Grace in Small Things #1

By pure "chance" I came across a website called Grace in Small Things on a blog I visited momentarily. The concept of living life day to day, moment by moment, grace by grace has become very important to me lately as I've realized the necessity of living in the Present rather than the unchangeable Past or unseeable Future. The concept of grace itself has also become newly precious, and related Godtracks have sprung up all over the place. So it makes sense to practice finding grace in small things, the daily happenings and realities that are too easily overlooked: the gifts that we do not earn but are given anyway. GiST challenges its members to list five examples of grace every day; I think I might just do so as the whim takes me--but at least once a week. So here goes!

1. Not such a small thing, but nevertheless: I did not crash last night. The "smaller" piece of grace (besides the larger one of no injury to myself or others) is that just yesterday afternoon my faithful Saturn Vue ticked over its odometer to that dreaded number 100,000. As in, the remaining value of the car just dropped like a stone and it is now definitely worth less than I still owe on it. And I still have one year of payments remaining. So if it had been crunched, it's all too possible that the car would have been considered "totalled."(1)

2. A travel mug of coffee hot from the French press, brewed by my beloved mother, ready to grab on my way out the door.

3. Spare pairs of pants and underwear for DramaBoy from school to replace those he soaked with his juice box on the way in this morning. Even if the "pants" are a pair of weird sage green leggings. They look kinda cute tucked in his Spider Man rain boots (which he's wearing because his Spider Man sneakers are AWOL and I didn't want to send him in his good church loafers.)

4. More fresh-brewed coffee, flavored this time, from the Color Guard Booster Moms who set up shop inside the front door at school. I stop there every day--can't beat a lovely cuppa for a buck, especially when they know me well and will extend "credit" when I don't have cash on me, like this morning.

5. My faithful MP3 player coming to the rescue when I couldn't get Pandora (2) to stream well because our Internet access is so horrible lately. Music helps me get more done during my prep hour, even when the Internet isn't cooperating and my "work" suffers as a result.

There we go! Oh, by the way, turns out the camera uses a proprietary USB cord that is currently in ComputerDaddy's possession, so pictures will have to wait until I can get the cord to download the pictures. Patience. (For me, not just you!)

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(1) I changed this word to "traveled" due to Eric's challenge, then changed it back. As Kathleen pointed out, this is the European spelling. Which is why spell check didn't catch it. And since I am, of course, cultured and travelled and all that, I'm sticking with the two l's, cuz I thinks it looks better. So there.

(2) Pandora, if you haven't found it already, is an absolutely WONDERFUL website that allows you to create your own music "stations" based around songs and/or artists you like. It's like satellite radio without commercials, but streams online. Pandora plays songs/artists on each station that match the style and genre of the ones you enter. You can then find out more about the songs and artists as well as "train" Pandora by indicating which songs you like or don't. It's a wonderful way to discover artists you've never heard before, too.