It's the little things

Sarah Bessey challenged us to write, quickly and without thinking about it too much, what's saving us right now. (Oh, my gosh, I'm such a tech flunkie, I don't even know how to link properly. Here's the site: http://sarahbessey.com/in-which-we-are-saved-synchroblog/) For me, it's not one thing (although as a mom who's debating weaning her almost three year old, I completely identify with what's saving her right now: nursing her sweet little girl, seeing those precious cheeks, those eyes looking back up at you) but a number of small things.

It's that email I received from one of my true "bosom friends" in response to a frustrated, I-can't-do-anything-right rant I'd sent her early in one morning. She said she was right there with me, understood exactly what I was saying, and ended with this clencher: "You are doing a great job. I know you are because I know you." Oh. Thank you, God, for sending her into my life so many years ago!

It's the new posts I get in my inbox from places like Deeper Story, Sarah Bessey, sheloves, and others (again, excuse the lack of hyperlinks; I'm very new at this...also, Kathy Escobar, I miss you! Please come back!) that remind me that I am not alone. I am not the only person neither boycotting nor stocking up at Chick-fil-A. I am not the only one who knows who she is in Christ but still wonders if she's doing anything useful at all.

It's that Michael W. Smith's "Go West, Young Man" came on Pandora yesterday. Really. First man I had a crush on. He so rocked (and still does, of course, but I've got my own personal rock star now with whom I am completely enamored). I can remember, right this second, sitting in my booster seat in the back seat of my Mom's 1980's model Nissan Sentra, studying every section of the little booklet that came in that tape. He knew how to rock a color blocked jacket (though I hope he won't try bringing the trend back anytime soon) and...was it cowboy boots?

It's sitting on my Olivia's bed with her after a long day at work, making a flower design out of her new set of sparkly headbands that Daddy bought her. Did you know you can make the letter "S" by putting two headbands together, just so? She didn't either. She thought I was a genius!

And lastly, it's that deep, abiding knowledge that I AM is big enough. That no matter my doubts, my worries, my tiredness, my confusion, my tears, my anger, my joy, God is bigger than it all but also encompasses it all, is within and without it all. It's that gut feeling that I heard and felt, loud and clear, this morning, driving down that long two lane road between corn fields, "I AM big enough!"