Hello, beautiful souls and welcome to the Persistence and Prayer Podcast, hosted by Catholic mindset, coach, wife, mother educator, and speaker Kylie Hein. Kylie is passionate about helping you deepen your relationship with God through the power of prayer. This podcast is a space for high achievers who want to do it all, but also want to prioritize their spiritual life and grow in faith.
Join us as we explore the beauty of persistence in prayer and the transformative impact it can have on our lives. Get ready to discover practical tips, insights, and inspiration to help you develop a daily prayer practice and cultivate a deeper sense of trust in God's plan for your life. Let's journey together towards a more fulfilled and faithful life as we invite the holy spirit in Let's begin. Hello, beautiful souls and welcome back. I am so happy that you are here today.
This topic has been on my heart this week. And the topic is how do I trust in God? This is one of the things that I promote when I am working with clients on developing a plan of life is. How to create a plan or a commitment to a way of being that not only will reduce anxiety, but will help develop a greater trust in God. So before I jump into how we can develop a greater trust in God, because I think this is something that truly, we all desire.
This is a desire that is in our hearts because God puts this in our hearts to fully trust and surrender to him. Um, I want to share a confession. A confession that actually inhibits my ability to trust in God. And that is that in the back of my mind, there is this subconscious thought that I want to be in control. I want to be in control of my health. I want to be in control of my schedule. I want to be in control of knowing where my next meal is going to come from. I want to be in control.
And it's funny because there are actually a lot of things I don't want to be in control of. And the thought of being in control of certain things does create anxiety for me. Um, but. And as part of my natural born dominant temperament of choleric I often want to be in control. So choleric is a temperament and if you haven't listened to the podcast or you're still not quite sure what a temperament is, a temperament is a natural pattern or inclination for how we respond to something.
So there are four temperaments. Jesus was the perfect encapsulation of all of the virtues of the four temperaments and none of the vices, And while we each have all four temperaments within us, And we are all unique even if we have the same temperament as someone else, we are not the same as them.
It shows Up differently The temperaments provide us with this kind of base ground or foundational level of where we can look in our lives for places where we are naturally inclined to go toward virtue or go toward vice. So as a choleric, there are certain things or certain thoughts that are going to be more common For me, things like I want to be in control. I do not want to waste time. I want to be right. These are things that show up for cholerics.
In fact, I've coached a couple of cholerics in the past week, and these are things that I have coached on. Not wanting to waste time. That is a motivator. So if they have a thought like, Ugh, I just don't wanna do it. But you can kind of shift that perspective of, well, it's wasteful, it's going to motivate them to get into action. And so it's a really great tool for coaching, but it's also a great tool for personal self development and awareness.
Um, and so this is something that as I was working with my spiritual director yesterday came up for me. We were talking about attachment and it was something I actually brought up on my own and my spiritual director asked me, well, what are you attached to? And I was shocked when the thing that I came up with was, I am attached to control. And what does an attachment to control indicate? Well, it means that there's a lack of trust in God, or there's a lack of letting go.
It means that I like to live my life with a lot of manuals and that means that I am putting expectations on my day or on myself, or even on other people about what I think things should look like or how I think that things should go, and when they don't go that way, that's a trigger for me and I'm likely going to get frustrated or upset. So this was surprising to me because I remember probably 10 years ago, reading the book, A Story of a Soul, which is the autobiography of St. Terese of Lisieux.
And I remember writing in my journal and taking this thought to prayer of, Lord, I want to surrender to you. I don't know how to do that. Like I want to completely give you my life, but I don't know how to let go. I don't. I wanna trust in you, but I just don't know how. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what it feels like.
I was so disconnected in my spiritual life that this idea of surrender was exciting, but it was also really discouraging because I just, I couldn't do it no matter how hard I tried. And so this is something that I have worked on over the years. And so imagine my surprise when I thought I had made all of this progress and all of a sudden it showed up again yesterday that I am struggling with attachment to control.
