had a whole two sink worth of dirty dishes in the sink because it was Sunday. We had a Saints game, we weren't home. I had, you know, balloon installs to do, and we had a birthday party. We just we weren't, we were living our lives. Yep. And I wanted to also this morning wake up early enough to go to a 5 a.m. workout. And I knew if I didn't go to bed soon, that wasn't gonna happen. So I asked, you know, I wanted to start getting in the habit of asking myself, okay, if I need to prioritize things, does this glorify God in my vocation? And is it going to help me glorify God in the future? So it's nice for my children to wake up to a clean house. It causes them a little less stress, especially if I'm able to make them breakfast before they get up and have everything kind of ready for them and helps our morning go a little smoothly. But I knew if I prioritize sleep at that moment, that I would be able to do all of that as soon as I was able to get home and do that. So I chose sleep. I left the dirty dishes, and you know what? They got done in the morning. Um and some people would think that's lazy. And you know what? I would tell them, I can't afford a maid, and you can't afford to give me that opinion.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

So But really, these are the priorities, right? Something is going to fall off the list every day.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

And if you are gonna decide what investment have I given to this day, I have poured into my children, I have poured into my family, I have poured into my business. Poured into my spiritual life because I'm sure you went to mass and had um your sacred.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

We went to visual mass, yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Right. So I did all of that. If the dishes fell off the list today, that's okay. Yeah, and we'll catch up tomorrow. Because that's the other part of balance, is that like, can I find a place in my heart where I am at peace with the fact that I can't do everything? And we in fact learn in scripture in scripture that without him we can do nothing.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

So I We can do nothing well. We can do stuff, but it's gonna be a it's gonna be garb, it's gonna be booty garbage.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Exactly. So if I can lean on the fact that I am not almighty, that I am not omniscient, that I do not have infinite attention and energy, um, that I am not life and love itself, and I didn't do the dishes today. And I can forgive myself and move forward and know that like I'm gonna show up tomorrow more ready, and that's the priority is like getting to the the evils of tomorrow, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:57

As the scripture tells me it's the whole story of Mary Martha, and I think that in itself is gonna be like its own episode, but like I prioritized and I figured out what was needed and going back to prioritizing thing in our schedule. Um I think more common than not, we prioritize events with others and fun events and things like that when we're looking at our busy weekend and not okay, what time are we gonna go to mass this Sunday? Like let's plan our weekend around when we can go to mass or when you know we can sit down for dinner at least once this week as a family. I think it's it's our kids' schedules that get priority because like we paid for them to go to dance, or they got to go to dance at this time. It's like, yeah, okay, we have all of these, you know, um tasks, we have all of these obligations. Are we overdoing it to where we can't fit community in our schedule, time together in our schedule? And if so, what is it that has to give? You know, like what exactly? Um so when planning out important things, like, you know, and that takes if you're married, that takes some discernment with your spouse. You can't decide that for your family and then just say, this is what we're doing. Good luck with that, you know, enjoy therapy. But we we have to be able to prioritize what is going to help glorify God through our vocation as our capital V vocation, as a parent or as our you know, religious sister or single person, or our little V vocation, our our our occupation, you know, the skills that we're using to make, you know, God better. And what really helps with that is having holy friends. You know, you really can't pick your family, but you can pick the people you surround yourself with. Um true. And I was having this conversation with one of my girlfriends. We were at retreat a couple weekends ago, and we're, you know, we're kind of on the same wavelength. We have kids the same age, we're both Catholic moms, and we're trying to really be more disciplined in our faith and like going to adoration on a regular basis. And we kind of just said to each other, like, I really just don't have time to be friends with people who aren't pursuing holiness.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

