God is in the small things

It was meant to take five hours, door to door: it took 19 hours.  James and I were due to return home from Cork on December 19th - Snow-Swept-Saturday!  As a result of the snow, a trip that was already a wee bit challenging, took on a life of its own! 

We spent hours in airports and on the plane (5 of those hours just sitting on the tarmac in Cork Airport), and finding transport from Standstead was impossible. Perhaps it's because of hormones, new-mother-tiredness, or a combination of all the above, but I didn't feel as strong and resilient as I normally do that day. 

Yet traveling with an 8 week old baby wasn't as hard as it could have been: in all the chaos, waiting and crowds, there were so many tiny moments of grace ... a space to breast-feed in privacy in the middle of a crowded airport, strangers who volunteered to carry the pram down flights of stairs to and from the plane, a baby changing room appearing as if from nowhere, and James himself barely cried that day (which is unusual for him!)...

It was the sort of chaotic day I would rather not live through, but there will always be such days: days when everything falls apart, when it's seems so easy to feel alone and vulnerable, when the illusion that we are in control of our lives  is swept aside. 

Looking back on that day now, I see that I wasn't alone.  God was with me, in the small things.  Those small graces were an invitation to surrender to feeling powerless and put my trust beyond myself, to be willing to fall and trust that I would not be hurt. 

I didn't have to do it on my own.  I didn't have to have full control.  I could (and did) pray for help and then - and this was the tricky bit - trust that, when I took the first steps, help would arrive.  And it did - time and time again that day.