Enjoying Life Even When Things Are Stressful

At the beginning of September, I got to be part of my best friend’s surprise proposal. She thought we were just going to take her graduation pictures, but little did she know that she would be driving home as an engaged woman! How exciting right? Here are some of the picture from the day:

After the proposal, we all decided to start driving home since we all had a several hour drive ahead of us, and it was starting to get dark.

As we were making our way down the one way gravel road, all the cars in front of us came to a halt. A tow truck was blocking our way.

A truck was parked in a ditch, and they needed to tow it out. The bad news? They said it was going to take 3 hours for them to tow it out. And, the tow truck wasn't going to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Cars started piling up behind us, and we all became stuck. There was no cell service. The road was tight. It became dark quickly. All of the sunset watchers were trying to leave the park just like we were.

Luckily, we all somehow were able to back all the way up to turn around about a .5 a mile down the road to go the other direction. (I had Elliott backup my car, and he did a great job!)

If we chose to continue going the other direction opposite of the tow incident, it would be a 2 hour detour through the forest to get to the nearest town in TN. Our car and our friend's car was coming short on gas, and our phones were stuck in data roaming mode. The situation wasn't looking good for any of us, and our tummies were rumbling.

After we went down the road a bit to get away from the traffic, we parked our cars to strategize.

We had two options. We could either drive 2 hours on a road we weren't familiar with to possibly run out of gas before we could make the entire trip. Or, would we wait it out for the tow truck to move. The time was now 8:30 PM.

We all decided that we would wait it out.

Caleb needed to call his parents and update them about the proposal. If he didn't call them, they'd get worried and possibly have the police come out to look for us. That was the last thing we needed.

We decided that we should walk around to see if we could find any hint of cell service, so he could contact his family. There had to be cell service somewhere right?

As we were walking, we all stumbled upon a dock in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. We went to go check it out. As we approached the end of the dock, all we could see was beauty. The stars were beautiful. It was serene. There wasn't anyone in sight except for us. Instead of continuing to stress, we turned on some tunes to slow dance under the stars. It was great. After we all danced, my friend Juju and I stood at the end of the dock looking at the reflection of the stars across the water. We couldn't believe how stressed we all were just moments before.

Fast forward an hour: the tow truck left early, and we were all able to get out to make it back to town to get some late night waffle house.

The moral of the story? You can find beauty in life even if stress is surrounding you. During this time, we were stressed to the brim about leaving. We were hungry. We were worried about gas. We were cold. We could've spent the entire time stressed and missed out on what was right in front of us. The stars. Extra time with a group of phenomenal friends. A beautiful wedding proposal that we had just witnessed a few hours earlier. It took us just stopping to find the beauty in the mess to realize that life wasn’t so bad for us after all.