It’s funny how the small things add up into something so much greater.  This shouldn’t surprise me, as I teach my girls their addition facts, but on days like today you notice how it starts to accumulate.

It starts very early with crying, whining, complaining, and attitude.  And it starts with my beloved giving his Blackberry a coffee bath on the way home from the gym.  I give him my Blackberry and am left with no phone for the day, except his office phone, because both of our home phones are dead.  As in no-longer-able-to-be-charged dead.  He’s left with the use of a phone, but none of the data that he needs, like client phone numbers or addresses.  We’re reminded of the importance of backing up our phone data.  *sigh*

There are more struggles as we push through the school day and then I get a call from the ballet teacher that second child’s class has been canceled due to low enrollment and she needs to move to a Monday/Wednesday rotation for the school year.  That makes four nights a week at the ballet studio and four nights a week of anything for kids is a point I never wanted to get to, especially when they are still in grade school.  I try not to cry while I’m on the phone (Matt’s office phone) with the ballet instructor.

I contemplate calling Matt and figure it can wait until he gets home.  Then I get a call from him on the home phone, which is dead, but the answering machine works.  “Honey, I’ve been in a wreck.  I’m okay, but I need you to call my next appointment and tell them I won’t be there.  I think the guy that hit me is having a heart attack.” The girls and I take hands and pray.

I feel completely beaten by this day.  It’s not that anything huge happened.  Matt was not injured.  We did not get a call from a doctor saying one of us is terminally ill.  Our house is still standing.  Everything, in the grand scheme of things, is fine.  But it’s the little things of life that wear you down.  And this day has been one giant inconvenience of little things.

Except for two bright spot little things.  A sweet friend who sent me a text after all this happened and offered to come over and watch our kids so Matt and I could go out.  I cried.  I had to turn her down because Matt had meetings and Grace had ballet.  But sometimes, it truly is the thought that counts.

And just now, other friends stopped by with an apple pie.  Just because.

God is good.  He carries us on the days when the big things hit us and on days when the little ones threaten to overwhelm us.  He sees me.  He sees us.  He will get us through Matt having a broken phone and a broken truck, or maybe no truck at all.  He will get us through the decisions about ballet and schedules.  He will get us through bad attitudes and hard days.  He will carry us on the wings of His grace and the unexpected kindnesses of friends.