Where Stress Meets Gratitude

Your inbox is overflowing, your schedule is packed and you can’t wait for a reprieve from the pressure of it all. 

Does this all sound familiar to you?  If so, lean in.

I recently signed my daughter up for Girl Scouts.  After two years of waiting for a troop to form in our area, the day had finally arrived.  Mind you, the Girl Scout Council always said, if you want to be in a troop, you can step up and become a troop leader, we only need two!

This was not something that I wanted to do.   But I did want to volunteer to help out where I could.  As time passed, one of the leaders who had stepped up, did not end up completing her training and without a replacement, the troop could not proceed. 

As I texted back and forth with the other leader, the same question popped back up: “Would you want to step up?”

“No! Absolutely not! Maybe. Fine. Okay, I’ll do it.”

And there I was, taking all of the training courses, and learning the excessive amount of information necessary to lead.   

Our first meeting happened to fall within the first week of cookie season.  Now, if you’ve ever been a part of Girl Scouts, you know that cookie season is A LOT.  All of our troop leaders were new, including myself and no one had the first idea where to begin.

So, at some point, somehow, I blacked out and became the cookie person too.  With that came hours and hours of researching, learning and carving out times for cookie pickups and drop offs.

In the throes of it all, it often felt like having a second part-time job. 

But here’s the thing.  Even though I was stressed, it was a GOOD stress.  I had to remember the reason why I was doing it, and I encourage you to do the same with whatever is going on in your life.  I was not being held at gunpoint, forced to deal cookies out of my house against my will.

I was doing it for my daughter.

Those little moments where I saw new friendships form, when a big smile came across her face, or when she learned something new made it all worth it.

After our last booth, we brought the girls to a small shop across the street to get frozen yogurt and reward them for doing such a good job.  I watched the three of them sitting at the table, talking, giggling and bonding.  It was a moment of clarity.  I saw in them, the fruits of my labor, and it was that moment that I understood why I made the choices that I did.  They walked back to the parking lot all holding hands and I almost lost it.❤️

That experience alone made every minute spent in the whirl of cookie chaos worth it: seeing my little girl love something and be loved back.

The point is, not all stress is bad stress.

So if you are feeling stressed, I urge you to find the source and then find the gratitude in it.  Sometimes this may be easier than others, but I promise there is almost always something to be grateful for behind the scenes.  And if you find the source, and it’s coming from a deep, dark place, be grateful that you now have identified it, and can work towards eliminating it from your life.

When we find and hold the gratitude for what is causing our stress, we discover that it may very well be worth it. Sometimes stress is simply proof that something in your life truly matters.