Stress

Do I know STRESS!

I wonder who would understand stress. Maybe a young woman who looses her first baby and dies on the table to boot.
Who has a baby two years later and her mother dies five months later.
She has a father who has emergency surgery every time she and her family finally go on a short vacation.
When she, her husband and daughter move more than 600 miles to be closer to their families, she finds herself pregnant with a second baby. A great and welcome surprise, just not to timely. Imagine being deathly ill for 9 months, then having a hysterectomy as well as a C-section at the same time. Guess what that does to your hormones.. She doesn't have five months this time before loosing her father, only 9 weeks. Just a week before her father dies, her uncle dies (her father's brother).
Six weeks later she takes her aunt (her mother's sister) to the doctor to be diagnosed with cancer of the throat. Auntie decides against surgery. We all have a free will to make these decisions - her husband was dead, three of her syblings were dead and she had no children. But when push comes to shove, she really doesn't feel like dying,so she signs the papers for surgery. When she wakes up, she is mad as hell. She cannot talk - no voice box. She blames her nephew and his wife for signing for the surgery. By product of throat cancer: cuts off oxygen to the body and the brain. She doesn't remember. After a couple of years hearing how they made her have surgery and she didn't want to live, she found out the truth. She wasn't all that ready to die. Remember this little diatribe is about stress.
The same summer her father's only remaining brother is diagnosed with hodgkins lymphoma. Will this roller coaster ride end soon? He buys time with surgery and is happily around for a few more years.
While all of this is going on, her husbanad helps start a soccer league in South Bend (not just a team). The first year there are 53 kids playing, the second year there are 53 teams. The fact that there are few people who even know what a soccer ball looks like, becomes a problem. Who will coach all these teams? Well the wife with 2 small children and an aunt to care for comes to mind. She can coach a team with her baby in a back pack. Her daughter is on that team of 7 year old boys to make it look like she should be there. Daughter is only 6 and has no interest in playing with boys, so she goes off and picks flowers. Father is busy for his part; he does have a full time job, he coaches 4 teams and he is organizing the league.
In between all of this hub bub, neices and nephews keep getting married, two to three weddings per summer.
Home life must continue in some fashion. Two small children with a gap of 5 years in age creates their own dramas. "He painted my doll?" " I was just operating on it," But add to the mix auntie who takes sides. She has never been to keen on girls, but she loves little boys. Many things will factor into this, but won't be solved until after her death. While she is alive, it just creates STRESS. A stress that she is not willing to suffer in silence.
There are the usual rounds of doctors, meds, and hospital stays. A great extended family helped to care for the children when hospital stays occurred.

The point of all this is simple. (Did I just say that?) We all have stress in our lives, at different times in our lives, caused by different things. How we handle it defines who we are. We all need help from time to time. If you can give the help, thank you. If you can receive the help, please do. It will change your life. If we let ourselves become stressed out, we are no longer any good to ourselves or to others we serve. May God bless all those who serve, in whatever capacity they serve. May they be ever humble in their service and richly rewarded for said service.

Respectfully,

Sissy