I want to know the outcome of things, and this also leads to a melancholic trait, which is perfection. I don't like this feeling. I don't like knowing that I'm not trusting fully in God. But maybe some of you can relate to the struggle, and maybe if it's not you, there's someone in your life that you can understand this struggle a little bit better from their perspective.
For me, I like to think that I'm carefree and I'm easygoing, but deep down, I also know that if plans change at the last minute, if things don't go the way that I expected, I'm gonna get frustrated. If I want my children to be in bed at eight o'clock but my husband pulls into the driveway from the farm at 8:15 and then my children stay up with him because they haven't seen him, and I'll let it go because I'm like, oh, they need to see their dad. Right? That's a beautiful positive thing.
But the next thing I know, my children are not getting to bed until nine o'clock, which means that I am not starting the work that I need to do until 9:30, and then I'm up later, and then I am cranky the next day because I didn't get enough sleep. And who am I blaming? I'm not blaming myself. I'm blaming everybody else because I had a plan and I had a schedule and they didn't stick to it. And then it just creates all of this chaos and things where I am not growing in virtue.
It is a perfect scenario for me to let all of my vices come out. Okay, so how do we handle this? Maybe, maybe you also have this thought. I like to be in control. Why is that a problem? Like needing control is a good thing. We can take command. We are commanders. We can take control of the situation. We get things done, we are organized. Well, why is that a problem? Because if I am in control, that means that God is not in control.
That means that I am allowing my will to direct my life rather than his will. Now letting go of this thought does not mean that I can't still plan ahead. For example, being in control of my health is a huge thing for me. Now, I know that I am not in control of my health, and I know that the Lord has brought me so much closer to him through my health struggles.
I also know that if I am not fully aware of where I'm going to be during the day and what I am going to eat, that I'm going to put myself in a situation where I am not going to be pleasant and I'm not going to be charitable. My blood sugar levels are going to crash. Food that I can eat that will not make me sick, will not be accessible, and then, it is a whole lot of other things. It creates a lot of side effects for my body that are not healthy and that are very uncomfortable.
But I also know that if I am so rigid about always planning what I am gonna to eat and where I am gonna be and what I am gonna do, and if I get frustrated every time a schedule changes, because that means that my food plan has to change, I am trying to completely control everything and I am not allowing for God's grace to work and for him to provide for me, which he does in those scenarios. When I forget to plan, there's always a solution.
There's always a way to work through that, but it causes me anxiety to think about not being in control. So, Letting go doesn't mean that I can't still plan ahead, but it means that I trust God enough to provide for me if things don't go according to my expectations. And this is truly a necessity for life because if we are only joyful when life is going exactly according to our expectations, we are going to be miserable because there are a million things outside of our locus of control.
We cannot control other people being on time. We cannot control their temperaments. We can't control their reactions. We cannot control traffic. We cannot control when our kids get sick. We cannot control most things. We can control our mindset. We can control our reactions most of the time. And we can control the way that we show up to things and we can control the way that we prepare for things through prayer and through self-awareness.
But we have to understand that most things are out of our control. So when I think this thought, okay, and I'm gonna use me as a personal example, rather than using, um, a client that I've coached, but I'm gonna use myself, um, when I think this thought I need to be in control. For me, it creates anxiety because deep down I know that I'm 100% not in control and there's nothing that I can do to change that. So what do I do?
Okay, well, if I were working with a client, I would walk them through the reason cycle, and part of this is recognizing that I have an emotion that is stemming from a thought. Now emotions are neither good or bad, but it is important to recognize that they are there. So for me, when I think of thought, I need to be in control, it creates anxiety. It is literally, as I sit here and say that out loud, I can feel like a tightening tension in my shoulders. It creates a racing heartbeat.
It makes me feel this pressure that I have to perform, that I have to be perfect, that I need to be on top of things. Um, and it's also creates this other thought of like, this is unrealistic. And so when I am anxious and when I think this thought that I need to be in control, I reflect on what kind of things do I do when I'm anxious? Well, when I'm anxious, I'm, I'm not growing in virtue because I'm not trusting in God and I'm not glorifying God.
