little things from the big guy

Sometimes it is the little things that remind me how much Heavenly Father is watching out for me. Take this morning for example: 

I was on the Quint (ladder) at work functioning as a firefighter. Firefighting makes me nervous on all sorts of levels, one of them being that I am afraid of being the last one in my turnout gear and on the apparatus therefore holding up the boys and the time it takes to get out of the station and to the fire. A minute can make the difference to what # truck you are on the scene. Later on the scene = Less fun you get to have. 

This anxiety triples A: when I am in the shower (time delay toweling off and putting cloths on) and B: at night. The boys bunkroom (and the whole station) has neighboring county's tones and dispatch streaming 24/7 so we can get a jump on the fires instead of waiting for the 2-3 minute delay for our dispatch to tell us about it. I cannot sleep with all the noise at night, so I turn it off in the girls bunkroom. So at night the boys would be able to hear the county dispatching us and wake up to run out to the Quint, and I would be snoozing for three extra minutes until our dispatch notified us of it. And with the promise of a fire that three minutes would seem like three days and the boys would be waiting on me to get up and out and into turnout gear and that would not make them happy. And it would make me embarrassed.

I have a point. Just after 5am this morning I woke up for no reason. I went to the bathroom. (Another one of my fears is having to pee while fighting a fire, not being able to hold it anymore and going in my gear.) I laid back down to go back to sleep and not more that 5 minutes later I hear a bunch of tones go off, familiar tones, so not being asleep yet my ears perked up (I can still hear the hallway speaker through the bunkroom door but it is faint). Yep, we were going on the house fire. So I bolted straight up and jumped out of bed. Pulled my pants on and speed-walked down the hallway and out to the Quint. The boys were right on my tail (how do they do that?) and we were off. 

I was so grateful that I happened to have woken up to pee (and get that out of my system) just before the county's tones happened to have gone off so I happened to be awake to hear them and get out there the same time as the boys. I know it is not a coincidence though, it didn't happen to happen. I know that Heavenly Father watches out for me. And I know that He is aware of my fears and concerns, as stupid as they may be, and I know that He sends me little bundles of help when I need them. I am sure they are much more abundant than I recognize, but this morning I recognized it. So I just wanted to thank the big guy for the little things He does for me every day.