28 - LOVE OTHERS

We've got a great idea for parents who want help igniting their teens' spiritual lives.

Do you battle scrupulosity? (I sure do!)  #catholicguilt

And did y'all see the botched assassin? Those government school kids are so weird!  Maeve and Mat chat about all these things and more!

Show Notes:

Episode 28
Published: July 21 2024

Links to things discussed:

How to Raise Kids with Faith and the Catholic Church's stance on Yoga Pants, Episode 4:  https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2306441/14378248-4-how-to-raise-kids-with-faith-and-the-catholic-church-s-stance-on-yoga-pants

Chris Stefanick interview with Carlo Acutis' mother:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8E5vTpL_Ew

Steubenville Youth Conferences https://steubenvilleconferences.com/youth/?

Catholic Blog: St. Vitalis Story
https://www.piercedhands.com/merciful-like-the-father-st-vitalis-of-gaza/

https://www.piercedhands.com/


Chapters and time stamps
00:00 Welcome and Introduction

00:41 Overcoming Sickness and Podcast Dedication

01:32 Reflecting on Steubenville Youth Conference

02:36 Generation Z and the Power of Youth Conferences

05:55 Fun and Games at the Conference

12:32 The Impact of Confession

15:56 A Saint's Story: Vitalis of Gaza

20:47 Personal Confession Experience

24:35 Understanding Personal Limits

25:10 Navigating Conversations in Marriage

25:42 Anxiety and Natural Remedies

26:13 Stigma and Acceptance

28:36 Confession and Scrupulosity

31:37 Homosexuality and Catholic Teachings

41:35 Bullying and Its Impact

44:11 Protecting Children from Harmful Ideologies

47:53 Conclusion and Call to Action

https://maevejemison.com/

https://www.instagram.com/maevejemison/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550933369945

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Transcript

 Hey friends. Thanks for tuning in. Listen. Don't lose hope for today's youth. I just got back from Steubenville youth conference where the holy spirit moved over gen Z gen alpha. And even the old folks like myself who are chaperoning and wow. Did I have the best confession of my life while I was at that conference?

Standby for all the juicy details. 

Thanks for coming over to home. is where the truth is. 

  

All right, welcome to the show. Home is where the truth is.

for being here. Okay,

I want to just say one thing real quick.

thing real quick. Okay.

I'm not going to apologize because I don't know why people say this. I'm not going to apologize that I sound nasally because I'm sick, This is but I am sick because one of our children,

Came down with something, pass it on to the next child.

And I'm third in line.

Mm hmm.

Lucky.

two of us are a holdout.

Yeah, lucky me. So yeah, if I have that  raspy, deep, micro voice,

that Mm hmm. I like it. Thanks for pushing through. This podcast has to go on, 

for our 12 listeners. They, they have to hear this,



Yes, appreciate, appreciate the pain that sometimes we have to go through

Yeah, and we appreciate everyone who's downloading our episodes.



We see our numbers growing and we're super stoked that you're here and we hope we can encourage you and you can laugh along with us today. And I'm super excited about this podcast in particular because we're going to talk a little bit about the Steubenville Youth Conference 2024.

Oh, Orlando.

Yes, but that means that we have been recording for a year now because we have already talked about Steubenville Youth Conference 2023 back in episode four.

And remember we talked about Father Leo Padalinghug

Oh, yeah. Super cool, dude. Yeah.

really awesome. We talk all about him and, and that's a great episode to go back and check out. But I'm just recently back from taking our girls Bible study to the, the conference and parents, you have got to get your teens to these youth conferences, they are absolutely amazing.

, It gives me hope for Generation Z

know, it gives me hope for Generation Z. For a

a light in the darkness, you know, the light will not be overcome by the darkness. And that's what it was. It was 1800 kids in Orlando and they have a lot of conferences. There's at least like eight or 10 of them. So a year at different regions. And if you listen to the statistics on generation Z, they're the most lonely, they're the most anxious, they're the most depressed, they're on their screens all, all day long. 

They're going through all this terrible stuff. They're being indoctrinated with trans ideology, they're hypersexualized, and it is scary as a parent, right, to try that we want to protect our kids.

yeah, God help this country.

Right,

20 years, they're going to be running this place.

Yeah. And we're going to talk about God helping this country and a little bit. But I'm going to tell you guys, if, if you know of any youth group or youth conference, that is going to be glorifying God, please get your kids there. Because when I saw the energy, the joy, the openness to the spirit, it It made me realize actually wait, these are the people now These are high schoolers and above like high schoolers to probably 18 19 year olds.

