When my family got together a couple of weeks ago to bowl, I requested the song Stressed Out by Twenty One Pilots. Of course, they never did end up playing the song before we left which seriously caused me to be a little stressed out. LOL. My baby brother Luke gave me some crap about my song selection. He chided me a bit about being stressed out all of the time. He told me that being stressed out was a choice.

This is where I retorted back, “Just wait!” You know that little comment that other people make when they are a little further down the road in life. Like the time that I thought that my toddler wouldn’t throw a temper tantrum in the grocery store over candy like my friend’s child did. Ha, ha just wait your days are coming she said. They sure did. So I am bottling up Luke’s comment to give back to him when he has teenagers. You know, when I am an empty nester and he is in the throes of raising teens. Just wait!

Yes, my life is stressful! I don’t seem to have a lot of control over that right now. I am trying to run a business with my husband. I am raising three teens and trying to be an involved parent. In my spare time I am training for a marathon. Oh, not to mention trying to write a blog everyday. All while maintaining a clean house, staying up on all of the laundry, and trying to keep some shred of sanity.

Luke was a very difficult child. His role as the youngest sibling was to make sure that my autistic brother Matt did not get all of the attention. And he entertained us! When Luke was a little boy, he got angry at my dad and cut the live wire to my dad’s electronics almost electrocuting himself. He also kicked a big hole in the wall. When he was a teenager, he played a round of co-ed strip volleyball in the front yard. But my personal favorite was when he rolled around in the front yard wrestling with my dad for the car keys. My dad had chest pains and spent the evening in the ER. It all ended well. My brother was a wild child. You wouldn’t know that by looking at him now. He is very serious. The running joke is that he became serious and I became wild. But we won’t talk about that now!

My mother did her due diligence to make sure that she prayed that my brother has children just like him. Now he has two daughters. The oldest is serious like he is now. But the youngest is quite the firecracker. She is a wild child. She screams when she doesn’t get her way. She has a very impressive high pitched scream. She tells it like it is without a filter. She is bossy. She loves to be the center of attention. She makes us laugh.  And she just made a list of four boys that she is going to kiss when she is old enough. I just can’t wait.

So someday when I am living the life of leisure and my brother has teenagers I am going to tell him that he is in control of how much stress he is under. Just wait!!