Anxiety, Sleep Training, and Supporting our Priests

The end of October is busy with Halloween, All Saints festivities, and All Souls. I hope you will enter into the hallowedness of the season with a Litany of Saints, a prayer for the dead or a visit to the cemetery, and dressing up of course!

I am linking to the articles I have written this month - one about a new ministry called Chrism, and how we can support our priests. Another one on sleep training and the lies we mothers tell ourselves, and finally, a collection of Scripture reflections to help with anxiety. They are taken from my journal and my own journey overcoming anxiety.

Thank you for reading! My goal is to help you grow in your spiritual life. I hope you’ll take a moment to click subscribe. It’s free to read, and then you’ll never miss a post.

Share

Situated in the heart of Denver, Matthew Rudolph is on a mission to help priests discover their unique design, so they can live out a happy, healthy and holy priesthood. . .

While the seminary provides a great deal of intellectual and spiritual formation, Rudolph suggests that there can be a gap in its practical application to a priest’s life.

That’s why he founded the ministry, Chrism — a name based on the great priestly unity seen at the annual Chrism Mass, as priests renew their ordination promises.

“We feel called to integrate the various needs of a man so that he can be thriving on the inside to be living out a thriving priesthood on the outside. We’re looking at human formation and leadership, as that overlaps with mental health and healing, as that overlaps with spiritual health and renewal, looking at the whole man,” Rudolph said.

Often, priests find themselves feeling isolated, not having a lot of fraternity locally, or experiencing a lack of unity in the presbyterate.

“Recent studies have shown that 45% of priests have experienced burnout in their priesthood,” he explained. “60% of priests 45 and under have experienced burnout in their priesthood. … 50% of priests do not have a spiritual director. That has a huge ripple effect on the faithful, their priesthood and vocations.”

. . .If there’s one thing Rudolph wants parishioners to know about their priests, it’s that they are human, just like us. Read the rest at DenverCatholic.com

__________________________________________________________________________

Last month, a neighbor with a 10-month old came over for dinner. She was raving about how well it was going after they had recently sleep-trained their baby. She could now put him down awake, and he would fall asleep by himself and stay asleep. She felt so rested!

Part of me was very happy for the sleep she was getting, because I know how hard sleep deprivation can be. But part of me felt guilty because I had never really been able to sleep-train my children. Without any jealousy towards her whatsoever (because my five kids are now ages 4-14 years old), I had to examine where this guilt came from. Through prayer and reflection, I discovered some lies I was still holding onto from those early years of parenting.

Read how I identified the lies and spoke truth to overcome them at Catholicmom.com. (TLDR: all babies go through periods of good and bad sleep, and it makes little difference when they grow up. As teenagers, you can’t get them to wake up! We put too much pressure on ourselves to get our babies to sleep and can easily become obsessed with sleep schedules.)

___________________________________________________________________________

I have been an anxious person for most of my life, but it definitely ramped up when I became a mom. Over the last fourteen years of motherhood, I’ve learned a lot about where my anxiety comes from, and I’ve learned tools to help deal with it.

In particular, God has spoken to me through his Word to show me a path forward through my mental struggles. I will share some of my Scripture reflections below.

Before I begin the meditations, though, I want to remind you that each of us is an intricately connected body-soul unity. Sometimes our anxiety is linked to a trauma response stored in our body. Other times, anxiety can point to a problem with our gut, or low vitamin and mineral levels. For women, anxiety can ramp up when our hormones are off or our progesterone is low. With our body in a healthy state, we are more easily able to attune to the struggles of the mind and soul.

The mind can also be influenced from outside, for both good and bad; therefore, it’s important to learn to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Speak your worries out loud to a friend, spouse or counselor. Write them in your journal and let God either confirm or reject them. When we get our thoughts out of our heads, we can see them more clearly in the light of God’s Truth.

And now for the Scripture Reflections…. Read it all at DenverCatholic.org

Thank you for reading! You can subscribe for free to get my bi-monthly newsletters.

I also want to remind you of my DIY Retreat for Mothers of Young Children for full subscribers! You can cancel at any time.

I have another talk coming up for a group of moms, and hope to turn that into another DIY retreat to grow my collection :)

A DIY Retreat for Mothers with Young Children

·

October 15, 2025

When I was pregnant with my first, I read all the pregnancy books, but I was wholly unprepared for all the changes that would take place after birth. We were in the hospital for three days until a failed induction led to an emergency C-section.