There were some college kids there These are the people who should be spreading the gospel They're joy filled. They've got spunk vigor energy You know, they haven't they even though they're dealing with all that. They they still aren't really Beat down by life, you know how when you get into your thirties, you've just  you've, you've come across so many roadblocks, so many bumps in the road that you, you just kind of lose vigor.

And I mean that it was just so amazing to see  all the kids there just so pumped up, so joyful. And. So don't ever underestimate your power as a joy filled life filled Christian Okay, that's powerful the MC Chris Stefanik who I Did not know about him. He's got a huge podcast. He is a international evangelist He was funny relatable.

He's a powerful preacher 

In His podcast he's recently interviewed a Christian Carlo Acuti's mom. So that, that's, I already watched the interview. Highly recommend.  He told this story. And he played the guitar. He got up there and he was playing the guitar. And he said, You know, when I was a teenager, I wanted to be like Slash from Guns N Roses.

He had a picture of Slash, a poster of Slash with the hair in front of his face. And he said he came to this conference, the Steubenville Youth Conference, or Life Teen, whatever it was called at that time. And he saw an old man.  Praising the Lord. He said, this man was like 70 years old. He was not cool, but he was praising the Lord with such joy and love that he looked at him and he said,

and he said,

want that.

I want that. and he said,  my heroes are dead, you know, his rock stars that he said, I'm up here on this stage because of a joy filled life filled Christian changed me. 

That's what we, you gotta get your kids to these conferences and we all have to be joy filled and life filled.   Now one of the games they did.

for this conference, that's just two days straight of sheer fun and teen fun, I

some of the videos the kids took and they were showing me And I was amazed like how?  Clean fun, , these kids were having just  not a care in the world

Nary a drug, no alcohol.

Joy, yeah, fun games. Like, what did you see?

kids  dancing around,  hands in the air smiling laughing Complete strangers just having a great time with each other  

 And one of the games they played was a scavenger hunt. They broke the, the, the, it's like girls versus boy. They had a girl and a guy going into the crowd of 1800 people. They had to find 10 things like it was an old Steubenville shirt.

They had to find a spelling bee champ. They had to find a break dancer, someone who met the Pope. And . It was so cute because it was this fast paced thing and then they lined the people up. Oh, they had to find someone with red shoes. And it was funny because both  people they found with red shoes were wearing red Crocs. 

I've told you about how these teens and homeschoolers love their Crocs, okay? So they both had red Crocs on, but one of them had, Socks with the Pope on it. So that kid won. So they had a, they found the break dancer. The kid got up there on stage. They

popping and locking

well, they both did the California

worm.

And you know what? They, the other kid, the kid that won. He did a dance move that I taught the kids. We, it was on a YouTube video and the guy on the YouTube video said, if you do this move, it's going to look like you're doing a break dance move, but you're really just jumping over your leg kinda. And, and also, and that's what the kid did.

I'm like, Oh my gosh, he watched that same video. Because  on a previous episode I talked about how we prepared the kids for prom. We watched a bunch of, so, okay.

the

So I was able to be like, Oh, look at that. Right.

team building is to do learn a new dance.

Because, okay, let's go off on this tangent because this is a good tangent. So in  what we deal with is a lot of bickering, fighting, , kids against one another. And I, I'm reading a great book and one of, he said, one of the universal truths of humanity is that they all

movie is

together. Tribes from the antiquity dance together because to the beat they do war dances and so I'm like, okay, boom, that's what we need.

We got to learn to dance together. We're going to have to do some dancing together to get our tribe status. So like where, where we have each other's back instead of fighting each other.

So we'd already done the Blanco Brown, whatever you want to call that

two step boogie now shake with it. 

So I'm curious as to what this next dance is

Well, our son wants to do the, what's the foot, the football player, the gritty,

The gritty

where

The white receiver from I can't remember 

the dance, Yeah we're gonna learn a bunch of gritties together

Oh gosh.  So when we make our touchdowns, we got something to do.

Right. Blanco Brown,  the get up, the get up. Okay. 

We must have watched that video probably 50

Oh yeah. We learned

it  And you know what then that was before they all realized that wow, if you know a line dance, that's so fun And again, we were pulling teeth until guess what? They're over at a friend's house swimming in the pool and all of a sudden the get up comes on and they all knew it And they were like, oh, okay.

Mom has some wisdom there 

Okay,   In the scavenger hunt game, it was so lit. . You got kids break dancing. You got kids cheering everyone. So it was two people who had met the Pope. They come up to the front of the line cause the people are lined up that are supposed to  prove here's the scavenger hunt.

