What Will Your Kids Remember About You?

Do you know what your kids will remember about you?

Not the spotless house. Or the perfectly executed chore chart. Not the organic meals or the beautiful minimalist home.

They’ll remember the way your voice sounded when you asked them to put on their shoes. The way you looked at them when they spilled their milk again. The atmosphere that hung in the air when they woke up, when they walked through the door, when they crawled into your lap.

They will remember if their mother was joyful.

And I’ll be honest. That understanding used to make me ache inside. Because I knew the tone of my home wasn’t joyful. It was survival.

But I’ve learned something that has changed everything for me:
Peace and joy isn’t found in the quiet moments. It’s shaped through the chaotic ones.

The joyful mom is not some rare unicorn who never gets tired or frustrated. She’s simply a woman who has learned the power of micro-surrendering.

Tiny, hidden, moment-by-moment acts of surrender to Christ—not once a week or just in her devotional time when her cup is filled up, but in the thick of it all: when the baby won’t nap, when she’s burned the dinner, when the toddler is screaming at her feet, and she is tempted to scream right back.

Right there, in the most ordinary and aggravating moments—that’s where peace and true joy is born.

Let’s Talk: The Path to Joyful Motherhood

So here’s what I want to share with you today, as if we were curled up in a cozy living room with tea in our hands and little ones breaking up our conversation:

• My main point and theory about how I think moms can be more joyful
• How to actually do it
• And finally, some really practical tips I learned from somewhere really unexpected

This is the system that helped me go from angry and overwhelmed mothering… to being peaceful and present. Even while raising little ones and even when things didn’t change around me.

From Overwhelm to Peace

If your days feel like a blur of overwhelm and overstimulation, if your temper scares you, and you feel like you’re failing at something you wanted so badly—I see you.

If you’ve been longing to feel calm, to mother from a place of love instead of stress, and to rebuild your home without therapy or expensive supplements or decluttering marathons—you are not alone.

A Surrender I Regret—and What God Did With It

My firstborn was incredibly colicky. I’m talking blue-in-the-face, inconsolable, hours-long screaming. And I knew in my gut that something wasn’t right. My mama instincts told me he was in pain.

But I was a brand-new mom, and every time I voiced that concern, people would say, “Babies cry, Kyrie.”

And I started to feel silly for even speaking up. Like I was being dramatic or like I just couldn’t hack it. So I stopped going out. I isolated myself. He would lose it in the car seat. He would scream in the stroller. And I was trapped—a prisoner in my own home.

I felt like I was failing—like I couldn’t help my son who was clearly in pain, and honestly, I felt like God had completely abandoned me.

One day, I got my son down for a nap—finally—and I slumped on the couch. I sobbed. And then I said something to God that I instantly regretted.

“I’m done. I’m done with You. How could you make me go through this and not help me help him.”

It came out of the depths of my exhaustion, fear, and despair. I told Him I was done walking as a Christian, because what was the point? I had asked, begged, pleaded for help. I had tried to do everything right. And still, He was silent. Still, my baby was screaming.

I wasn’t truly done. God knew that. But in that moment, I had surrendered—just not in the right way—not to Him. I had surrendered to despair. To fear. To the lie that God didn’t care.

And here’s the part I still marvel at: within a couple of days from that moment, we had an appointment with our naturopath who told me to cut out dairy and eggs from my diet. So I did. And my son was healed within a couple weeks—and within days he was significantly better.

God answered. In a practical, tangible, sacrificial way. He asked me to lay something down—and in return, He gave me peace.

This is why 1 Peter 1:7 means so much to me:
“So that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

God wasn’t trying to destroy me. He was refining me. He used my exhaustion and my misdirected surrender—to test and strengthen my faith.

And He used it to teach me something foundational:
Peace doesn’t come from everything being fixed around you. Peace comes when you yield to God in the middle of the mess.

Cognitive Reframing—The Psychology of Peace

There’s this term that psychologists use called “cognitive reframing with an internal locus of control.”

Basically, it’s the ability to take a situation—say, your toddler throwing a tantrum—and choose to reinterpret it. Not as a personal attack. Not as a problem to panic over. But as an opportunity for obedience.

Cognitive reframing means I don’t just accept chaos—I actually choose to see it differently. And an internal locus of control means I believe that my response is my responsibility. Not my child’s fault. Not my husband’s. Not my hormones. Mine.

I don’t always agree with secular psychology. In fact, much of it—its roots, its conclusions, its detachment from spiritual reality—can veer far from truth.

Many of its frameworks are built on assumptions that deny God, glorify self, and treat symptoms without addressing the soul.

But I also know this: God created our brains. He designed how they function. He wired them for growth, for renewal, for transformation.

