Catholic Mom Calm author to speak at Women’s Ministry events in Laurie, Kirksville, St. Martins and Salisbury

If you come, you will leave with hope. That I can promise.”

Sterling Jaquith

Catholic speaker, author, wife and mother Sterling Jaquith helps people hear and discern the voice of God.

“I find people who feel lost or stuck, and I matchmake them with the Holy Spirit,” she said.

The author of Catholic Mom Calm: Six Steps to Calm the Chaos of Everyday Life, Mrs. Jaquith will be the featured presenter during a Women’s Ministry traveling speaker event Sept. 5-8 at four locations in the diocese.

She will speak on “Solving Problems Like Mary,” on Thursday, Sept. 5 from 10-11:30 a.m. at St. Patrick Parish in Laurie and on Saturday, Sept. 7, 10-11:30 a.m., at the Kirksville Newman Center.

Her topic will be “Peace in Any Storm,” on Friday, Sept. 6, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at St. Martin Parish in St. Martins and on Sunday, Sept. 8, from 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. at St. Joseph Parish in Salisbury.

Joining her at each event will be Barb Prasad, diocesan coordinator of Women’s Ministry.

“Here’s a promise,” said Mrs. Jaquith. “If you come, you will leave with hope. That I can promise.”

For information or to register, visit diojeffcity.org/womens-ministry-upcoming-events.

The diocese arranged to bring Mrs. Jaquith to the diocese. Individual parishes are hosting these events and inviting people from surrounding parishes to attend.

“It’s wonderful to see our parishes reaching out to each other,” said Mrs. Prasad.

“It’s nice to recognize that we’re part of a bigger faith community than our own individual parishes,” she said.

Turning over the reins

Mrs. Jaquith knows this is a busy time of year, but she believes taking time out to attend one of these gatherings will be worth it.

“I know how to help them stop worrying and be less stressed,” she said.

She knows from experience and from reading the Bible.

“I used to feel very anxious and trapped,” she said. “I’ve learned very specific things about how to have peace.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, what you’ve been through, where you are in your life. The Lord tells us not to be anxious about anything, and I will spend an hour telling you how to do that,” she said.

“And it’s pretty incredible.”

She pointed out that none of the wisdom she will share is her own.

“It comes from the Bible and the lives of the saints and from just trying to live it out,” she said.

She likens the ailing human condition to being in a horse-drawn carriage with the Lord, headed toward sainthood.

“But we get frightened and yank the reins out of his hands and say, ‘I’ll do it,’” she noted. “And he’s sitting there thinking, ‘Really? Do you think you can do a better job than I can do?’

“We do that all the time,” she said. “I can help people recognize when they’re doing that and how to stop doing that.”

For all who answer the invitation to attend any of these events, Mrs. Jaquith suggests praying and being open to why God is arranging this encounter for them.

“He’s bringing you here to hear one sentence that’s going to change your life,” she said. “It might be from me, or the person you’re sitting next to, or maybe a sentence the Holy Spirit whispers into your heart.

God’s better plans

Mrs. Jaquith, who with her husband, Michael, lives in northern Idaho, was raised with no religious affiliation and had a profound spiritual conversion to Protestant Christianity in her mid-20s.

“I really fell in love with who Christ is and really learned how to pray,” she said.

She met her husband through an online dating site.

“He was a Catholic,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘No way would I ever marry someone Catholic.’”

But he loved dogs, and she loved dogs.

Besides, his profile said he read his Bible every day.

“We went on a first date, and all we did was argue about the Vatican,” she recalled. “We had so much fun arguing about the Vatican, we continued hanging out.”

Through prayer and discernment, she realized that God was actually calling her to marry this man.

“And because I had been taught that husbands should be the spiritual head of their household, I told God, ‘If you’re calling me to marry this man, you must also be calling me to be Catholic,’” she said.

With very few questions, she went through the initiation process and was received into full communion with the Catholic Church shortly before their wedding.

“God gave me a ton of grace, and I went all-in on being Catholic,” she said.

Mrs. Jaquith bought into the Church’s teaching against artificial contraception but was determined not to have more than two children.

They brought six children — three girls and three boys — into the world in their first eight years of marriage.

“All three boys came in three years,” Mrs. Jaquith noted. “We call them our Irish triplets!”

The children now range in age from 13 to 5. The Jaquiths homeschool them.

Mrs. Jaquith is thoroughly convinced that “God’s plans are always better than ours.”

“I love this wild circus of a life that we have. I would never have chosen it for myself, but I’m very grateful for it,” she stated. 

“If God doesn’t give what you want, he always gives you something better,” she said.

Gifts and virtues

Mrs. Jaquith calls the Holy Spirit the unsung hero of the Church.

While studying about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit proclaimed in Isaiah 11:2 — wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord — Mrs. Jaquith recognized in them the secret to living well.

“But most people are not asking the Spirit for these gifts,” she said.

“It’s kind of like of how water is always in your kitchen, but you have to turn on the faucet to receive it,” she stated. “It’s always there for you have to ask for it.”

Furthermore, every Gift of the Holy Spirit corresponds to a virtue.

“Most people don’t wake up in the morning and pray for more fear of the Lord!” said Mrs. Jaquith. “But the gift of fear of the Lord corresponds with growing in the virtue of temperance, which most people deeply desire.”

Namely, in curbing things such as unhealthy consumption of food, alcohol, phone-scrolling or gossip.

“People want temperance, and I tell them to start praying for the gift of fear of the Lord,” she said. “It makes you want to live your life in a manner of giving it back to God and being saying, ‘I want you to be so proud of how I live my life today!’”

Buried treasure

Mrs. Jaquith hosts the “Catholic Mom Calm” podcast of the same name that’s available in every popular podcast platform and at Catholicmomcalm.com.

She realized while attending a middle-school student assembly when she was 11 that she wanted to become a motivational speaker.

She carried that aspiration into adulthood and the Church, hoping to convince non-Catholics to become Catholic.

“In the end, I believe I heard that God wants me to tell Catholics about how much treasure they have that they don’t even realize in the Catholic Church,” she said.

“Imagine having a treasure chest full of diamonds and rubies and emeralds under your bed and you don’t even realize it’s there,” she stated.

“I’m here to tell you that it’s there.”

Learning to ask God for guidance and really listening — rather than “praying at God” like people tend to do — makes life much more manageable, she said.

“Not easy ... but more manageable,” she stated.

“Made for community”

Mrs. Jaquith said it’s always a good idea for women to spend time together, listening and praying out loud with each other.

It helps to combat the epidemic of loneliness in this society.

“We are made for community, and everything about the history of the Catholic Church points to that,” she stated.

In anticipation of her trip to the diocese, Mrs. Jaquith asked for prayers for the strengthening of Catholic marriage and family life.

“So you can never pray enough for Catholic marriage — for my marriage and for everyone else,” she said.

She and her husband are both involved in public ministry, and they knew from the beginning that attacks would come.

“So, we always ask for covering us in prayer,” she said.