Here's my skill. 

Okay. So So 

 lady had a picture on her phone, the Pope, she was kneeling down and the, and Pope Francis was blessing

So,

So Chris Stefanik says, Oh, this is going to be hard to beat. He goes, and he puts , the microphone in front of her.

She's probably about 14 years old. , he says, so you've met the Pope. She goes.

She

I was baptized by the Pope.  Pandemonium!  Chris Stefanik,

the 

Oh, he fell down on the stage. I mean, it was pandemonium. So I was like, oh my gosh. And, yeah, it was so good. You can't top that. I mean, how, yeah, you can't top that. 

I

Yeah, I mean baptized by the Pope. I mean, how do you even get that done?  so 

The Pope. Did our wedding?  Married

Right, well, I mean, I don't think that still beats

it 

okay.  Okay. I guess not. He gave us a ride home one late night and we couldn't find a taxi

I rode in the Pope mobile

Yeah.  Probably.  Does he drive like a little Fiat or Mini Cooper or something like that?

I don't know so The priest, no,  they hand pick the priests and the speakers that can truly get through , to the kids because

You don't want some old

no, no, no boring. No.  He was father Louie and he was so funny. He was hip. Now he had, he was black and he had a slight accent, but 

I couldn't really place the accent because it was so slight, but then he's talking to the kids and he's like, get your behind to confession.

And so he's like throwing out some kind of , hood slaying. And so we're after that first session, we're like, well, is he  african or is he from the hood? We're trying to figure it out. He gets up there. He's beat boxing on the mic. And if you don't know what beat boxing is, that's where you , you drop a beat with your, can you beat box, Matt?

Can you beatbox? 

Nah, I can't do that. My lips are too dry. Something like

well he was, yeah, so he was dropping a beat.  Father Louie was encouraging the kids in the sacrament of confession.  Because their goal is to get as many kids at the conference to confession and, a clean slate for that weekend.

And he's like, he said a bunch of things that would benefit anyone. He said, The priest is not gonna react to your sin and be like, oh and he said you don't need to know the steps. You don't need to say Oh, what's step one? What's step seven? He said they're gonna  walk you through it And he said they're just waiting.

They're so glad you're there and I know like I  Matt, I know for you, that's one of the things that keeps you out of confession is  you're just scared to stumble through it, right?

that keeps you at Confession, is you, like, kind of, you're just scared to stumble through it, right? One of the things I didn't know was the  the very last part when he's   absolved you and you say  the last, whatever, the last

is. Oh, the act of

active Contrition, 

Yeah, I didn't, there was so many versions of it. I didn't know it. And that was what was holding me up. Like, how do I end this? Because I've had a priest. He's like, can you say it? You know, say the active contrition. And I used to remember the long version. I was like right in the middle of it. He stopped me.

He's like, do you know the 

shorter one?  

And I just my mind went blank

and I but yeah

that's, well, it's unfortunate that you felt bad about that, but that's what he said.

You don't even need to know the act of contrition. He's just telling them just come to confession. He said, we're happy to see you. And so. All our girls were just about it. They're like, okay, we're going tonight. They're, they went the first night and one of our girls said she had our Stanley cup.

Now this is the uniform of Gen Z is a Stanley cup,  a cross body bag. Lulu Lemon. Okay. Now, luckily, there was a strict dress code, so they didn't have all the yoga shorts and spandex, so it was well dressed kids, but okay, I mean, that's all you saw. Stanley cups and cross body bags. Well, she sits down and she sits down to confession and he's like, Oh, is that a Stanley cup?

And she's like, yeah. And she totally disarmed her, totally made her feel completely comfortable.

Was this

Yes, it, it, was so,



it

was in a big room and they had like a ball, you know, the ballrooms. Okay. So it was like a mini 

ballroom.

Oh, so you, like, everyone had like a certain

Yep. There was about 20, 20, Pairs of chairs set up, everyone had plenty of space and they were playing music and the two chairs were facing each other.

So the priest was sitting in a chair and the faith and the fact that, well, the chair was like off to the 

side. 

our girls said, they all said, wow, that was the best confession I ever made. They, some of them said I had never been able to confess that sin, but I was able to. And they were crying.

It's so.

So,

And I'm going to tell you about my confession. It was one of the best, it was truly the best confession I ever had.

Ooh, I want to hear some details.  Tell me. 

But I want to tell you first, I'm going to come back to that because I want to tell you about a saint we learned about in our session. There was a girl's session and a boy's session, and we learned in the girl's session about.  This amazing saint from the 7th century, he was an Egyptian hermit named

named Vitalis,

Vitalis, Vitalis of Gaza.

