The Blessings of Stress, Part 1 of 2

I've been feeling very stressed out lately, as you can tell by the drop in my postings.  I will begin with a litany of complaints, but bear with me.  This post is not a complete pity-party, I promise. 

Life is busy, busy, busy.  This past weekend I was hopping from Friday night to Sunday night, nonstop it felt like.  The schedule looked like this:

Friday night:

• Date night with my girlfriend celebrating her birthday.  We went to our favorite restaurant, and caught a chick flick: "Eat Pray Love", rolling home by 11:30pm.

Saturday: 

• Got up at 6:20am to get to Barley's soccer tournament game at 8:00am
• Stuck around for game 2 in the hottest weekend of the year, finally rolling home by 12:30
• Ran to mall for birthday gift, home to wrap it and get Barley ready...
• to attend friend's birthday party at 2pm
• Arranged for Teddy to go swimming with a friend at the same time.  Pool turned out to be closed, so Teddy's friend's father took them to the water slide park at Golfland instead.  
• I sewed some fundraiser items for a bit, then went to collect Barley from the party
• Teddy was dropped off
• Arranged dinner (have no recollection of what that was now)
• we all cleaned the house in preparation for the next day's activities.  This weekend is unbearably hot, and we are all exhausted by the end of the day.

Sunday:

• Got up 6:00am sharp to get to Barley's soccer tournament again, trying to be on time this time as the coach scolded us all for being late to warmup, after which the boys played like slugs Saturday morning. 
• Got showers this time.  
• Home by 12:30 again, just in time to...
• Rinse off Barley and get him changed before our guests arrive for
• The monthly Dungeons and Dragons game starting at 1:00pm.
• I am now free to meet a friend who is selling her scrapbooking tools, and 
• Buy the extra birthday presents I should have bought yesterday while I was at the store already.  
• Home to sort all the new papers, and 
• Make dinner for 7, and try to clean up after.  
• Boys get full showers after guests leave, and we all collapse into bed exhausted, AGAIN.

Yes, a completely insane weekend.  We survived it, but are all tired.  As I try to figure out in my head what we are doing wrong with our lives that our weekends are so out of control, it occurs to me that my thinking may be in the wrong direction.  Yes, we need to monitor and evaluate to be sure we are not over-committing.  But every family will have convergences in their schedule, where everything seems to happen at once.

What I was missing as I mused about what was "wrong" was what was "right" about all this.  The reason we were so harried and stressed, was because our lives are so rich in blessings.  (smack forehead over stupidity of perspective!)

As hectic as it all was, I can count the following blessings in the insanity of the weekend. I could come up with more given time and energy:

1. I have a wonderful girlfriend to have dinner and see movies with
2. We are financially sound enough that the above does not stress me out 
3. Barley has found a sport he does well in, and has a great coach and team that he has been part of since he was 5 years old!
4. Heat was easier to play in than cold rain
5. Both my boys have friends who like them enough to invite them to birthday parties and swimming.  The birthday party was literally next to our house--how much of a bummer would it have been had he NOT been invited?!
6. Everyone pitched in to clean the house, with minimal grumbling
7. We had one win Sunday morning.  More would have been better, but we had at least one.
8. The boys have 3 friends who like to play D&D with them, and their parents are supportive
9. DH is a great Dungeon Master, willing to put in all the time to create the scenarios for them
10. I have friends who share my hobbies, etc.

I could go on...and I will tomorrow.  This is enough for now.