Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a parent who is inundated with the behaviors and requests of their children? It’s like trying to locate the queen bee in a hive of crazy. Nobody is concerned about or can comprehend what’s being said, focus is going in a million directions, and the constant buzz is enough to drive everyone in and outside of the hive crazy.

This past weekend I witnessed my friend, Jamie, at the heart of her own wild hive. We were hanging out at a friend’s shop, and for some unknown-to-our-children reason trying to have a conversation.

While Jamie balanced her son on one leg, her daughter traipsed passed walking her baby doll by the hair. Without warning, the baby doll leapt onto Jamie’s vacant leg and began marching up her arm and then rested on her head. Shortly there after, Jamie’s husband asked her about something he couldn’t remember, and she replied calmly with whatever he needed to know. Barely skipping a beat, Jamie continued on with our conversation. After finishing her sentence to me, she politely asked her daughter to take the doll to play somewhere else. Her daughter’s response, “But I need you to be my jungle gym.”

Well, there you had it.

Jamie was needed.

She was a comfy place to sit for her son, reference library for her husband, an apparatus for her daughter’s baby doll activities, and a hub of conversation for me.

We all have those times where we feel like we are stretched too thin or buried under a mountain of must do’s, but the cool thing about being needed is that we are blessed enough to be the ones who makes all those mountains move. The challenge is facing the flood of demands with grace and collectively compacting our stressors in ways that are healthy, productive, and positive.

Just as Jamie carried on with her role as the “World’s Best Mom-Chair-Library-Playground-Socialite”, we all have it in us to be gracious, caring, and humorous. As you take on multiple roles today, I encourage you to put energy into embracing all the imperative issues swarming around and feel grateful for the blessings of being needed.

It’s okay to step back and slow the stream of demands by focusing on the most pressing first or giving yourself a moment to reset your reactions by taking a deep breath or saying a prayer. I’m certain you can be the queen (or king) bee of whatever hive you rule, if you just remember to feel gratitude and pride in each demand and all the things that come with being wonderful, awesome, intelligent, slightly-swamped you.

By: Melanie A. Peters

P.S. No insult was intended when I called you the “queen bee.”