Just as I as finishing up mowing my lawn yesterday afternoon, Corissa walks out to me with the phone in her hand. It was Michael calling the bullpen to see if he could bring in the relief mower. Turns out his mower isn’t as young as it used to be, and mowing the whole yard just turned out to be too much for it to tackle. So he headed on over to borrow our mower to finish the job… which should’ve been a simple thing, since he lives about 45 seconds away in rush hour.
About two minutes later, he pulls up in front of my house (he must have taken the scenic route). We load up the mower in the back of his Tahoe and I start heading in for my shower and dinner… when I hear a strange click type sound. Turning around to investigate, I discover that his truck is deader than a doornail – which is an expression I’ve never really understood, but I’ll use it anyway… I mean, what point is there in comparing something to a doornail anyway?
But since Michael and I are such handy, manly men, it seemed like a simple enough deal. Just pull out my truck, hook up the jumper cables and he’d be on his way. But after about 30 minutes of trying that approach, it turned out his battery was in cahoots (I’m just full of fun expressions today, aren’t I?) with the lawnmower and wasn’t cooperating in the least. So we decided that we needed to head on over to Pep Boys and get him a new battery. So after what should have been a simple lawnmower loan grew into a 2 hour delight, we finally got him on his way with a new battery.
Now, I titled this post It’s the Little Things, and there has to be a reason, right? Well, knowing me, of course there is, and it’s this: In the midst of what could very easily have been construed as frustrating evening, I saw a lot of blessings. The first was that we live close enough together that coming over to borrow a lawnmower, or anything else for that matter, is possible…. blessing number one. We had the resources to fairly easily solve the problem of both the dead mower and the dead battery… blessing numbers two and three. The Tahoe died in front on my house, instead of on some busy highway or even worse, when Julie was out in the middle of nowhere by herself… blessing number four. The list could go one, but by now I think you’re getting the idea.
My point is simply that so often we overlook the little things… the almost invisible blessings we get everyday. Sometimes we are so busy either looking for the huge blessings or blinded by the little frustrations that we miss the blessings all around us. Just imagine how much happier we would all be if we could recognize and be thankful for the little things more often…