So when psychology stumbles upon something helpful—like cognitive reframing—it’s not some stroke of brilliance from the minds of men. It’s simply a shadow of what God already built into the design. All truth is God’s truth, and even the most secular insights, when they’re right, are just borrowing from His wisdom.

So I take what’s true, I test it with Scripture, and I toss the rest.

James 1:2–4 says:
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Micro-surrender is biblical, cognitive reframing in action.
It’s saying:

“This meltdown doesn’t control me. I can still choose gentleness.”
“This disrespect hurts, but I will not sin in my anger. I will find the obedience here and I will be a faithful servant.”

You can reframe a ruined nap as a moment to model patience. You can reframe a messy living room as a sign of abundant life being lived in your home.

This doesn’t mean we fake happiness.
It means we invite truth to reinterpret our trials.

A System That Calms the Chaos

This shift—of reframing the chaos, of taking back responsibility for our responses—completely changed how my home feels.

But it wasn’t just one shift. It was an entire system of biblical, emotional, and practical tools. And here’s something I didn’t realize at first:

The reason it all felt so hard wasn’t just because I lacked self-discipline or was ungrateful. It was because my nervous system was constantly in fight-or-flight mode.

I was operating out of literal survival mode and I think so many moms are experiencing this without even knowing it. Every little stressor felt like an emergency. Every tantrum, every mess, every unmet expectation sent my body into panic.

Learning to calm my nervous system—through biblical truth, practical rhythms, and mindset shifts—was a turning point. It gave me access to the part of me that could respond with patience instead of panic and I finally felt like the gentle, loving mother and wife I’d always dreamed of being.

Here’s what one mom had to say after working through these principles:

“Before Kyrie’s program, I was exhausted, anxious, and felt like I was barely keeping up with my kids. She showed me how to calm my mind, organize my day with grace, and actually enjoy motherhood instead of just surviving it.” — Megan S.

Practical Tips: The John Delony Call—I Loved and Hated It

Recently I watched a video of a mom calling into John Delony’s show on the Ramsey Network and to be honest, I loved and hated his response all at the same time.

She was talking about how much she truly hates her life as a stay-at-home mom to 3 under the age of 4.

He said, “That’s why. Your life sucks right now.”

And I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was honest.

He didn’t sugarcoat it. He didn’t try to make her feel guilty for being tired or overwhelmed and just not liking her life in that season.

But at the same time I hated it because—well, see my previous point about cognitive reframing.

More importantly, here’s why I felt the ‘ick’ in his response: He treats mom-burnout as a purely horizontal problem.

But a believer’s deepest fuel is:
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord” (Col 3:23).

That eternal frame is absent, so the counsel lands half-empty for me.

Scripture calls these years of giving so much of ourselves a living sacrifice in Romans 12:1.

Delony’s worldview can only offer “grit until it passes.”
The gospel offers purpose in the grind—Christ says, “Share in My suffering, and I will give you peace that surpasses understanding.”

But then the pendulum swung again and he said something that had my jaw drop:

“No mother should ever be left alone with a crying baby.”

That validation was SO REAL. SO GOOD.
Then he said to her…

“I’m wondering if this ‘I hate my life, I hate all this stuff, it’s all too loud’—is because you’re trying to do it all, all by yourself.”

YES. That’s the wound.
The pain isn’t just the noise or the diapers or the mess. It’s the loneliness.

Practical Helps—And a Call to Action

He gave some really practical, unconventional advice that we as moms need to hear.

The caller was upset that she had no help from family and he actually used the cognitive reframing tip I gave earlier to help her think differently about the situation.

He said:

“They told you no. Now it’s time to get creative.”

His core point was to stop fixating on who won’t help, and start building with who might.

He encourages her to stop waiting for the perfect village and start architecting her own community.

Some of his tips:

• Hire a teenager. Not to babysit. Just to play with your kids while you’re still home. Even that much gives your soul a breath.
• Start a mom swap.
• Invite friends over—even if they’re busy, ask anyway. Most people are lonelier than they let on.
• Invite even the friends without kids. Say, “I’ll make breakfast. Just come talk to me.”

Then he says:

“I know it’s such a pain to get those three kids out of the house… But staying inside all day is slowly wearing down your soul.”

His point was this:

“It’s chaotic either way. But doing it alone inside four walls will crush you. Get out, even if it’s hard.”

Step Into the Joy-Filled Motherhood You Were Made For

You don’t have to wait until the kids are older to be a joyful mom.
You don’t have to wait until things calm down.
You don’t have to keep trying to fix everything around you before you allow peace inside you.

If you feel stuck in survival mode, there’s a way out.

Sign up for my free workshop and take the first step toward joyful, Christ-centered homemaking.
You can register instantly and watch it on your own time.

You’re not alone in this. And you don’t have to keep surviving. Let’s start rebuilding peace—together.