Behind the Scenes of a Talk

Well, I’m finished!

I was up against a tight deadline, but I finished the talk for the upcoming Catholic Mom’s summit and just sent it off! Hooray!

Honestly, I don’t know how it is all going to come together, but I did my best — and now I leave the rest to God and the editors (they have their work cut out for them!)

Let me just say, I am exhausted. I always feel like a shell of a person after giving a talk. I just feel like I have nothing left to give.

Do you ever feel that way?

Anyway, today is all about catching up with all the things that piled up while trying to get this talk together, but I’ll share a funny little behind the scenes before I go.

Our first attempt at filming the video was a total crash and burn experience.

It was a rainy day and it made lighting difficult, but I have this full spectrum light I use in the winter to keep the blah’s away — and it worked like magic to make it look like a nice, sunny day.

Honestly, I felt like one of those vloggers with their fancy lights. Ha, ha!

It was such a little thing, but for some reason that little thing gave me that confidence to be ready to speak the words I felt God was placing on my heart — but as scripture says, “don’t build your foundation upon sand or the rains will come and wash it away” or something along those lines.

You probably know where this is going….cue ominous music….

Wouldn’t you know it, as my “cameraman” a.k.a “John”, moved over to make sure the camera angles were right, he accidentally hit the light cord and broke my light!

I can’t explain why, but I just felt totally defeated.

So I tried to psyche myself up and sat down and looked at the camera and the very first thing that came out of my mouth was…”Hello, I am really annoyed right now, and I don’t want to be here and I really just want to give up”.

Oh boy!

To make matters worse, I ignored John’s advice to move up a bit (he did break my light after all, and I was still annoyed with him! Ha, Ha!) and I ended up being way too far from the microphone and the sound quality was pretty bad.

To make matters even worse, I was sitting back like Jabba the Hut on his couch in the Return of the Jedi. Do you remember that scene?

I guess you could say I had kind of given up on life at the moment, and my posture showed my defeated attitude.

Again, I say, Oh boy!

I tried my best to muster up the best talk I could, but at the end of the day, I realized I needed to scrap it all and do it again!

In the meantime, I picked up one of those fancy lights those vloggers use — which also held my phone in place! It made the whole process so much smoother.

I think it went pretty well! Thank you, Lord!

I am sharing this because I know the topic I spoke on was so important, and I know that parents need to hear the things I was trying to say — but there is a very human side to trying to share the gospel, and sometimes our human side, our insecurities get in the way of that, as evidenced by this post.

But the beauty of our faith is that I know that I spent an hour in adoration preparing for this talk, and I fasted and prayed for the people who will hear my talk, and I asked the Holy Spirit to work through my insecurities and very human ways — and so I know that I did everything I could to make it a good talk.

I know it wasn’t perfect — but I am trusting that God will do something good with it.

I am trusting Him with the results — and I will humbly acknowledge that if people like the talk, if it was helpful, that it is because God will do beautiful things with our “yes” — flaws and all — if only we are willing!

So whatever it is that God is asking you to do, just say “yes!”.

You may not get warm fuzzies from saying “yes”, but I firmly believe God will do something beautiful with that “yes!”. We just need to trust Him with the results.

Our job is to be faithful to what He asks, to try our lousy best, and to leave the rest in God’s hands. I firmly believe that!

Don’t take my word for it, here’s a beautiful quote from Mother Teresa.

“God does not require that we be successful only that we be faithful.”

Mother Teresa

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Have a great weekend!