When the House Is a Mess and You Feel Like You’re Failing | Season 2 Favorites

Welcome to another special episode of Orthodox Christian Parenting. So we're moving through our summer clip series, sharing some of the most practical moments from our archives as we count down to the launch of Season three. Today we are bringing back a favorite guest, Doctor. Philip Mamalakis to talk about a struggle that every parent knows. How to stay peaceful when life feels absolutely chaotic.

If you've ever felt like you're just reacting to one fire after another, then this is the conversation for you. Doctor. Mamalakis explains that peace isn't the absence of chaos, but rather it's a way of being within it. He talks about how to shift our focus from controlling our children's behavior to managing our own internal state and why success in a chaotic moment is actually about how we model Christ's love when things go wrong. He also shares a wonderful perspective on how to set boundaries that actually bring peace to the home rather than more conflict.

It's such a grounding reminder for all of us. So let's dive in. I know as parents, we can get really caught up in all of the I don't wanna say minutiae because it's a real thing when it's happening. But when our kids are all over the place or they're misbehaving or things aren't going well and again, it doesn't matter what age. For little ones, the misbehavior looks different.

For older ones, it looks different. But what do we do to keep ourselves focused on the sacredness of parenting in the midst of all that chaos?

It's a great question because here we wanna learn how to parent. Here we wanna we want our faith to guide us. Like, we're we're believing Christians. Yes. Right?

And then you look at the house of the disaster. It doesn't look very beautiful or sacred. Our kids are just you know, it feels out of control. And so then oftentimes we can have really powerful negative feelings.

Yeah. So many.

And then and then we we're ashamed. We're kind of ashamed of the whole thing. And so if we believe that to be a Christian is to is to look a certain way and live a certain way, it gets doubly overwhelming. So the beauty of the Orthodox Church is that we believe, we recognize that Christ, the king of the universe, chose when he was born not to be born in a beautiful palace. Not to be surrounded by white marble, you know, beautiful soldiers.

Instagram worthy.

He was not born into an Instagram worthy space. And remember, God could have done that. Yeah. He deliberately chose to be born in a stable, in a dirty, smelly stable. And that's like, that's the nature of his love that he says, I wanna be with you.

I am with you in the mess. Yeah. To be a Christian is not to have a clean house, well behaved kids, and really happy feelings. To be a Christian is in the middle of the mess. We recognize that Christ loves us and he's present.

So the first thing, that thought can help change everything.

Completely countercultural by the way. Completely countercultural. So give me a practical takeaway for our audience and for me, like how do you get away from that desire to have the Instagram worthy white marble, all the things?

So the beautiful thing is how do we learn to trust God? I think that parenting is so beautiful and sacred because it exposes our hearts. Mhmm. You know, kids will expose our controlling nature. Mhmm.

Kids will expose our tendency to fear.

That's right.

And the question is, what do we do when we're Parents will tell me, my kids just push my buttons. And they're half right. Like, they're not intentionally doing that. But it's by design because how else are we going to unwire these buttons? It's one of the powerful images that is in the scriptures when Christ approached the the paralytic, the guy laying by the the the the sea, the private pool.

Yeah. And he said, I have no one to lift me into the water. He asked him, do you wanna be healed? What what sounds like what a crazy question. Do you wanna be healed?

Would wanna be healed?

Of course I do.

Of course I do. In those moments, when we feel overwhelmed or hopeless and everything looks terrible, it exposes our pride. It exposes ourselves like Christ joins us and asks us, do you want to be free? Do you want to be free of these thoughts? Do you want to be healed?

And if we can answer Christ, yes, I want to be healed of my need to have a clean house. I want to be healed of my concern about what other people think. I want to be healed of my perfectionism. If we say yes, we learn how to take a deep breath and thank God for this moment, recognizing this is not a problem. This is not a shameful negative thing, but this is the state of my house and Christ is present.

