Miracles happen all the time

The Universe wants to write about miracles today and who am I to disagree?

We may think the world is going to hell in a handbasket, or worry about 1,001 things that may or may not happen. Our poor loving minds try in two million ways to keep us safe, happy, healthy and content.

But it’s Truth with a Capital T that miracles are happening around us all the time. Unexpected gifts. Ordinary offerings like smiles, hellos, how ya doin’ today my dear friend?

There’s ice fishermen heading out to fish on a frozen bay. They can walk, pull sled, perhaps bring home lake trout or whitefish for their families.

To be able to walk is miracle enough, isn’t it?

I know people who cannot walk who would give anything to take just one more saunter. Just one.

Perhaps the Universe wants to talk about not giving up. Perhaps there’s someone reading this post who feels utterly hopeless. Perhaps you’re the one who needs to hear that leaning trees can stay upright, refrigerators keep on humming, people heal from death sentences.

Fortunes can unexpectedly shift from one breath to the next.

I just returned from a walk up and down the road. It started out 32 degrees with a slight breeze. By the end wind huffed and puffed and tried to blow the walker down. My ears hurt with cold. But, hey, why complain? Life feels energizing after a cold blowy walk and my cheeks are still rosy. And I can still walk.

Every time I meander up and down the road I look at that tree. Do you see the poplar leaning half-sideways over the road? For twenty or thirty years we’ve said: That tree is gonna fall. It can’t last another season. It’s going to topple. That tree is history.

And every year we’re wrong. The tree roots remain steadfast. It leans but does not fall.

The tree seems to say: You can’t predict what or when something will happen. Miracles do occur. Don’t write me off so quickly. Can you live in a little more not-knowing? Can you live a little less fixated on worries, lack, fear?

Our refrigerator, down in the basement next to the wood room, is another testament. We bought this frig when we were young whipper-snappers in 1983. (Actually, I think a grandparent may have bought it for us considering our lack of finances while building our house from scratch.)

Our son graduated from high school in 2000 and we threw a graduation party. We had read that these refrigerators didn’t last much longer than fifteen years and I didn’t want the darlin’ to die when filled with bowls of coleslaw, meatballs and lunch meat. I insisted we buy a new one.

We did.

Do you think that old refrigerator died during the graduation party? It is STILL running 22 years later. Still humming away down in the basement. We have bought THREE refrigerators upstairs in those years, but Old Faithful keeps on running.

Miracle, do you think?

Who knows why Big miracles with a capital “B” happen? Some people claim prayer. Others urge positive thinking. Some suggest it’s all random. I’m no longer as interested in why they occur–simply the fact that they DO occur fills my heart with gratitude.

Love

Have you known people with cancer or other diseases who miraculously beat the odds? I know someone filled with tumors who still lives many years later. People who have lost all their money yet somehow reset to thrive. Others who suffered in pain who are now pain-free.

Anything is possible.

Anything. Is. Possible.

(And when miracles don’t happen? Then perhaps we allow our heart to open in compassion again and again and again, humble to how much we don’t know, how much it sometimes hurts on this life-journey. How we can keep walking each other Home…holding each other’s hands when it hurts.)

The Universe gives and the Universe takes away and you never know when the apple will fall from the tree. There’s a mystery and gift in not-knowing, not-presuming, not-imagining that we’ve got this figured out.

That’s what the Universe wants to say today.