Miracles and Answered Prayer
Periodically, Ninepatch proposes various themes for contributors letters. Here are the letters we received in response to the 'Miracles and Answered Prayers' theme...
A SIMPLE CROSS
A few weeks before my husband died of cancer, a devoted Episcopal friend visited him. She asked him if he would like to wear her oversized cross which she said had been blessed. He said yes, so she took it from her own neck.
As I watched, she tenderly guided it over his head and left it resting on his chest. It was a plain smooth unadorned gold cross on a long chain. He was still wearing it when he died.
In the days after the funeral period, I approached our friend and held out the cross to her. She was somewhat surprised and asked, "Don't you want to keep it?"
"I think you should have it." I placed it carefully in her hand.
She held the cross and examined it closely. "Did you polish it?" she said, wonder in her voice.
"No, I just washed it with soap and warm water. He perspired quite a lot, at the very last," I answered softly.
"It looks as though it has been polished," she said with awe. "It was a holy death," she pronounced.
June (Jan.'03) adds, "Was it a miracle? I'm still not sure. You decide."
Dear Fritzie,
You also asked for letters on e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y- miracles, so I have a thought. It does seem the older I get, the more it is a miracle just to live another day.
I think that is why I love
the morning so much. It's a new day-- another beginning.
Patricia
Patricia (July '02) adds, "We have just come south for a few months. My days are filled with errands: running around and picking up things needed for projects and to settle in. The first week we get back is always so busy-but, calm will return. "
Hi Frances:
Right now the only miracle that comes to my mind is one I think many ex-students will understand. You remember I am back to school, now, studying to be a pharmacist. My miracle is what you might term small, but to me it was HUGE.
The fact that I passed my pharmaceutics class last term --
that was a minor miracle in my academic life. I thought I was truly in danger of having to repeat the class! And this one is required! Wish me luck in Pharmaceutics- 2 this term.
Maeve
Maeve (June '02) adds, "Right now I'm still happy on my new path of becoming a pharmacist- - I've met some new friends and I'm constantly challenged. Let's hope I still feel this way upon graduating in 2006! My kids seemed to be proud of me--and my husband, too."
Dear Frances,
My husband and I had a miracle about a week ago. A bird flew into our window and crashed to the ground. I checked on it for the next forty minutes or so, in case it was just knocked out. (I didn't want a neighborhood cat to get it.) It never moved. Finally, I asked my husband to pick it up and dispose of it. I was upset to see the little body lying there for so long.
He went outside and picked up the feathered body. He didn't just scrape it into a bag with a stick like I would have done. He gently lifted it, stroked it, and talked to it for a full minute.
Then, he said, "It moved."
I went over and peered at it. I didn't see anything. "Are you sure?" I said.
"Yes, it's going to come around. I'm sure of it."
Well, my husband stroked that little bird for a few minutes more before the little eyes opened. The creature wasn't really conscious yet. It took a good five minutes more for it to wake up enough to realize it needed to fly off.
During all that time, the bird never acted distressed. Finally, it just got bright-eyed for a second then flew to the nearest tree.
The miracle isn't that the bird lived. I know it was just knocked out. My husband is my miracle. He takes things so easily. He notices. He feels. So different from what I see around me--and what I see in myself. I felt so good to have been drawn into that moment of kindness and release.
Peace, Georgene
Georgene (Jan.'03) says, "The other day a friend told me how she looked for 'the thin spots' of life. She said that thin spots are the places where God gives us a little glimpse of heaven from our place, here on earth. I've come to realize that my husband is one of God's thin spots. While he has plenty of faults I could list, if I chose to, I'm always drawn back to his intentional respect for life and ability to fully live in the present moment."
Dear Frances,
The Saturday before Christmas I had a little excitement. The Sister who was sitting behind me during our special evening prayer accidentally got her lit candle caught in my hair. Flames shot up a foot high before she put out the flames. Fortunately, I did not have any hair spray on. Also, neither she nor I were burned. My burned hair filled the whole chapel with an awful smell, but I was fine.
One of our Sisters is a hair- dresser. She'd been dying to cut off my long locks and offered her services. I quickly accepted and came away from her beauty shop with a nice and attractive hair cut.
