Small Miracles

I don't have any really cute pictures. I haven't gone anywhere recently as I'm a total shut in (wait until next week for that), so I'm posting about the feelings I'm left with after a book I just finished. This week I read a book entitled Here if you Need Me by Kate Braestrup. She is a Maine warden service chaplain and the book is her journey of faith through losing her husband, dealing as a single mother of four, coming to know God in her own way, and helping out families who are in the "hinge" of life-when life changes from what they knew to something entirely different as they deal with loss.

I practically ate the book, I read it in a day and the thing I got from it was that there are miracles all around us, but we only recognize them as miracles when we step back and recognize God's love in what happens. One man she worked with asked with dismay, "where is God in this?" upon finding a small girl who'd fallen through the ice and was found dead, a girl who was very much like his own beloved granddaughter. She replied that God wasn't there in the accident, that sometimes these things happen, just as a glass of milk is sometimes spilled at the breakfast table, but that he WAS there in the arms that comforted the parents, in the neighbors who show up with a pan of brownies and tears of empathy when those accidents happen, in the warm dinners that spontaneously arrive in the aftermath, in the peace that surrounds you when you are going through something horrible, THAT is where God is. When you recognize that, hope goes and on and you realize that you have so much more than just the grief, and that miracles have not ceased.

Today I felt so blessed as I considered the miracles in my life. I have a neighbor who shovels my drive at the first sign of snow and who's done it for me each and every time it snows, he does it quietly and disappears but I know it's him. I have a husband who works so hard so I can stay home to raise our babies, a miracle- especially in today's economy. I have three beautiful children, one on the way and a strong body which is capable of creating and sustaining life. I sometimes take this for granted and feel like this is all too much, but it is a miracle, an absolute miracle. I have a handful of kindred friends who know my heart and who I can talk to about anything. I also have tremendous support in an extended family of siblings, parents, and in-laws who bless my life and my family in ways I'm not even sure I'm worthy of. Do I believe God loves me? Undoubtedly. I feel it in all the small miracles that happen around me, who could doubt God when they sit back and consider the good in their lives?