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DISCLAIMER: I feel inclined to share my family's situation since I know I recently posted something similar to this on Twitter, though I doubt this was the catalyst for this particular Cubbing Minute.

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The first thing I learned at my first Scouting related training?

"If you're the glue that holds your unit together, you're doing it wrong."

I didn't truly understand it until this past fall, though.  (I still owe thanks to Shawn and my amazing Unit Commissioner for helping me through THAT nightmare.) 

At this point I'm not exactly superfluous, but I can step away for a week or two (or four as was the case with Wood Badge responsibilities) and things ran JUST FINE.  Oh sure, my fat ego would like to believe things are better if I'm there, but when the time comes for me to move in a different direction in Scouting, the Pack will survive and thrive without me.

All that being said…

The troop situation is horribly, miserably bad right now.  I can't even begin to explain how heartsick I am over the issue.

My husband has spent almost a year trying unsuccessfully to get adults replaced after their kids have aged out of the program or as parents have grown weary or moved on to other things.   My husband finally reached his breaking point when he attended the August Committee meeting with ideas and suggestions on how to revive the dying troop.  He was told, "Everything's fine.  We have plenty of time to figure this out."

Recharters are due soon.  They haven't figured it out.  There aren't enough adults stepping forward to recharter as of this writing.

There's so much more to the story, but no sense airing dirty laundry.  The gist is this: each person must take responsibility to replace him or herself or at least to train someone else to step in an emergency. Important paperwork (especially Advancement stuff!) needs to be available to more than one person JUST IN CASE.   If one person fails to create such a safety net, a unit can usually pull things together.  If three or four volunteers leave a gap, things are going to get very difficult.

In the end, when my oldest son said, "I want to go do Venturing instead."  My husband took that as his cue to move on in that direction with his volunteering time.  It was a hard decision, but sometimes sticking with a sinking ship isn't courageous, it's just wasteful.