it was something we do on a very normal basis: pile in the car and head out to run errands as a family. yesterday it was to get kenny's annual haircut. he wanted to boys to see him get his haircut to show them that haircuts, in fact, do not hurt. rowan and sawyer seem to think that having your hairs cut shorter involves pain. they cry and scream when we try to cut their very straight (and very hard to cut) hair. of course, watching their daddy get his hair cut doesn't always work. and it didn't yesterday either.

on the way home, the boys and i were chatting about dinner: i told them i had chicken waiting to be cooked, and they responded with their typical response, "i don't like dinner. i want a snack!"

about 6 miles from home, the dreaded "thump-thump" was heard first by kenny, then by me. we had a flat tire. it was darkish, cold, and snowy. kenny was insistent on changing the tire himself (what guy wouldn't insist?).

we pulled over to the most level ground possible (this is hard to do in western pennsylvania. there are hills on the hills here), and he opened the back of the van and proceeded to find the jack and spare tire. it was then that adam decided to scream. i pulled him out of his carseat and found a banana in the diaper bag from a car trip earlier in the day and started to feed him. it satiated him for about 3 minutes. he was mad. kenny was struggling to remove the spare tire from the back due to some "poor engineering." and then...God sent his hands.

i'm not one to say that angels are watching and protecting us. i never got into the widespread love affair the world had with angels a few years back. i know God speaks of angels, but i don't think we fully understand them if we describe them only as "passed loved ones that watch after us." we are to be the hands and feet of christ on earth. this is why i think the man who stopped his car and asked if we needed help wasn't an angel. and he might not even believe in jesus. who cares? but he got the tire out of the poorly engineered back of the van (he used to work in a garage), and started to jack up the car. hooray! five more minutes and we'd be on our way again.

at which point the jack broke. in half.

this is when God sent his feet. a man wearing the coolest trucker hat (it had a built-in light on the front of it) pulled up behind the man already helping us. he said he had a bigger jack a few miles away and he'd return with it in 10 minutes. adam was inconsolable at this point. the only thing that we didn't try yet was to walk him around outside. kenny bundled him in his blanket and walked him outside while he and the first man waited for the built-in-light-on-his-hat-man to return. adam was happy as a clam on the outside of the van.

i am truly impressed with how many people stopped and asked if we needed anything. there were, of course, drivers who passed us by (a few even waved!), but several stopped and asked if they could help.

i am also truly impressed with the way my older boys handled the situation. they sang songs with me and talked about dinner some more. i promised them they could have anything they wanted to eat at this point. of course they chose to have cereal for dinner. their favorite food in the world.

the second man (with the cool hat) returned, just as he promised, and the spare tire was on within 5 minutes flat (no pun intended). we returned home, gave the boys cereal, crackers, apples, and cookies for dinner while kenny and i cracked open a bottle of red.

i know what you're thinking. it was only a flat tire. what is the big deal? i guess it's the little things that make it a bigger deal to me than it was. it could have been worse: we could have blown a tire on the highway and lost control of the car. i could have been alone with the boys. nobody could have pulled over to help us. the boys could have been sick and irritable.

God sends his hands and feet in any form and in any problem. No matter how small.