From the outside looking in, Rachel Balducci’s life was enviable. A mother of six beautiful children, she had a career as a writer and speaker and was married to a busy attorney with his own practice. She was organized, capable of handling it all, armed with a killer to-do list and an up-to-date calendar.

But those on the outside couldn’t see that Rachel was a mess, a bundle of anxiety and exhaustion. She was present physically to provide for her husband and kids, but far from present emotionally or spiritually. She stared down every day wishing it were already over.

One night, in desperation, she cried out to God, and he answered in a startling, freeing, and life-changing way. If you are feeling more chaos than peace, more panic than joy, take heart. Make My Life Simple: Bringing Peace to Heart and Home gives you down-to-earth practical pointers to achieve peace and order:

• In your home: Establish a peaceful environment for you and your family
• In yourself: Design an ordered way of living to benefit your body, mind, and spirit with Rachel’s friend-to-friend advice
• In your spiritual life: Create order in your spiritual relationships with Jesus, yourself, and the others in your life

Rachel Balducci and her husband Paul have five strapping sons and one precious daughter. Rachel is a newspaper columnist for the Southern Cross and blogs at Testosterhome.net. She is a co-host of The Gist, a talk show for women on Catholic TV and the author of How Do You Tuck In A Superhero and other delightful mysteries of raising boys.

In a former life, Rachel was a newspaper reporter, and she has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Georgia. These days she writes about faith, family and how keeping her bathroom clean will make her a saint.