Accepting Miracles

There can easily be times in our lives when we think Somebody has it in for us. We went grocery shopping and filled the refrigerator an hour before the electricity blew out. The car battery is less than a year old and it dies. A person we trusted said something that — no matter what anyone else might try to tell us — sounds like a hit to our integrity. We wake up in the morning and every side of the bed is the wrong side.

I used to work with a young woman from Ireland. She was smart, well educated, funny and beautiful. Every once in a while when I walked into her office to wish her a good morning, she would look like she had been run over by a train. Her clothes and hair were perfect. Her makeup was exquisite. Her face and posture appeared as if she was battling Medusa.

When asked how she was, she replied, I feel like the wrath of God.

How do you reply to that?

Great? Have a good day?

Me, too?

Gosh, wasn’t that some football game last night?

There was nothing to do except back out of the room and tell her I hoped her day improved. So did she. Fervently.

Some days it did. Some days, well, it took a few days.

My coworker accepted her lot. She acknowledged the fact that she had lived through precisely the same sorts of days before. She could do it again.

She followed the old saying: Stay sober, stay silent. She did everything humanly possible to quietly wait out whatever it was that gripped her soul.

It came, it went. Life moved on.

It was her acceptance of her life as it was, her ability to clearly see that she had lived through similar times, that made her capable of progressing through her dark times. Her grace, her dignity, were simply inspiring.

To this day the thought of watching her live through her dark times, waiting for the miraculous return of good days, makes me grateful for knowing her.

Would that we were all such positive examples of lives well lived.

Other peoples’ stories can be quite like our own. Faced with similar dark times in my life — whether from causes known or unknown — I try to remember the good example of my coworker and the many other women and men I’ve seen soldier through.

They kept their heads up and faced the storms of life. Reservoirs of quiet, simple dignity led them on. Humility showed them how to accept the miracles inside the storms. They knew how to wait for the clouds to lift.

We expect miracles to come in the worst of times to improve our lot. That isn’t always how life works. Sometimes the bad times in life are the miracles.

Living through the hard moments make us able to live through the good times.

It sounds trite. Sometimes we feel like we hear it said far too often. What I have observed is that the Spirit is greater than my spirit.

Modern life is no different from life five hundred or a thousand years ago in some very basic ways. Now as then we are subject to emotional exhaustion to the point that we believe our souls can no longer continue. Whatever has piled on us, we are tired to the point of death.

We think.

What we think, what we feel in our spirits, is not what the Spirit has in mind for us.

Having lived in physical pain all of my life does not make me eligible for some kind of get out of life quick scheme. So what if many nights I fall asleep out of exhaustion from the pain?

Big deal.

There are men and women on this planet who live with far greater physical pain than I. Queuing up for martyr’s status does not win points. With anybody. Being willing to stretch my body and mind to be useful to someone who maybe can’t do what I can makes me useful.

Period.

There are no points for sainthood. None of us gets written up on the front page of the paper for doing what is right. For sucking it up and going on.

We have already accepted the only miracle we need. We are alive.

We have been given the gift of being useful.