all i need is a miracle

i read a book back in june about examining our beliefs. one of the chapters was on miracles.

last week, i was talking to a friend who said that right before her mom passed away she fell into a coma. the doctors told her that it was just a matter of time. unexpectedly, her mom woke from the coma mystifying everyone. my friend said that she had an unreal clarity and spent the next few weeks sharing stories with her family about her life that none of them had heard before. they had thought they were loosing her, and then she went on to live for several more months. she gifted her family with information that would have forever been lost. my friend described it as a miracle.

sunday, the sermon at church was on miracles.

daily, my e keeps asking me about miracles. she's not convinced that the things she is learning about in sunday school are real. she's also thinking that some stuff she sees in the movies might be examples of miracles. it's made for some pretty interesting chats at our house.

"yes, the Bible tells us that Jesus DID feed a lot of people from one tiny lunch and i believe that the Bible is the true word of God."

"no, Jesus didn't give matilda magical powers like a miracle. how do i know? because matilda isn't real. yes, he could give her special powers, but only if she was real. no, i don't think Jesus will give you special powers, not even if you pray really hard."

i guess you could say, i'm surrounded by the topic. i thought about sharing on the topic in june, but somehow moved on to something different. it popped back into my head when my friend mentioned the miracle she saw through her mom, and then yesterday... well, i'm thinking that a few gentle reminders might be worth something! so here you have it... my experience with miracles:

when my mom was nine months pregnant with me, she suffered from a brain aneurysm. it required some extensive surgeries, one that included the removal of part of her frontal lobe. i wasn't around at the time (well, i was, but i don't remember it). the fact that she lived was pretty remarkable, but i think that can be attributed to science. i'm a pretty firm believer in the fact that science comes from God, so her living was certainly a gift. but i won't go on record as calling it a miracle. i'll come back to this a little later.

when i was around the age of ten, my mom and i were visiting some family friends in new england. as was typical for my mom, she insisted on going to church while on vacation. she and i went to a church that she found in the yellow pages. towards the end of the service, they called me and my mom up to the front of the church and laid hands on her. it was rather traumatic for me. i was in a congregation of strangers, standing at the front, while people were laying hands on my handicapped mother and praying. it is vivid in my mind. they prayed for God to heal her and give her back the mobility in her left arm and leg. they begged God to restore her body so that she would be able to walk, run and function again as she once did. they prayed forever! it went on and on, like they were not going to stop until she was healed. while they prayed, i remember the feelings of anger and frustration sweeping over my body. did these people really believe that when we all opened our eyes my mom would be healed? did they think if they prayed for a really long time it was more likely to happen? sure, that would be cool, but i felt like it was cruel because i knew in my heart of hearts that it wouldn't happen. i didn't even believe that it could happen.

years later, my sister gave birth to my nephew joshua. josh was born with trisomy 18, a condition that effects the chromosomes and causes some physical deformities. it is typical for a trisomy 18 baby to die in-utero. in fact, almost all trisomy 18 babies do. the odds are stacked against a live birth. and out of the babies that live, the vast majority die within minutes or hours. josh did not. i was there for his birth, and spent a great portion of the day praying and celebrating the fact that this sweet boy was alive. i remember feeling ecstatic that my sister had time with her newborn son- she was holding him, loving him and sharing this experience with so many friends and family members. as we sat there, savoring each breath that josh took, i felt my posture begin to shift. i had anticipated that he would not live, but there he was, before my eyes living and breathing. my sister's pastor was with us in that room for most of the day. at one point, we all paused to dedicate this sweet baby to God. not knowing what the future held, pastor chris and a room full of people prayed. i remember he started out by just giving thanks that josh had made it. it took me to my knees. all of the odds were against us being in that room, circled around a baby that was alive. and then he continued. he, along with my sister and her husband, handed that baby over to God and surrendered their wishes for him to the plan that God had for His very own child. chris stood there and continued to pray- he acknowledged that God COULD change josh's physical appearance, that God (as king of the universe) had the power to transform this baby, heal each and every chromosome in his body and give him a long life.

it took my breath away. i remembered that moment, years back, standing in front of the strange congregation in new england. suddenly, for the first time in my life, i believed that what pastor chris was praying was true. God could do that, if He so chose. it was a life changing experience, because while i didn't expect God to do that, i knew for the first time that He could. chris's prayer was not a lengthy one, it simply asserted that He believed in a God that held the power to do so. and when i opened my eyes, there was not even a tiny tinge of disappointment that josh was just as he was when we began praying. what did change though, was my heart. it cemented in me a new belief, that if God is who He says He is (and i believe He is), then God holds the power to do the unbelievable.

on thanksgiving day of 2008, my mom was hit by a car while walking down the street. the car hit her from behind and she fell backwards onto the vehicle, hitting her head on both the car and then again on the sidewalk. when taken to the er, it was pretty apparent that she would not survive the hit and maintain brain function. the doctors kept waiting to see what would happen. from the scans, they could see that her brain was bleeding severely and they assumed they were going to have to go in and surgically drain the pool of blood (which is typical for head injuries of this magnitude). she kept bleeding, but with each scan, the doctors were amazed that her head wasn't swelling beyond what it could hold. after a day or two, the head neurosurgeon made a statement that stunned my sisters and i. he said that her head had the room to hold the blood because of the frontal lobe portion that had been removed 33 years prior (when she was pregnant with me).

it was a miracle. if this accident had happened to you or i, we wouldn't make it. but because it happened to my momma, who happened to loose a part of her frontal lobe years ago, she made it.

if you had said that my mom having part of her frontal lobe removed was a miracle with three young kids to care for, i would have told you that you were certifiably crazy. but there i was, 33 years later, looking at my mom who was coming back to life. by the grace of God, through a surgery years prior, He was showing me how His hand works and that His ways are not our ways. He was showing me that all things have purpose and that we can't always see how the story is going to end. it is sometimes beyond our ability to see.

God knows the whole story. He has each of us in his palm and He is the author of our book.

we can ask God for the ending that we would like, but when we surrender and stop asking why, we get the ending that He deems best for reasons that aren't always clear to us. He can give us the miracle, even today.

i think that often, we get so mad when He doesn't give us the ending we want, when we don't "get our miracle". but slowly, day by day, i'm learning that because our vision is short sighted (focused on the now), we miss what might be our miracle. if God had restored my mom in front of that congregation to her full self before the aneurysm, she wouldn't have had a missing frontal lobe years later. sure, she would have had her miracle but that miracle would have led to her death years later. getting a "no" on the miracle front, was part of how God was writing her story. and it was also part of Him writing mine.

and so, if you ask me about what i believe, it's pretty simple. i believe that giving your life to God means letting Him be the King and ruler of the earth. we are to praise Him, when He grants the miracle (because He can) AND when He doesn't (because He really does know how the story ends). i believe that God performed miracles back in the days of moses and that He performs them in the here and now.

and that's my two cents. what do YOU believe?