Okay? And I got this article off of Meg Hunter Kilmer's blog post, piercetans. com. 

When Vitalis was about 60 years old, after many years in the desert, 

He gave up the hermit life and went to Alexandria. There he became a day laborer and he would work all day at back breaking tasks to earn a wage and then proceed to the local brothel to spend it.

Oh.

Every night this former hermit found himself with a different prostitute. Now, you can imagine what the local Christians thought. Vitalis was ridiculed and harassed. People even approached the patriarch to try to have him excommunicated, but the patriarch refused to act on hearsay. So Vitalis life became really miserable until one day he was attacked in the street and killed.

You

and killed.

When he was found, he was clutching a paper with first Corinthians four or five written on it

Therefore, and

Therefore and here's what that verse is Therefore do not make any judgment before the appointed time until the Lord comes For for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts  But the Christians of Alexandria had already judged, , good riddance, they think until his funeral,  dozens, if not hundreds.

Former prostitutes attended his funeral and each testified that she owed her soul to Vitalis. So as it turns out, he, his life was not quite as debauched as people thought. Each night after Vitalis had paid for a woman's services, he would tell her he had brought her one night without sin. She was free to sleep.

He meanwhile would hold vigil over her and pray for her.  Naturally, some were curious. They asked Vitalis,  what, what is he about? And he told them that God loved them and wanted them to be saved. He told them of God's mercy, of his death on the cross, of the way that God delights in them.  And when they were ready to accept this, He found them a way out.

He would work to arrange marriages, provide dowries, and even find monasteries willing to accept them.

only

The only thing he asked was they keep quiet about it because if they said anything, he wouldn't be allowed to go to the brothels. So.

He

submitted to ignominy.  Meaning he willingly offered his reputation for the sake of their souls.

souls. So,

So was he killed by someone who was angry at his success with his, with a good, a prostitute that person liked or a self righteous Christian? We don't know who killed him, but certainly he was a martyr. So he offered his life for the salvation of those women's souls.

Isn't that fascinating?

concerned with

He was so concerned with the salvation of others that he not only offered his life, but his good name, you know, how much humility would that take to be condemned

, to save 

you 

  Then there's the fact

then there's the fact that he had this ability to see the dignity of these women who   The women, these women are considered scum of the earth, right? And this is long before people understood human trafficking and their victims. Right. But he was already looking at them and seeing not fallen women, but daughters of the King.

He 

He didn't just try to stop them from sinning. He was trying to show , at all costs that they are worthy and that they're deeply loved.  Wow, right?

Yeah. Who else would have done that? I mean, that wouldn't even be, that would be unheard of. I would guess.

Right. , and exactly. So he basically went without sleep or food for the sake of helping these suffering women, you know? 

 It's an amazing story and

I'm going to tell you that story because the next story about, I want to talk about my confession that I had,

yeah.  I forgot about that. I

I mean, I'm not just going to give all the juicy details, but I am good. Okay. Well, first of all, the priest that I went to, it was completely set up by God because  You go in there and there's five chairs for people who are on deck waiting.

And there was like four teens in those chairs, but they were still doing their examination of conscience. And I had done mine in line. So he asked all each team, are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? And no, none of them were. So finally he got to me. I'm like, yeah, I'm ready.

I'll go. And that was who I went to father McCoy.  Now, I love going face to face. I love it, because it's so much more personal, 

and 

it's so much more 

personal, and No I can't even look him in the eyes when I'm  divulging all this detail. Okay,

Holy Spirit tractor beam just sucked me in like,

and when I

and when I sat down, I looked directly into his blue eyes.

I like, and they were just so, he, he was sitting there, you know, how you sit, like If you're on the bench in a basketball game, your, your forearms are on your knees. He was leaned in like that. And I sat down that same way. So we were leaned in like that face to face. It was so, and it was like, I was talking to a loving father that  had my best interest in mind.

It was such an amazing and intimate situation. 

intimate, uh, Situation. So No, they don't do that. That was the whole

point of 

that. That was the whole point of what Father Louis said. They're not going to do that. Okay. So  and plus the fact I ask questions because  

I want to know if this is a sin that I'm thinking it's a sin.

And I've asked a lot of doozies. One of my questions was  okay, well, 

first. 

At our church, we can't, we, we cannot go face to face confession. Our priest doesn't allow it. He, that's his style. He's just going to go through the screen and it is, it's hard to ask questions through a screen. I just want to get in and get out.