Um, when I'm anxious, I don't show up well to my relationships. I'm probably a little short with people. If I get really anxious, I might let other people actually do the work, which is opposite of me being in control, which could then lead to more anxiety because they might not be doing it the way that I want them to do or the way that I would expect them to do it. And then again, it's this spiral.
So I recognize that I have this thought, which is related to an emotion, and this emotion is taking me on a trajectory that is leading me away from God and not toward God. So now I have a choice. Do I want to continue to accept this thought to play into it, this need for control, or do I wanna choose to let it go. To take that thought captive and to move forward. Now, I will tell you, when I'm coaching clients, there are oftentimes where they'll say, Nope, I feel, I feel some vindication.
This is a thought that I wanna keep. That will happen. Um, in fact, when we do, when I do the temperaments workshop with, with groups of people, there, there is a question which, of these triggers do you, do you want to keep or do you feel justified in keeping? Uh, and, and there's always something that people want to keep. There are thoughts that people want to keep and why do we wanna keep them? Because it's more comfortable there. If I let go of control. Ooh, that's uncomfortable.
That's the unknown. I, if I'm not in control, then God's in control and I don't know the mind of God, then where does that put me? It's uncomfortable. So how do I work through this? How do we work through a thought that we want to keep? In this case, this thought I need to be in control. Or even if I change it to I want to be in control or I should be in control. Um, all of these are still keeping me from trusting in God. So obviously we take that to prayer. We lean on our strengths.
We recognize that being in control is keeping us from Christ, and we can either choose to be in control or we can choose to be virtuous, but by trying to be both at the same time, that's a recipe for disaster. We can look at why are we attached to control. Okay, so I'm attached to control. This is me personally, uh, because it is uncomfortable to surrender. I don't know what's going to come next, and I like to know what's coming next. And so that is hard for me to let go.
We could ask ourself, this is another form of the same type of question, is what comfort am I seeking from not trusting God? Well, I'm seeking the comfort of knowing what is going to come next, whether that's for my business, for my family, for my personal life, for my schedule. We can ask where specifically in our lives are we not trusting? Maybe you trust God with a lot of parts of your life.
Maybe you trust God in your work and you trust God with your spouse and you trust God with uh, your health, but you're really struggling with trusting God with your children because they are going to, let's say, a public school and you can't control what's going on there, and so you're having trouble trusting God to take care of them while they are there. So where specifically in your life are you not trusting?
That's the next place that I would invite you to take this conversation as you take it to prayer. Now the next part of this, um, we're gonna talk about believing and trusting, okay? Because the purpose of this particular podcast is to help you understand ways that you can develop a greater trust in God. Now, belief and trust are two different things. They're related, but they are different. Um, one of my spiritual gifts is faith.
I, I believe, like I 100% know that God is going to be there for me in everything. I have evidence of that in my life through losing parents through a miscarriage, through job struggles, through health struggles, like God has always been there. He has always provided. So I 100% believe that and I can know that he is going to be there, but actively trusting him with what comes next is still really scary for me.
That doesn't mean I'm not working on it, and it doesn't mean that I don't ever trust God. It just means that that is a place where I constantly have to put forth effort. If you think of an addict, I, they could be clean for years, right? But that temptation to fall back is always there, and that is something that they have to work at each and every day. Each and every day for every day of their life. So it's similar to that when we think of kind of our temperaments and our vices and our virtues.
So there are certain vices that I am always going to be inclined to fall into temptation or fall toward, that I actively have to work against, and actively invite the Lord in to help me. Um, again, I talk about believing and trusting being two different things, so, Even the demons believe in God. We wouldn't say that they trust in God.
So what begins through humility and growing in God's vision of ourselves, as we start to see ourselves, as the Lord sees us and as we start to prioritize how God sees us and what God desires of us over how other people see us, okay? Cuz this is the first step we have to grow in humility. Once we begin to do that, and we have grown in this humility and we are prioritizing what God desires of us, and we understand our own desires as God desires them, um, there's a next step.
