I believe in miracles. Big ones and small. Life-changing and subtle. In fact my whole life has been a series of miracles. If you just listen to the silence, you may be surprised to find that yours may have been too. From that day four decades ago when those two starry-eyed new Americans from the same third-world city, who had never met, happened to arrive in the same Chicago suburb at the same precise time...to fall in love and to set my journey in action. To the day I was trying desperately to graduate from high school while living on my own in New York City.... and I received a magazine from a small little college in the foothills of Kentucky.
I believe that hope can rise from your deepest darkest moment when you are covered with nothing but a blanket of despair. Like the death of fairy tales upon my divorce, only to be replaced with a deeper belief in humanness and the kind of crazy, beautiful love that way surpasses the confounds of happily ever after. I believe that sometimes miracles come in the form of clarity. Clarity that allowed me to once again trust in love, with someone who I seemingly had nothing in common with, but who shared a very part of my deepest soul.
I don't always believe what doctors tell me - not because I don't respect their profession and training, but because sometimes miracles come in the form of an unexplainable medical phenomenon. When I met my second husband, Adam, it was miraculous enough that we discovered that we both shared the same kind of brain tumor - a pituitary gland tumor to be exact. We were both previously married for about ten years. We both tried to have children during those marriages. Our different doctors told us both that we would most likely not be able to have children because of our tumors. We were pregnant within eight months of meeting.
And sometimes miracles come in the form of second chances. We miscarried. And for the first time in my life I learned what it felt like to have a panic attack. To breathe into a paper bag just so you don't drown in the unbearable grief that slowly rises above your head. And sometimes the miracle is this: just when you don't think you can ever keep your head above the water, it recedes. And the very next month we found ourselves pregnant again. This little guy was determined to enter the world. Truly our miracle.
And throughout my life, I continue to experience so many miracles. Like the time the ER doctor 2000 miles away got on the phone with me and told me to come now, that my dad would not be making it through the night. That was seven years ago, and every night when I kiss my father goodnight on his forehead I remember that moment, and the miracle that he is.
I believe that life itself is a miracle. That it comes in many forms - but we often fail to recognize them because we allow the bad, the noise to overwhelm us. Fate. Unexplainable medical phenomenons. Second chances. Clarity. Healing. Life itself is a miracle. This I know. For this I am thankful. This I believe.
For more information on "This I Believe.", an international organization engaging people in writing and sharing essays describing the core values that guide their daily lives, please visit http://thisibelieve.org/
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