So I love the face to face. So if you'd never have gone face to face, just try it. Okay. 

This is, the same person who can't order off a menu without asking like 20 questions. So, that doesn't surprise me. 

Yes, because when I'm by somebody who has the wisdom, I'm going to, I need wisdom. Now I told you, we've been telling you guys, we've been praying for wisdom. So I'm on a wisdom seeking mission and always I can get it. So I started listing my sins and I needed wisdom and guidance because

there

are some things that leave me wondering some things that I get caught up in that make me feel Dirty or feel like I've offended the Lord.

So I explained the date night situation at a bar sometimes so Matt and I I said it my husband and I love to go out to to just have a drink and sit there and make each other laugh, but then

with that? No,

No, and then I say but I Other people around us, they might start telling raunchy jokes or  and then I say, , , we don't, we don't get, we're not sitting there getting drunk, but how do I know when is it a sin?

How much is too much? And the reason I'm sharing this is because  I shared this with , a chaperone

at Steubenville We 

out. We were just talking about our confessions and she said, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you told me that because my husband and I.  struggle with the same thing. And that's kind of our date night too.

And what father McCoy said is he, he did have wisdom. He says,

is, he says, Um, Four or five is okay? Laughter There's nothing wrong with that. Okay, so he said, he gave, he

okay. So he said he,

a number, but

he didn't give me a number, but he gave me this wisdom. He said, , you, you do have to know what your limits are now. He said at home. You don't really have to be so careful because you're at home You're protected you can let your guard down and so it's not as much of an issue But in public you do need to know how much is too much before it happens and so

Before you're face planting on the sidewalk as you leave, 

Yeah, don't let it

get that far but what he's but when he said that it's like  I realized it's my responsibility to know that. Okay. It's my responsibility and our responsibility as a husband and wife, we need to have those conversations and, those conversations can be easy or hard depending on what you're talking about as a husband and wife, but we have to have those conversations, he said.

Okay. So then,

step further

I took it a step further because there's something else that's been bothering me or making me wonder. Is this okay with the Lord now?

This is where it's gonna get 

juicy, Okay. I'm all ears. 

a

a little bit,

Little bit a little background for me. I'm clinically diagnosed with generalized anxiety and a little more background for me is  in my younger years, I was, I'm a, I'm a former pothead basically, ?

And well, come to find out that there is actually an all natural medication that does help with anxiety and,

which I do have a MedCard for it, okay? And this is really hard to talk about because, 

because there is such a stigma attached to it.  And I, I told him like, This,

very small

now in very small doses, okay, this, I told him straight to his face, I said, this, it helps me.

I said, I'm such a nicer mom. I'm thinking of like all the good games when I use my  medicine and 

he like laughs. He does a belly laugh. He's like, Oh, and I said, but so is, is it wrong? And he said, no, cause it's not against the law  and you're not. You, you're not  overusing it, he, and he said, just 

discreet 

be discreet with it, 

and I'm like, yeah, I would never, , just normalize this in my household and be like, hey, you know, go get mommy's meds, kids,

like,

but he said , you're not breaking the law and you're not abusing it, and then he said, just, , don't use it when you don't need it.

don't need it you know,

So that was a big relief for me because and I've also talked with a friend who's a doctor who told me, Cause there is a stigma attached to it, but my friend who's a doctor said, you would be so surprised if you really knew  how many moms , how many younger 30, 40 year old moms do use it because there's no side effects as far as like alcohol is.

If you, if you just had a drink, every time you're feeling anxious, , you'd become alcoholic.  Alcohol wears on your body. 

about there's these

There's, I saw some posts about there's

mom groups. And the recent, the most recent one 

is  

there's a mom group that they take Mushrooms. To deal with their daily  Rigors of life with their children  and there's also a mom's  pot group 

that 

moms, canna bombs, the canna busts and the

Yeah can of moms.

 Well, so.  The,  I don't know about the mushroom

Right, yeah, I just

I do know that,  it's legal if you have a med car. We're in Florida. Just like the fact that there's people out there struggling, like the other chaperone I talked with, she's like, wow, that I'm glad you told me about that.

I hope that this also would help somebody  And, and he, one of the things he said, 

know that's 

we, we literally belly laughed a couple of times in my confession. Now you know that's a good confession when you're belly laughing with the priest. And he said, \ he, we were laughing because he said, you know, this is new ground.

