Miracles

Terminal brain cancer. Heart attack. Stroke. Addiction. Bi-polar disorder. These are some of the things affecting my people. Sister Three reminds me that as we get older, we will hear of more often of these life-changing and sometimes life-ending events. I see despair and strength, denial and acceptance to varying degrees with my people. It can be so easy to let myself be pulled by circumstance and emotion into seeing all of this as negative, and to let my inherent compassion become over-reaction. I need to temper that with the miracles I see. I have to search, at times, to find the miracles, and when I find them, to remember them.

Three miracles I've seen:

- Cousin Thirty-Two (or thereabouts) has made great strides in recovering from an illness that affected his vision, his hearing, his breathing, his ability to swallow, his balance. He found a way to believe when the medical community said nothing more could be done.

- Family members recovering/recovered from addictions and making huge leaps into building solid and healthy lives for themselves. (I prefer the term recovered, but the literature says recovering. It's a lifelong illness, I know, but...). Each has fought (and continue to fight) their own demons.

- An ant carry, by himself (herself? itself?), a piece of popcorn. One piece of popped corn would not be so heavy to me, but to an ant? And the awkwardness of the enormity in comparison to its' tiny size?

With each miracle there is a hidden lesson for me. The lesson from these three miracles are all centered around not giving up, persistance, hard work for great rewards. I enjoy and rejoice in the miracles I see for the sheer wonder, and later the lesson reveals itself. I am alive today, and that is a miracle. I sometimes need to remember that. Each of you reading this are a miracle in my life - you provide love, learning, support, humour, joy to my life.

Find your miracles. Search for them diligently in the times of illness, stress, death. Feel sad, angry, frustrated, hopeless when you need to, but rejoice when you see the miracles. And the lessons will come, along with new peace.