It’s here. We’ve been in it for the last couple weeks. It’s draining us, it’s stretching us thin,
it’s hard and sad and exciting and mostly exhausting.

It is the end of summer.

If your family is anything like ours, then you might be stretched thin.

Schedules have long gone out the window, everyone is a little bit cranky, a lot over tired, and if I hear, “I’m bored” one. more. time.

I can’t. I mean, I literally can’t.

I am already the lady who hasn’t showered in days, but I am on the cliff’s edge of becoming the lady who breaks down in the grocery store because I went there to stock up on the kids chips for school lunches and they are already out.

Over here at our house we are each struggling with own issues, emotions, frustrations, excitement, and yes boredom. We are charged with energy and no outlet which means we are rubbing up against each other and causing toxic friction.

When this happens in our home, I notice we struggle with not being able to see past our own need.

I need a fun adventure. I need something to do. I need school to start. I need a better attitude. I need everyone else to have a better attitude. I need people to understand me. I need people to help me out around here.

We feel stretched thin and so we have little to give and even less understanding for others outside of ourselves. We are holding on by a thread.

If this is you, like it is me, then I want to pass along the advice my mother gave me a long time ago,  “When everything starts to become crazy out of control, and you feel unseen, or unheard, or stretched thin, or you maybe even start to think only of yourself, that is when it is time to do something nice for someone else. It’s time to gain perspective.”

So here I sit, at the end of my rope, pulling my hair out, needing school to start and feeling like I am running out of time to get everything done.

This is the moment. This is the moment that as I am buying school supplies for my kids, I buy a few extra folders and pencil packs and donate them to a family in need.

The moment I splurge and hit a drive thru coffee shop is when I buy the frazzled parent behind me their coffee too.

This the moment that I double our dinner recipe and invite friends over or walk it down to a neighbor just because.

Or as I harvest food from my garden, I donate some of it to the local food shelf, or senior citizen home in my neighborhood.

If my kids need a project, this is the moment I have them write letters for the troops or bake cookies for the fire department.

The options are endless, but what I have found to be true, is that this frazzled moment is the one where in giving to someone else, I find energy, peace and joy. I find I am not as stretched thin as I thought I was, because when I busy passing on kindness, it’s effect starts with me.

Odds are, you and I aren’t the only ones at the end of our ropes.