It's not like you can just go look it up in the catechism.

go look it up in the catechism. Right. He wasn't hearing about this probably

yeah, yeah. They need to edit the catechism when add that in. And if you're listening to us, what the catechism is,  is basically a book we Catholics use that explains everything. You can look up anything in the Bible. Search anything you want about our faith  and there's going to be a paragraph in the catechism that explains it in simple terms.

And he did suggest the catechism as a tool in battling scrupulosity. Now, do you know what scrupulosity is? 

It sounds like a very interesting word that I probably would never use.

Well, okay,

The   What's, okay, the root word is scrupulous. So scrupulosity is like me I was battling scrupulosity because, , I have a,  a prescription for some medication, but I'm still wondering, Hmm, is this okay? Should I do it? Is the Lord okay with this? So, or you know, with how many drinks am I supposed to have?

One or two? I'm, I'm battling scrupulosity so we can look stuff up there's a lot you can't, you know, like you can't look up some stuff, but I want to reference the catechism in a second.  But let me just say this confession is a beautiful, beautiful sacrament, not only for being absolved from our sins, but cleaning our souls.

And I have asked some doozies of questions. About is this a sin? So one time I was face to face with our parish priest who he's retired now. He married Matt and I 18 blissful years ago and in fact He's he was from Malta and the priest that told him When he was discerning for the priesthood, he went to a priest and said I'm discerning Should I go into the priesthood that priest?

Is a saint now. Okay.

Father Frank, I was confessing some stuff and I asked him,  

is 

a sin to go to a gay wedding?  

And he 

said,  no, but just tell them you can't go. You got something else that weekend.  And I was like, Oh no, no, no. I already went to it.

no, no, no, I already went to it.

Oh, and let me

And let me tell you, and I'm thinking in my mind, like, that was a fun night too, man. That was a fun party. We danced the night away.

do you tip on that, I don't know.

Now, more dudes hit on Matt that night. 

And, , these were friends of ours, just from the community   people that we hung out with once in a while, we had a great time with them. We were just  yeah, these are people we vibed with, but you know what?

Here's where before people, before all you people out there who are actually being scrupulous right now, let me read what the catechism of the Catholic church says about. Homosexual persons says  they must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.

And you know, back when Pope Francis kind of was fresh in his  papacy, I mean, he even made this comment. I mean, he's like, if a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge that person? The catechism of the Catholic Church explains this point beautifully, but says, These persons must never be marginalized and they must be integrated into society. The problem is not that one has this tendency. No, we must be brothers. This is the first matter matter. now it's kind of like, , having that lava cake at the time. Like yeah, I, I ate the lava cake.

It was good. I, , should I have done it? N  maybe not. Okay. But I enjoyed it while I, while it lasted.  ,  I mean, who's the patron saint of gay friends? Because I'm not gonna shun someone because they have a same sex attraction or live a gay lifestyle. And when you love others, as Christ calls us to, we're not supposed to be rude or off-putting because someone's gay.

 Christians. You can't have gay friends, , how else are you gonna share Christ's love and some people will say and have said to me Oh, well as a Christian, you should not have gone to that wedding,  Well,

But yeah. Well,

they're fine, it's a dance party for sure. Yeah Now, am I saying that God recognizes this as a marriage and blesses their union?

No, I know that. It's not God's idea of marriage. 

and let me talk, explain a little bit more. Because

she came out

my best friend from high school,  She came out to me in maybe 10th or 11th grade. I don't remember how old we were, but I remember we were in a Taco Bell drive through when she came out to me. And we were still friends. We were friends through high school and even a little bit after high school.

But when I, whatever, reconverted 

I 

kind of like pushed her away. I distanced myself from her  and  We reunite, we recently reunited. I mean, she was even in our wedding,  but we grew apart a little bit and we didn't, we didn't have a falling out. We just had a one, one last conversation where we never called each other again.

And she probably realized I'm being so Christian and I probably 

realized, well, she's, , on a different path.  I am regretful.

That I lost all that time with her, you know, and I hurt her and She's been with her partner now for 25 years. Am I gonna change her?

No, of course not But I lost out on almost two decades of a dear friend life who always Had my back like this was the girl literally we fought together. Okay, she had my back  her parents had my back and It's a regret of mine and because of what scrupulosity and  I will admit that probably maybe I did need that at the time.

I needed to focus on being a wife and being a christian mother , but I do regret that and , some people might be gasping and saying  well Don't hang out with sinners. They're going to change you, right?

Yeah. They're going to change you if you hang out with sinners. And so I'm not saying like, go out to the gay nightclub and catch all the drag shows.  But, and I do agree. Yeah. If you hang out all the time with people who don't have your same belief system, that's going to erode you. That's going to erode over the days and months.

