If it matters to you, it matters to God.

Something I tell my middle school small group girls often is “If it’s worth worrying about, it’s worth praying about.” It’s a good reminder to them that they should come to Jesus with all the “little” things in their lives – from their math quiz, to their cat’s sore paw, to the crush they have on the boy in their class. Another way of saying it is “If it matters to you, it matters to God.”

But as we all know, it can be one thing to tell others something with conviction, and another thing entirely to believe it yourself. It can be easy to know in your head that something is true, but struggle to actually live like it’s true.

Ever since I was 13 years old, my family has had chickens. They are my mom’s beloved pets mostly, and they are silly and sweet and all have proper ladylike names. One of my favorite things has always been when my mom gets new baby chicks. So when she told me recently that she was going to be ordering four more chicks from a hatchery out-of-state, I immediately made plans to go visit them when they arrived!

According to the hatchery, the chicks were supposed to hatch on a Sunday and be delivered the very next day. But that Sunday rolled around, I asked my mom for an update, and she still hadn’t heard anything. On Monday morning, when she got an alert that they would be delivered to the post office on Wednesday, we started to worry—especially since it turned out that they had hatched and been shipped on Saturday. I’m not sure how much you know about the process of shipping baby chicks, but the longer they are in the mail, the lower the chances are that they’ll all make it alive.

After contacting the post office and the hatchery, my mom related the news to me: the chicks had gotten delayed somehow. No one knew where they were; the only thing they knew for certain was that all the delivery trucks had already come in for the day. The soonest the chicks would arrive was the next day—3 days after they had hatched.

My mom’s text to me was all I could think about after that: “The lady at the hatchery said there’s a chance they will still be ok tomorrow, but who knows? …I’m not sure how I’m going to get through today, much less sleep tonight now. Pray that God sustains them somehow.”

Those poor little chicks. And my poor mom, so full of anxiety, helpless to do anything except wait for the call saying the box had arrived—and not sure what she would find inside. It had happened to her before, and I’d give anything to keep it from happening to her again.

But in the midst of the uncertainty, she’d had the right idea: Pray.

So I prayed for the rest of the day. I told God that I knew asking Him for the lives of 4 baby chickens was a little silly in the grand scheme of things. But I also heard my own voice telling my 6th and 7th graders that even the smallest things that matter to them matter to God, and I realized that I was being forced to decide whether I actually believed it myself. I told Him that I knew He could bring them all there safely if He wanted to. The challenge was believing that He wanted to.

In the end, I simply repeated the words that an anxious father said to Jesus in Mark 9:24: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” I know He’s faithful and good. I have seen Him answer prayers in my own life and in the lives of people around me—had even seen it that very day. I just had to keep telling God that I trusted Him, even if everything in me wanted to believe the worst.

My mom texted me the next morning to say that she had gotten an alert from the post office: the chicks had been delivered, and she was leaving to go pick them up. I prayed even harder for her as she waited for the box to be brought out, asking God to give her peace and comfort no matter what she found. And although I wasn’t sure if it was too late, I kept praying for the lives of those silly little chickens!

After that, I didn’t hear from my mom for a while. I waited anxiously, wondering if that was a good sign or a bad one.

And then, finally, the text came through: “Praise the Lord! I got them! They are all alive. And…there are 5!”

Not only had the chicks beaten the odds and all survived the long trip through the mail, but the hatchery had thrown in an extra.

I’ll admit that I cried happy tears when I read that message and saw the accompanying picture of the FIVE little fluff balls, all huddled together in their shipping box. Isn’t that just like God? He doesn’t only answer our prayers; He surpasses our expectations. It wasn’t even about the chicks anymore. It was about the undeniable sense of God’s kindness, the incontrovertible truth that He really CARES—even about the smallest and “silliest” things.

It was like I could feel Him smiling at me, telling me, “Daughter, don’t you understand? That’s how much I love you.” It wasn’t an earth-shaking revelation. But it was a miracle nonetheless—a miracle in its purest, simplest, most everyday form. I got to go see the chicks that very night, and I couldn’t help thanking Him over and over!

Here’s the Scripture that happened to come up on my mom’s verse-a-day calendar that very day:

“Be at rest once more, O my soul,
 for the Lord has been good to you.”
~ Psalm 116:7

If there’s one statement I could give you, one that I believe even more now, it’s this: God is good, and He truly cares for you. He wants you to come to Him with everything that’s on your mind. Nothing is too small or significant, no situation too hopeless. He’s not just a God of huge, mind-blowing miracles—He’s a God of everyday miracles. 

And sometimes THOSE are the stories we tell for years to come.