So what can I say? God was with me!
Love you all! Patience
Patience (June'02) says, "Everyday miracles are just as important-or more so-than the big ones. I am so very grateful no one was hurt in the fire."
Hello Frances,
As you know, I have been lighting a candle every morning and saying the prayers I have on an index card underneath the candle. I also have a Jesus night light in my father's bedroom.
This morning I went into his room to open the blinds and there was something lying on the floor by his bed. At first I thought it was our dog's chew- bone, but when I stepped back in and looked closer, it was his Jesus night light.
My first thought was about my nearly blind ninety-one- year- old father. Oh no! What is he doing now? He can't just turn the light off, he has to pull it out of the wall? I proceeded to plug the light back in the socket. When I did, it lit, so I turned it off and started out of the room. I didn't get three steps, when I heard, click. I turned around and the light was lit again. I went back and turned it off again, then turned to leave. Again, I heard, click. I looked and it was lit. When I turned it off a second time, I stood there and watched.
You can guess. I heard, click and the light came back on. I actually saw the knob go right- to- left! I pulled it out of the wall and inspected it. It appeared OK. I plugged it in a third time, and turned it off again. But again the same thing: click and the light came on. Finally, I pulled it out of the wall and put it on the floor. (This is probably the reason my dad put it on the floor to begin with!) I didn't really think about it again until I was telling our friends this story at breakfast. They led me to think this might be a sign or message.
I have to tell you that I've been asking God for some kind of sign that he was hearing me. I have wanted a spiritual awakening. Even with all the praying and all the readings I do, I had not felt what others describe. Now I really think this was my sign. My Higher Power is hearing me. Maybe I have not been asking the right thing or seeing with spiritual eyes. I have chills talking about this experience.
Sorry this is so long… I just had to tell the whole story.
Love Ya! Rena
Rena is married and mother of two grown daughters. Her father and one daughter also live with her. In her spare time she enjoys walking, reading and baking. She adds, "I always thought a spiritual awakening was supposed to be like a thunderbolt or a clap of thunder--nothing so subtle as a blinking night-light or a skipped heart beat. This, too, was a sign that I needed to make some life changes -- that He was indeed hearing me."
Dear Fritzie,
After a long engagement, my daughter's wedding was a wonderful spur-of-the moment event.
My husband called me at work to tell me that she and her fiancé were getting married that evening at our home and forty guests were expected. Less than an hour later I was zooming home. I stopped on my way to ask my sister-who was teaching piano-if she would play for the wedding. Once I got home, I found a friend to manage the refreshments and spirited the bride off to find a dress. She was not healed from a traffic accident and couldn't walk far. So I got a wheelchair and pushed her at record pace in and out stores. We were both excited and we were tearing around like tornadoes. We must have look like crazy women on a caffeine high.
I found a dress then stopped at a flower shop before they closed and picked up pink roses mixed with baby's breath for a bridal bouquet and decorations.
Meanwhile my husband was frantically tidying up the house and rearranging things to make room for guests. He also placed phone calls to invite our family and made other final arrangements. Somehow-- by magic I think-he managed to have the house looking great when my daughter and I returned.
By 11:00 PM my daughter looked radiant and her fiancé sweet, shy and handsome. Guests all crowded in and the wedding went on without a hitch: short and sweet. The reception was fabulous, too. My daughter's friends got a cake decorated with their names at a nearby store and there was a beautiful spread of other refreshments as well.
Six hours from the announcement to event. If that isn't a miracle, I'm not sure what is!
Blessings, Ginny Lee
Ginny Lee (October '02) adds, "I'm telling you this is the way to have a wedding! We all LOVED it. No worrying ahead of time about this or that. Thanks to all family and friend who pitched in, it was wonderful!"
When I heard Ninepatch was asking for miracles, I thought, "I've never had a miracle." Then I realized that my son was my miracle.
My first pregnancy was 'normal' through the first few weeks--normal but for the dream of my son I had. I dreamed he was a young man, about 5'10", strongly built, with blonde-ish hair and blue eyes.
I woke the next morning and said to my husband, "I've seen my son!"