But. But we have to prepare our kids, , as soon as they get out of our house and they're out in the world, do we want them to all of a sudden be like, wait, I'm gay. What's so wrong with gay people? Why have we been lied to?

Why have we been like, oh you shouldn't be around these people when they're fun to be around. They're,  you don't judge someone because of their sin right out the front. And so we  do use these relationships as teaching moments, right?

Preparation. Yeah. Right? Just like anything else. It's like you have that talk about the birds and the bees early because it's better than from you than from some 13 year old boy who, looks at porn all day and decides this is what you do and just, 

, ruins your 

all day and decides this is what you do and just, you know, ruins your kid.

I said, the, the catechism comes in handy. It says they should be treated. There's not a small amount of them. They should be treated with dignity and love. Their homosexuality is a cross they, they bear. Now where the liberal I love says, he says, well, when my kids said he sees two men that are holding hands and he says, Hey daddy, why are they holding hands?

I'm going to just say. Because they love each other. Well, no, I'm going to give a little bit more teaching on it and say, , 

this is a lifestyle 

that, 

often. Huh? 

That you're just going to come across more often than not. Unfortunately, just that's just how it is.

I mean, that's the

Right because  everyone's saying this is completely normal So what we're gonna what we're educating our our kids on is well Here's some Bible scriptures of how God feels about it This is what God's God says in Romans and this is what God says in  Corinthians chapter 6  Yeah, 

, right, in Genesis, he made them male and female, ? We do, , and we are going to use scriptures to, , back up the truth, while loving people for the people that they are,  so, yeah, if we aren't preparing them, they're going to hear some confusing messages. If we don't teach them compassionately, then we make them susceptible to going completely opposite when they are out in the world by themselves and they see how welcoming and supportive the gay and trans community is, right?

So, yeah. They may be attracted to that philosophy more because we send the wrong message of total segregation preclude them from our lives. You know, , it's not a sin to be friends with gay people and it's not a sin to love and support, to be a love and support in their lives.  What is definitely wrong is to try to sexualize and groom children to, toward homosexuality and transgenderism.

That is absolutely wrong. we're definitely going to protect our kids and do the opposite. We're going to inoculate them with the truth. . Because we have to stand in the gap for the kids that are getting sexualized and  fed the lies that, oh, , you can be whatever of the 180 different genders, apparently there 

are.

Interesting article that came out today, it was talking about Elon Musk and he has one of his companies somewhere in California. I can't remember what city might've been San Francisco or something like that.  And so California just passed the law. I don't know what number it was, but it just basically states that the school district 

is not required to contact parents if a child wants to 

transition.

That

law passed. so, Elon 

Musk said that was the last straw. He didn't want to have to worry about his employees. Children. Yeah, basically. And so, he's moving his entire company from California to Austin,

Texas. And he made

And he made it a point to say that was it. You know, above everything else, this was the straw that

Oh, wow. I'm so glad you told me that because I wrote about that in my book when they started in 2019.

, they started trying that and now it passed. Oh, wow. And wow. So you can't, you can't buy pot. Unless you're 18, you can't buy alcohol unless you're 21. You can't vote unless you're 18. But folks, , if you want to transition at the age of 12, you can now go do that at school.

The school is going to get you to the clinic and you're going to get those gender change, gender suppressing hormones and ruin your life 

and, and keep it from the parents who want to protect you from that dangerous, insidious Ideology, you will never be the opposite sex. You're going to be on drugs your whole entire life, and they're going to try to get you for barbaric surgeries that end in infection and hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Ugh,  that's just sickening. Get your kids out, people. Get them out of the 

schools. 

Get them out schools. Okay, a weird person in

okay, a weird person in the news, listen, there is a super weird kid in international news. Guess what? He wasn't a homeschooler, he was bullied every day of his life. And who am I talking 

that shot at President Trump. Yeah,

that's what we've, we learn about this kid. Now when you put the picture, when they put the picture up, it's like, yep, I can tell he's been bullied, 

 go ahead.

That's another main issue. 



I don't care who you are. , everybody, I would say almost everybody at some point in their lives, if you went to a public school 

or 

your private 

school, Um, 

some sort of 

bullying 

at 

some 

point, 

, that's just what happens, 

right?

Right.   

We even experienced it ourselves recently with one 

of 

our children. It was just a week long summer camp to play basketball and, these kids were, I don't know what, middle school to high school or just middle school kids, basically, which is

16 and under, but mostly middle schoolers,

which is probably the toughest 

age to 

be,  and our son, you could tell , something was amiss when he came home, I think, the second day.