We want to do whatever we can to call that to mind. So literally in the moment when we feel that, we take a deep breath and we can say a prayer. We can even say thank you. Right. Not because we like it, but because we know I wanna be healed.

And then once we're in that state, we can recognize that actually the only thing our kids need our kids actually don't need a clean house. They do need a peaceful mother. Like, Can the

they have both?

I'm not entirely sure they can have both.

Okay.

Do you know why?

Tell me.

Because God loves us. Because God knows if our peace is dependent on a clean house, that's not divine peace and we're not free. And because God wants us to be free, he allows for situations where we have to choose inevitably clean house or peace. Right? Wow.

It's by design.

That's horrible in some ways. Like that the inner cleaner, free. Yeah. That inner cleaner in me is not.

Once we recognize the sacred in the mess or more accurately Christ in our midst, We really we want God change my thinking about what good and bad is. Because you know what happens when it's a mess? Then we react, and now our kids are in a messy home and a mom is out of control or a dad is out of control. Like, it's sort of like when we when a dad freaks out, when a kid makes a mistake, they've already made a mistake. Now they've got an out of control dad.

Right.

Like, we have a God who invites us. He says, be you know, in the world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome. Right? That fear, I'm here to cast out fear.

And and I really think he means in the in the church of the home because it's really hard for parents to think church of the home. This looks nothing like a church.

Yeah. It looks nothing like a church.

It looks nothing like church. Church building. Let's just be clear.

Okay. Okay.

It looks a lot like a church. That is the people of God in daily life. But remember, people looked at Jesus and said, this can't be the Messiah.

Right.

People look at a mess and say, it's impossible for God to be present. And that's just our own blindness.

How can and I would dare say moms especially, how do we remove that kind of guilt and shame of I mean, because I don't know a mother and certainly not a mother in in my Orthodox sphere who doesn't feel enormous guilt or shame around this. I'm not enough. I've gotta be,

you know, taking care of parents, taking care of work, taking care

of a spouse. I mean, taking care of the kids.

How do we need me? I'm failing everyone.

One Everyone wants more of 100%. Are you in my mind, Doctor. Right. How, how do you actually go closer to a healthy understanding of what's appropriate, reasonable, or you just kinda know that the struggle and not being perfect is part of it? Like, what does that look like?

I think it looks like finding spaces to share that with people.

Okay.

Right? Because you can't it's hard to do something with your feelings. If you're feeling guilty, you can't just wish that stuff away.

Right.

And the church doesn't say suck it up and follow Christ. The church the church says offer it up and follow Christ.

Right.

So at the heart of it is this is part of my healing is I'm gonna tell someone I feel so guilty. I feel like a failure. The right people, a women's group, talking with my priest, my spouse, people around us who can hear us, hear our struggle. And from there, kind of give us some perspective and help us navigate because we need to first share our pain. Right.

Before someone says it is hard. Yes. And then with that love, we can reevaluate. Maybe I need to readjust all the things I'm doing.

Right.

Maybe I bought into this and I need to maybe it's on me, but in not in a critical way, in in a I wanna be well kind of way. Like, yeah, I wanna get better just being peaceful. But it's really hard because it's related to how messy the house is.

That's right.

Because if we can't let the house drop a little bit, it's really hard to have a balanced life because in the normal cycle of things, you can't always get to cleaning the house and nobody dies. Yeah. It's like some of these balls have to drop the I

when when Walid and I first got married, we were on our honeymoon, and my husband does not swim. He's not a swimmer, and he didn't wanna go down to the to the water. And I was like, come on. We'll just go put our feet in. So we go, and I'm a new bride.

I didn't know that he was really not into the water. So he was holding my hand. And at one point, he didn't realize it, but he had actually pulled me in. I'm, like, running on the, the bottom of the ocean. And I looked at him, and he was trying to take on the whole ocean to make sure everyone stayed okay and everyone was alive and didn't drown.