And this next step requires us to fully embrace that we can do absolutely nothing without God. If we can recognize that he is the source of all goodness. And we can more clearly see our weaknesses and ask the Lord to help reveal those weaknesses to us. We can more specifically invite the Lord into our healing and invite him into helping us trust more fully. And as you reflect on trusting in God and recognizing that we are nothing. Again, we can know that to be true.
We can know that in our minds to be true. We can know that in our hearts to be true, but actively living our lives in that truth is where that trust piece comes in, and that is significantly harder. It is something that takes time. That is something that takes growth.
This is something that if you have a plan of life, I've talked about Plan of life in another podcast, it will come up again and again because this is what I do with my, through my coaching work, is I help people develop and implement a plan of life or a way of being, a commitment to being and living a certain way to grow in virtue and, and travel along the narrow way with God.
Um, and as I work with them on those plans, these are places that we implement certain prayer practices to help us grow and trust with God. And so, if you don't have a plan of life, I encourage you to write one. And even if it's as simple as starting your day with five minutes of prayer, but a scripture verse that I would encourage you to meditate on if you are struggling with trust or if you are growing in recognizing that God is the source of all things and we are nothing without him.
Is Isaiah chapter 45, and so I'm gonna read some of that to you right now. I'm gonna start at verse five and read through. I'm actually start at verse four, I guess. Verse four, and read through about verse 12. "I call you by your name. I surname you though you do not know me. I am the Lord and there is no other besides me. There is no God. I arm you though, you do not know me. So that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is no one besides me.
I am the Lord and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make weal and create woe. I the Lord, do all these things. Shower oh heavens from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness. Let the earth open that salvation may spring up and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also. I, the Lord have created it. Woe to you who strive with your maker earth and vessels with the potter. Does the clay say to the one who fashions it? What are you making? Your work has no handles?
Woe to anyone who says to a father. What are you begetting? Or to a woman with what are you in labor? I thus says the Lord, the holy one of Israel and its maker. Will you question me about my children or command me concerning the work of my hands? I made the earth and created humankind upon it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens and I commanded all their hosts." It is evident here.
Again and again, I, the Lord do all of these things not only creating the universe and all of the components that go with it, which to me just baffles my mind every time I try to think and comprehend on it of all of the different components that simply make our world go round the rising and the setting of the sun.
But he created each of us, the potter's hands, he molded the clay and he molded us and formed us each uniquely so uniquely that even though maybe we have the same temperament, we may even have similar stories or similar upbringings and many things that we can relate with one another upon. But we are so different because we have each been created for a different purpose. And I love reflecting on.
We can do nothing without God, but also we cannot fulfill our purpose, the reason for which we were created, unless we can surrender to God and let him lead and let him be in control. Because we don't know our purpose. I mean, we know our purpose is, you know, union with God, but our specific task on Earth, our specific thing that God put us on the earth to do. Whatever thing it is that we were called to do, we can't do that unless we are willing to surrender.
And that is my, my personal motivator, to continue to work at this, to continue to invite God into it. Because ultimately I can't do it no matter how bad I want something, God has to act upon it for it to happen. Um, but it, it is my personal invitation to continue to take this to prayer. And as I mentioned before, the surrender is not a one-time commitment. This is something that we have to do day after day, again and again, moment by moment, hour by hour.
Um, and one of the ways that we can commit to this again, is by adding it to our plan of life. For a long time, I prayed the litany of humility. Pride was something I thought that that was like the number one factor in my life that was holding me back and so I would constantly pray the litany of humility, which is beautiful and wonderful, and it, and it helped me to grow more humble. And it is something I continue to pray on a weekly basis, but at some point I switched to the litany of trust.