 He wasn't acting himself and I'm like, dude, 

what's 

wrong with you? 

And 

I finally got out of that. There was a kid there that was talking a bunch of trash to 

him  

and 

He 

didn't 

know how 

to 

handle 

it so we had conversations over the next couple days , unfortunately when you're dealing with 

public 

school 

kids 

This 

is just part of 

what 

you're 

run into and this is 

kind of 

how you handle 

it You Right?

And  you don't let another kid bully you around, you tell somebody, because  , the worst thing you can do is just hold it 

because you feel 

ashamed.

Right? That's the worst thing. And then you just deal with it on a day to day basis. And that's what drives a lot of these kids to either kill themselves or just completely 

Go off the deep end and try to kill the 

president or the former president and yeah so one in five kids reports being bullied and of course the most common reason is physical appearance race gender disability religion and sexual orientation Less than half Report it to an adult

to

 And you know the shootings.

So since 1982, there's been , 126 mass school shootings and this is kind of an old stat, so there might even be more. so, listen. There's no shortage of marginalized, emotionally disturbed, angry young people in America. So that count is going to rise. We're going to continue to see these, terrible crimes and there's not  a specific psychological profile.

But, they do have it nailed down to shooters, school shooters, have in common is profound feelings of rejection and a history of having been bullied, and  of course some of them have fascinations with guns and a preoccupation with violence.  with violence. So um, Yeah, they might not even tell you. 

even telling you. Yeah. They might not even tell you.  So if you have that option that you could get your kid out of the public school system, out of the government school system, do it you, you know 

the solution

because you're not going to stop people, kids from bullying each other. It's going to happen. Because there's a lot of parents of these children, that  They don't care. They don't care what their kid does. Right? And so they feel like they can do whatever they want or whatever insecurity they have.

They can unleash it on somebody else who's, more susceptible to just taking it. And it's just going to be 

continuous. 

So the problem is bullying. It's never going to go away. The solution is get 

your 

kids 

out 

of 

that  

situation.

And give them the tools at home, like build them up at home, strengthen their Self esteem. And I, you know what? I, and I don't have all the answers. I was Googling.  What to do when you're being bullied, I didn't necessarily have all the answers for my kid, but we read that article together and some of them said, , ask the bully to use your names, you know, please don't call me that.

Please call me by my name.  It was some very black and white stuff. It just say, report it to an adult, avoid the bully. So there were , some bullet point things that we helped, that helped, but,  you know, ultimately, thankfully. Our kid feels comfortable enough to come to us  to get strength, to get advice and we know exactly what's going on in his life.

And by the way, that kid was already a troublemaker. He, he had been kicked out of that school where the camp was he was, , A foul mouthed young child. , and I did have to explain to my son that, you know what? We don't know what his home life is like. Something's wrong with his home life.

Maybe his dad yells at him. Maybe his dad bullies him. So, we also had to teach a compassion component of it.   And just,  we're just doing the best we can. And Did you ever talk to the, , camp counselor people about 

people about 

 

I just mentioned, I mentioned it to somebody and said , who do I talk to, this is happening and  that's how I found out that the kid is already a troublemaker,  He's like, oh, I can't believe that kid shouldn't even be here.

And and so then my son realized oh, you know What people are on my side people, people care and people have my back and not just my parents But look at what my parents can help me to find,  people that will help me, 

Oh, I just, that next day I walked in with them. I did like 

my little 

did like my

court. I walked him all the way to the bleacher, sat him down,

Were you peck popping the whole way?

I did that. I gave a little peering look out into the court, just to see, to make eye contact with everybody. Just let them know.

You put your two fingers up to your eyes and you pointed out At the 

crowd. 

of these, I'm like, where is this little guy? I

Yeah. Cause as a parent, you want to jump in you're ready. Like I don't care.

You 

there's been parents that have been arrested for beating up the 

kids 

that were bullying them. I saw one lady, she was at a bus stop, literally beat the kid that was bullying her 

child. I 

mean, I 

get 

it. I 

when 

you hear that, that like infuriates you 

like infuriates you. I don't condone that. Unless

is like 18 and is an

adult and decides 

like 

then yeah. 

and

is an adult and

are not homeschooled as we've seen in the 

As we seen, saw in the Assassin, okay? Get your kids out of public and private, even private schools. Bring them home to thrive. And St. Vitalis?

Ooh, pray for us. Let's try that again without the ooh.

what

And St.  📍 Vitalis?

Pray for us.   We  

 

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