Miracles

We needed one didn’t we? We needed that old man who was lost for days in the cold to find himself into an abandoned million dollar home and fix himself some food and go to sleep in a comfy bed after he’d changed into warm, dry clothes. After so many cancer deaths and tragic accidents have taken people who were way too young to die, we just needed one friggin’ miracle.

You know what a miracle is don’t you? It’s when the ultimate good wins. It’s when life is stronger than death. It’s when the seemingly impossible becomes a reality and the experts are wrong.

This last month has been four weeks of miracles for me, one after another after another. It’s been terrific. After running into so many walls and parked cars my nose was flat, I’ve experienced the unfolding of new opportunities I never would have imagined coming to fruition. In a heartbeat that which was negative has turned on a dime into that which is so life giving it gives me a whole new to do list.

I’ve experienced many miracles in my life. Mainly they have been healings. Other times the miracles have been relational. Sometimes they are just experiences that happened when they ought not to have.

We call them Kairos moments. That means, ‘God is in charge’ moments. There’s a popular praise song that goes, ‘You are God and I am not’. I know that flies in the face of people who think there is God in all of us. I think there is divine in all of us, but the biggest part of God is received only if I am willing to be open to miracles.

My four kids are all miracles. Their births were miracles, their adoptions were miracles, their lives as adults are miracles. This month is birthday month. Youngest daughter was this past Sunday. Ten days later, all in one week, is youngest son, oldest son, oldest daughter. I’m really sad every year they are too old and busy with their own lives to go back to the hospitals where they were born on the morning of the birth celebration like we did when they were kids. You can feed a family of six for under twenty dollars at a hospital cafeteria dontchaknow.

I had this column all written on their names and how they came to be and what they mean, but this week it seemed more appropriate to talk about the miracle of being alive.

I heard a lecture one time on physical miracles. The doctor, who was a leprosy expert, talked about what it took for us to bend and unbend our fingers to bend.... ‘A true miracle.’

There are two things we can do to participate more fully in the miracles waiting to bless us. We can get out of our own way and we can grow more comfortable with being uncomfortable. When we stop doing the activities of self sabotage and degradation the chances of a miracle increase. Seriously. Then, when you have stopped hurting yourself or medicating yourself, you can hear, feel, and respond to the urge of the Spirit.

For example, I’ve had this book I’ve known I was to write for the last , oh, since 1994. I decided I was going to confess to my accountability groups ( two small groups of women professionals) that I had been avoiding it. They said, ‘Buck up and sit down and write’. So… I pop out five handwritten pages. Bingo….three days later there’s so much going on in my life I can hardly handle it. It’s called ‘The Dove is a Dragon and My Feet are on Fire" and it’s about the gap between church and faith and the new millennium. I’ll try to get it finished fast and self publish so you can read it and tell me what you think.

Then there was the sugar thing. For years I’ve heard, ‘give up added sugar’. So… same thing… obedience and bang…. three miracles in a row in consecutive days.

That second part about growing more comfortable being uncomfortable is the other important thing. When new things happen to you, good or ill, it’s going to be uncomfortable for a while until the new is assimilated into the regular, the typical, the normal. Good stress is still stress.

I’m hoping you get a few miracles headed your way. It’s a breath of fresh air to get a win, a ‘yes’ answer, instead of ‘but if not’…

In this lovely midwinter thaw moment, let your soul soak up the possibilities of miracles the same way your face turns toward the sun in the brief respites from rain.

Love,
Deborah