It's on the counter, baby. You gonna go find it? She can't find the iPad, she's trying to pursue the iPad. She's gonna find it. I believe in you. But I but I was telling her, like, I like I get it. I know that we're supposed to love all and God has called all, but like I'm at a place in my life where I will have a conversation with anyone. If you invite my kids to a party, we are going. You know, I am not a snob in the sense that I don't want any new friends because that's just ridiculous. But if I'm gonna get to choose my time and choose like the little time that I have with my kids, if I have to pick between going to a big party with a bunch of people that I don't really know and find a sitter for my kids, or being able to take my kids to a hangout with a bunch of people who are also bringing their kids and we're all just kind of hanging out and all pursuing the same thing, I'm gonna pick that every single time. For sure. That's what's going to help me glorify God.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

And that's part of the balance question too, is because whenever you are deciding what your priorities are, it really helps when you're with people who share those priorities because then it takes some of the guesswork out of your day. It just makes it a little less decision fatigue of like, what do I need to know about these people? And you know, all of the social anxiety that might come into all of that. That if you know that you're speaking with people and working and doing life with people who get it, then all you have to do is be with them. And there's no guesswork related to that. And that goes along again with this idea of peace and balance, because if you know when you're spending your time, again, when you're investing, we call it spending and we call it paying attention, right? Where you're paying attention and where you're spending your time, if that is in a space with a group of people who are going to support those same priorities that you have, it just takes that little bit of extra thinking out of it. You're like, I know I can trust these people. That if I say, I want to do my 5 a.m. workout or I want to go to Adoration, will you come with me? Or, you know, I have to leave because I have to get my kids somewhere, that they just get it. And everyone's gonna support that effort that you're putting in. Um, and sometimes we might get called out to new groups of people, and that'll be part of our little V vocation, like you said. Um, but to kind of have your regulars and your things that you know you can rely on consistently as where you spend your time, it's gonna be a good investment for sure. Yeah. Now that we have fully explored what balance means to us, we of course want to give you guys something to go home with. We want you to think about these concepts up against church tradition, up against the scriptures, and up against your own experience. What does this look like for you? So we have some takeaway questions. Um, Raleigh. So one of our favorite writers said that if you look for Christ, you will find him and with him, everything else thrown in. That is Mr. C.S. Lewis. He is C.S. Lewis. He is a jack. So I guess the question is: if you're looking for Christ and you know you have that faith and that promise from God that you will find him, what are you doing to actively seek Christ? And if you're not, if you don't have an answer for that, what would you like to be doing? So why don't you give us an example, Raleigh? What you got?

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Um, be mindful of the music you listen to because if it gets stuck in your head, it's going to change your mindset. Be intentional of the shows you watch and be intentional of the conversations that you have, the way you speak about yourself, the way you speak about others, and share your goals for yourself, like for your holiness with those around you, especially those that you know will hold you accountable. Um, like if I kind of go off script and kind of start to, you know, gossip and talk bad about someone with my husband, he's like, okay, but like really, is it really like that that bad? You know, and he he tries to keep me in check and he does a really good job of it. But being intentional with the little things that just fall into your routine. If you can pick the background um noise to your life, you can pick the story, you can pick the narrative. Absolutely. My daughter is playing with a she's so cute.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Look at her umbrella. It was raining earlier, she's ready. Okay, I would say that I actively see Christ. I have to return to the scripture. Like when I'm not yeah, when I'm not placing myself in scripture, then I am not gonna find him in my psyche. Like he could he could be standing right in front of me, and if I'm not reading it, I'm not gonna know he's there. Like I have to go to mass, I have to frequent the sacraments, and I have to read scripture. Where I have to find myself, I have to engage with what the church offers us, and that is the sacraments, and that is scripture, and that's where I'm gonna find him. And you know, I might find him in a worship song, I might find him in a quiet moment sitting by a window, I might do um any sort of peaceful, nice thing and recognize that I should be grateful to Jesus in this moment, but like I am gonna be the most rewarded in my heart if I go to scripture and I go to sacrifice that's what I need. All right, so our next episode, we're gonna be diving into another hot topic. Raleigh, you want to tell the people what we're doing?

SPEAKER_00 30:51

So today we talked about balance. Next episode, we are gonna talk about wellness culture and how as moms, as Catholic moms, we relate to wellness culture and what that kind of looks like while trying to live out a life of holiness.