And I remember telling him, you know, not too many years ago, I feel like I'm you on the side of the ocean where I'm just trying to keep everything afloat and perfect. And he was like, but you don't have to do that. I'm like, of course, you have to do that. People are coming for Christmas or whatever the thing was. And I think it's a really interesting and probably self imposed pressure.

It is self imposed

pressure. Think that's probably true.

What And did God wants to expose that. Yeah. Because we can't heal from what we can't see because the church has been We

can't heal what we can't see.

Right. Like in order to confess something, we have to be able to recognize it.

Cause we

offer when we realize I am anxious or I am angry or I'm a perfectionist or I'm obsessive about this, we offer it up in repentance. I'm stuck in this bad habit. I'm stuck in this bad thinking. Literally offering up. We put it at the foot of the cross.

We share it with a spiritual father or in a group as I am stuck. That's a confession.

Okay.

And when we do that, and we're not defending ourselves, we're saying, I'm really stuck with this in the right with the right people. They then can love us. Not say, yeah, you're right. You should quit doing it. Well, if I could quit doing it, I I would.

I probably would have. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

But the first step is to see it. And then we could say, oh, man. I am really I like

This is a thing.

This is a thing. Yeah. And it does it it takes a busy home. It takes company unexpected more than you thought. At the same time a child gets sick and the washing machine is out, suddenly you have to prioritize.

Yeah. What I tell parents, prioritize peace in the midst of chaos.

Peace in the midst of chaos.

This Christ is peace. Yeah. Usually when we think of peace, we think, alright. The house is clean. Kids are asleep or eating.

Mhmm. Everything's just now I have peace. Well, that's not Christ's peace. Christ's peace is the washing machine is out. There is no dinner.

The kids are all upset. And I'm gonna say, glory to God. This is gonna be hard. Alright, guys. What's our next step?

That's good.

That's Christ's peace.

That's great.

That makes us free. Do we want that? Do we want and the only way to get that is in the mess. Messy home, messy kids, messy internal life. We take a deep breath and say a prayer and recognize Christ is here.

And if we Christ is here, isn't that the only thing that's important?

That's right. I like it.

And so suddenly the family life becomes like this ascent to the kingdom of God. Can you imagine becoming a saint through a broken washing machine, kids that need a bath that are tracking, you know, mud

All over.

All over. And and this is our path to draw closer to God. Christ's peace is taking a deep breath and just focusing on our children and saying, thank God while our anxiety is up and just walking in truth. It's Peter walking on water,

doing the things that we know we're called to do.

Once we say thank you, if we can recognize Christ is there, we do what's in front of us. I tell parents, what I remind myself is, the only thing I need to do, the only ball that can't drop, is my focus on being peaceful. So I had a situation where we were at dinner. I forget how it started, as we often do, but one of my kids said something and another sibling reacted to that. And within a split second, a third one was taking a side and then a fourth one.

And it's like a wildfire spread around my table. And I'm like, oh my gosh. It's dinner time. And so my internal fire is going. And I I said to myself, I can't solve this.

I can't stop it. There is no hope.

Right.

But I've been practicing. Just stay calm and connect with each one. So I touched the person next to me, the kid next to me. I went to the other one. I just and I thought to myself, the only thing my kids need is to stay peaceful.

I can't figure anything out. Stay peaceful as I take a step and connect with the kids. And and so that's literally I was focusing on that as I'm trying to connect with these kids, sending one out of the room, you know, just focusing on that. Within five minutes, everyone calmed down. I think one person was sent up.

I was like

Could have been so different. I love that.

And I thought because I know the only thing that would have made it worse

Is if you lost control.

My marbles.

Yeah.

And they don't even remember the incident. I do. And I'm like, that's kind of a victory. Even though I solved nothing, completely new didn't know what to do. I just remembered, oh, this so that's what it looks like.

Looks like us. You know, you can't stay in charge unless you stay in control. And that's about staying in control. When there's a mess, we just are not called to do it alone. So when we fail, we share with someone.

This this is this is where I lose my cool.