Of course, my hubby thought I was just being silly. I hadn't even had an ultrasound to tell me what sex it was. But, I didn't need the test-- I knew-- I'd already met him.
Sadly, as the pregnancy went on, my health deteriorated. Weeks before I'd planned for it, I was forced to quit work when my doctor said, "I don't want to lose you or your baby." It was that serious--and it got worse.
When it came time to deliver I had to make a decision. After three days of labour, two hospitals and countless doctors and nurses, the professionals presented their opinions. I was too weak, they said, and maybe wouldn't make it. The baby had to come out. They prepped me for a C-section.
But I said, "No." I knew I wasn't going to lose my baby and I would be there to know him when he was a young man. After all, I'd already agreed to that with him in my dream.
I'd already been prepped for the operation with an epidural and was full of enough drugs to drop an elephant. Despite all of this, I crawled onto a gurney and was taken to a delivery room. There, hours later, without an incision, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Now, he's a young man, and he looks exactly as he did in my dream! I suppose most people would think that my miracle was this difficult but successful birth, and I suppose I would agree. But what no one knows is my son gave me a miracle before he was even born.
I'd been so depressed that I was contemplating suicide. Then, my son came to me in my dream. After that, I couldn't kill myself. I had to know who he was going to be. I wanted to be here to know and love him.
TROR adds, "Darn it! It's sixteen years later, Frances, and I still get teary when I think of this. "
When I was a child I remember looking in the mirror, and seeing both my reflection and that of my mother. Oh, how beautiful she was! My mother was beautiful; though not in the photogenic sense. She was lovely in the manner she carried herself, her sense of humor and the way that she radiated her love to my dad and her children.
I imagine my mom could have been a good suffragette campaigner but she had no need to be liberated. She was her own true person. She may not have been the Amelia Earheart type but she could drive a car and go places on her own.
In my early years, we lived on a farm. It was the 1930s and life there took its toll on my mom. It was not so much the hard work, rather hard times that wither the spirit. We lost cattle to disease. Then low prices for the dairy products and little ventures that went bad called for drastic measures. Dad sold the remaining livestock to pay overdue bills, closed down the farm and we moved to live with grandparents in the small town where the four of us children had been born. There, dad had found a job working in the granite quarries.
I liked living in Grandpa's house and I soon had many friends to play with. I also liked my new school, even though I had to go to summer school, to catch up with the others in my class. I spent a wonderful first summer with my new friends. That fall, just before school started we moved again but I didn't have to change schools. Spring Street was a pleasant street to live on but the spring season that year brought me a great loss.
First, though, I was blessed with a beautiful sister in February. Later, spring arrived when a robin came tapping at our kitchen window. But, that robin was no harbinger of good news. That day my mamma went in a coma and my aunt came to get my baby sister. Mom was taken to the hospital where we children were born. She remained in a coma until her death a week later.
Our family history went on to include a remarriage for my dad, a good stepmother for my two brothers and me. It also brought adoptive parents-my aunt and uncle-- for our little sister.
Life and fifty odd years went by. Then, I received an invitation to celebrate the fifty years of marriage of my aunt and uncle. My wife and I flew down for the festivities, arriving a day early just to visit. We were all talking when my aunt addressed me with a serious look.
"Lee," she said "I have something that I want to share with you." She took out a little notebook that she had in her apron pocket. "I have here a journal that your mother, Marie, wrote a long time ago. She went on, "I was looking for something in a bureau, your mom and dad gave us as a wedding present, when this pad fell out from behind one of the drawers. I know that your mother wrote it because of its content. It was written when we lived on a farm in Quebec. I can't place the time when she wrote those entries but some are a little comical since I remember she had a crush on our hired man, who was a lit-tle too old for her. I don't remember seeing her write in that notebook but I know that my sister wrote it."
Having said that, my aunt handed me the collection of verses that my mother had written. When I opened the pamphlet, the first item I read was a poem in French, which translated in English would read;
Little bird on the wing
Bring
A message
To the one I love.
Suddenly, through my tears, I saw the robin of that long-ago spring, tapping at the window.
Lee (Oct. '02) says, "Miracles are the blessings and consolations in life that mere coincidences can provide."
Write and we'll add your 'Miracles and Answered Prayers' letter too!