It was just an ordinary morning filled with extraordinary little moments. That happens when I step out of myself and into the flow of the day, heart full of God’s Word, eyes and ears open, watching, listening.

If there hadn’t been a lakefront full of smelly dead fish (that Fannie had a fancy for) I would not have decided to go to Riverside Park instead on that crisp, breezy, blue sky, summer morning.

If I hadn’t lost my cap as we walked (my favorite cap), I wouldn’t have turned back to retrace our steps.

If Fannie hadn’t decided to stop and lay down at just that moment—if I had made her walk instead—I wouldn’t have been in the right spot at the right time to hear, “Miss Debbie!” and I wouldn’t have been able to catch up with my sweet former ballet student, Halea, who I often think about, just as she was picking up Thai food. I hadn’t seen her in years. How I loved that girl from day one!

And I wonder, what if our best lives happen in the smallest unplanned moments when we let go of our best planned daily agendas?

Because the more I do, the more I find that my eyes and ears are open to what is taking place around me in my ordinary life, and can hardly believe the little glades of sunlight and flowers I find along the way, regardless of how good or bad my day might be going. The more I follow, the more I find life taking me in the direction of the places and people I love and want to be with.

I used to wonder how amazing things just seemed to happen to certain truly amazing people.

“Debbie, it’s all God’s Story,” Nancy, one truly amazing friend, said to me. “All we have done is to ask God what His plan is each day. God leads, equips and makes life interesting. Every Christian should have a story worth telling.”

Do I?

“God doesn’t need us,” her husband Marc said. “The thing He does though is open up a space for us to be needed.” That’s when it becomes God’s story. And that’s a story worth sharing (like theirs).

It took a lot of hard knocks to learn that I could plan my day and then let it go God’s way. Once I began to trust just that, life hasn’t been the same since. How do I explain that to people when they ask, “What’s on your agenda for the day?”

What if all we need to do is ask God what His plans are each morning then let go and let Him lead? I guess I don’t believe in coincidences anymore. I believe in a “God who so loved the world…” Nancy says that’s the part of John 3:16 we often brush past.

He so loves us.

Marc, who was a preacher for sixty years, says that one day it won’t be a pastor giving the sermon. It will be people telling their stories that people can relate to, their testimonies of how God transformed their lives.

That morning, I thought it was odd I couldn’t find my cap. I’d stopped to take pictures and figured it had fallen out of my pocket, I even looked on the heads of the kids at the swing sets. But I couldn’t find it.

As Fannie and I walked home, I kept thinking I saw it, shadows were deceiving.

Maybe you can imagine, it had been a wonderful walk, but finding that silly cap was like icing on the cake! And that’s the best way I can describe the feeling I have in the small ordinary moments of my days as I surrender to one big extraordinary God.

One hat found!

One happy girl.