Stress in the Family

Hello everybody, this week I am going to be talking about stress in families and how stress can benefit your family. Throughout our lives we will all face many stressful situations and trials that can help change us and our families for the better. It depends on how we respond and react to the situation that will determine how it will affect our lives and our families' lives. In my family, we faced a very stressful situation when we moved from Mesa, Az to Yuma, Az. For a bit of background information, my family has lived in Mesa and Gilbert area since I was born, so we had a bunch of friends, a nice home, and my dad had a good, steady job. Slowly, his job became more and more demanding, and he was able to spend less and less time with us. This was very hard on my whole family, so he began looking at different jobs. Places all over the country. This began to place a lot of stress on my parents because they didn't want to upend our lives and move so far away from everyone and everything that we knew. It wasn't until my mom talked to my grandma, and she began expressing how she wanted us to move down to Yuma, Arizona so that she could retire and have my dad take over the family business. This was the last thing we wanted to do, because my mom grew up in Yuma and always swore she never wanted to live there again, my dad didn't really want to work in the family business, and me and my siblings didn't want to live there just because we didn't want to go somewhere boring like Yuma. As a result of that, my family as a whole kept praying about where we should go, and we all kept getting the answer to move to Yuma. So, within a few months, we sold our house and moved down to Yuma. When we first got there, my siblings and I were so nervous about starting at new schools, making new friends, and living in a completely different environment and lifestyle. For all that we knew, we were moving down to a ghetto border town. Luckily it wasn't as ghetto as I had thought it was. It was really hard at first having to adjust from our previous situation to our current one. However, slowly, week after week, and month after month, we realized how good this truly was for our family. We received so many blessings and opportunities that we wouldn't have had if we stayed where we were at or if we had gone somewhere else. One thing was that when my Abuelita was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Even though we were all heartbroken about this news, I know that my whole family is so grateful that we got to spend that precious time with her. Another thing was with COVID-19. Because of my dad's current job, he was able to stay open during the Pandemic whereas his old job he would have been let go. So, because of the move, our family luckily didn't have to face as many financial struggles. So, even though my family faced many trials and struggles with this move, in the end, we ended up being blessed because we listened to God and had faith in him. I know that when we listen to his promptings and guidance that we can be guided through stressful times and that these hard things that we will go through in life will help us to grow and become better people.