It's a Miracle!

It’s a Miracle!

Dear Deb,

Ever since I can remember, I have loved magic. As a little girl, I ooohed and ahhhed the loudest when a magician would dig deep into his top hat and pull out miles of vibrant silk scarves. How did he fit so many scarves in his tall black hat? How did he tie all those knots with me watching him so closely? I loved the mystery of it all!

Over the years I’ve learned to catch the sleight of hand when a magician palms a red spongy ball, and more than once I’ve caught him slipping the gold coin into his heavily starched cuff. It feeds my ego to catch the trick, but it also makes me sad to lose the mystery that delighted me as a young girl.

Thank God for miracles! Miracles are unexplainable, and no one can ever catch their trick—miracles seem natural, yet they contradict nature as we know it. Maybe that’s why so many people have a hard time believing what they see and instead choose doubt over awe. Not me. I’ve seen an eagle with his beady amber eyes soar a hundred feet above a spring-fed lake and swoop down to catch a pickerel mini ding his own business a foot under the surface of the darkest waters. I’ve seen tiny crocus buds with lavender petals soft as a baby’s eyelash birth their way through wet, crusty snow. Miracles both.

Perhaps miracles are supposed to tickle the child in us to remind us that mystery is magic. What greater mystery than making a blind man see? Or feeding five thousand hungry people with only five loaves of bread? Today when I read the stories of Jesus’ miracles, I don’t ask how he did it, and I don’t search for a logical explanation like I did with those illusion makers of my childhood. My faith tells me Jesus did it because he is God. Mystery? Yes. But as Einstein said, the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

Miracles are also one of God’s ways of getting our attention. I know he got mine. It’s a miracle I’m here.

Two people have tried to kill me. The first person was my mother. When she discovered at eighteen years old she was pregnant with me, the shame for a good Catholic girl was crushing. She felt her only option was to throw herself down a flight of concrete stairs to kill the baby. Mom was battered and bruised, but my teeny heart continued to beat. The second person who tried to end my life was me. Twenty-seven years later, I was in the same situation as Mom. Different circumstances, but still felt like I was out of options. On a rainy Sunday night, I made a plan to drive my car off a mountain pass. I pushed the accelerator to the floor and sped down the pass until I reached the opening where I’d decided to steer my little Volkswagen through the guardrail into the black void. When I tried to turn the wheel, I couldn’t. The steering wheel had locked. I yanked it with both arms and every bit of strength I had, but it wouldn’t budge. I don’t remember how, but my little car managed to steer itself home.

Miracle. The word conjures up images of being healed, of being saved. Miracle. Gifts from heaven made in heaven. I used to believe there were big miracles and little miracles. But I’m not so sure God measures miracles. Whether helping a blind man see or designing eagle eyes, I think every miracle is God talking to us. Open your eyes. See this. Here I am. Thirty years ago on a dark rainy night when life made me feel I had no options, a miracle showed me I did.

Oh, Deb! How blessed we are that miracles are sprinkled everywhere. Thank you for asking me to believe in yours.

Margaret Terry, Dear Deb: A Woman with Cancer, a Friend with Secrets, and the Letters That Became Their Miracle (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012).