And then somewhere along the way, because I didn't have it written into my plan of life, it was just something extra that I did. I happened to have like one of those little trifold, tiny little pamphlets that went in my book and then I switched books and I didn't have it with me anymore. And so somewhere along the way, um, I lost that practice. And the same with praying the surrender novena. That was something I used to do with my son when I started this podcast.
That was something I did almost daily with my son in the morning. Um, But I've kind of lost those practices because I don't have them written down in my plan of life when I do my daily exam at night, those aren't things that I go through and like these are on my checklist.
And not everybody should have the same thing on their plan of life because we all have different areas where we need to grow and um, we constantly have to evaluate if our old processes and thoughts are doing what they need to do to help us grow in virtue. And for me as I reflect, these are things that I have dropped from my daily prayer life that I am seeing the negative fruits of. And these are things that I, I should add back in as part of my morning prayer or my evening prayer.
Um, because I am falling back into this pattern of not trusting God and desiring control where I had made a lot of progress before.
And even though I am not daily asking for this grace or actively praying for a greater trust, it doesn't mean that the Lord doesn't know that those are on my heart but he does desire that we ask for those things and, and it's this beautiful gift that he's allowed me to fall backwards so that I can fully recognize my need for him and I can again, grow in humility of recognizing that I cannot be self-reliant. And this is an opportunity to embrace again that, Lord, I need you, please help me.
So to summarize all this and to wrap it up, if you are struggling with trust in God always begin in prayer, but an active prayer. Prayer can look a lot of different ways. And I'm not just talking about vocal, rote, memorized prayers, although those are the beautiful access points. I'm talking about really digging deep into mental prayer. Um, the practice of Lectio Divina is, is beautiful, and that is something that you can do. If you're not comfortable with that, you've never done that.
The Hollow app is a great resource to kind of get you started on that. Um, eventually I hope to have a community where we can do Lectio Divina once a week and we can walk through that together and share the experience and the reflection, but I'm not there yet. So, uh, if that's something that piques your interest, reach out to me, either through email or social media and keep on me about it so that I make that happen. Cause that is a desire on my heart.
Um, and if you don't have a plan of life, then that's something that you're interested in learning more about. Same thing. Reach out to me. Check for resources in the notes of this episode, and you'll see exactly where you can find me. Take a look at your thoughts. So go to prayer, ask for the Lord to reveal where it is that you are lacking trust or where you are struggling to let go. For me, it's in a place of control, a desire for control.
Surrender, as we look at it, starts with a desire and a yes to God. So showing up in your prayer is your active way of saying yes to God, and as you are sitting there with the Lord, um, Invite him in. And as you exit your prayer, remember that action begins with a thought, and the thought is going to inspire an emotion. And that emotion is going to lead to an action, an action that will either help you grow in virtue or will lead you from it.
So make sure that you are choosing helpful thoughts, thoughts that come from God, thoughts that are of truth, thoughts that are inspired by the gospels and by scripture. It's very easy for thoughts that come from the flesh or come from the evil one to enter our minds. And this is where the discernment process is essential.
It is an essential piece of Catholic coaching is discerning truth, and it is something that is different from secular coaching because we do evaluate thoughts in the light of truth and in the light of what God would say and what scripture and our catechism and our church teaching say. Um, and so it's this beautiful process. Trusting in God is not easy. It's not easy. It should be easy. Um, but it can often be very difficult. And it's difficult because we get in the way. It's a lot like prayer.
If we get out of the way, the Lord shows up. But some of us are more stubborn than others and we very much get in our own way. So thank you again for joining this week. You are all in my prayers. If there is a topic that you really wanna hear about, Please reach out and share it with me. I would love to speak on things that are valuable and informative to you.
If this was helpful, share it with a friend and make sure that you subscribe because next week I have a special guest, Jane Snyder, and she is a fertility specialist. She is going to talk to us about recognizing the patterns of the way that God made us and how we can utilize that to play into our spiritual lives, to look at the times where God is inviting us to be more creative, where he's inviting us to do more and where he's inviting us to rest more. So you don't wanna miss it.
Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you all next time.