I Do Not Believe in Miracles

When Time Stood Still
December 18, 2009
Friday, 11:44pm


I confess, Reader, that I’m always rather emotional this time of year. But, if it be possible, I believe this year has tugged harder and more viciously on the strings of my heart more than any other year. My emotions have been a mixture of things, all deriving from separate channels. I’ve cried for good things as well as bad. Some things have moved me, and some things have shattered me. I’m trying desperately to hold onto hope and faith, consoling myself that some day everything and everyone will eventually be saved. I want so desperately to believe in salvation, but it is still just a fairy tale to me.

And yet… and yet I still search the skies for answers. Every year I remember the stars I saw that night, twelve years ago. Twelve. Twelve shooting stars twelve days before Christmas. It was supposed to mean something. Now, dear Fates, it is twelve again… will the miracle finally happen? I’m not even sure what sort of miracle I’m expecting… I don’t want to be foolish enough to believe in these sorts of things, but I feel like now that I’m at the end of all that is left in me, I have nothing to loose.

It happened by accident, Reader. I use the word “accident” because I’m cautious of the word “miracle”, or the phrase “divine intervention”. This accident, as I call it, however was a strange, profound, emotional happening. I’m not sure it’s the “miracle” I’ve been waiting for or not, but regardless of what one wishes to label it, it has begun a new spiritual journey for me.

I was wanting to post something “Christmassy” on my blog. I had written about my twelve stars in a writing class in high school, and hadn’t read it in many, many years. I wondered if it was really as good as my then audience had declared it to be. I was seventeen years old. I wasn’t expecting anything. I wasn’t even sure if it was on this particular computer or not. So I did a file search: I typed “twelvestars”. Two folders popped up that had nothing to do with these words. One said “journals”, so I thought to myself, “Maybe it’s one of my really old folders…” So I clicked on it.

It wasn’t my journal, but I couldn’t resist reading it when I realized instantly what it was. It was my mother’s journal, a quick type up of things she wrote about us four siblings when we were children. I couldn’t close it up. I was rapidly addicted.

Goodness. Love. A family that was whole. I was three years old, becoming “more active” and “enjoys singing and Sunday school”, and apparently enjoyed wrapping my little brother’s head in a blanket and then hugging it. I had also apparently “painted his face twice now, once with her paints and once with Jason’s paints.”

I was eight years old, and my kitten had just died, and my two older brothers held me and comforted me in my grief. Kyle gave me a book mark he won at camp to cheer me up.

1988, my mother was having a stressful morning trying to get all of her children up and ready for school, and my little brother rose from his bed, bright eyed and full of smiles asking my mom, "Mom? Did you notice what a beautiful day it is outside?" And it saved her.

On and on it went, little snippets of each of us, all giving praise to our goodness, our worthiness, and our love as a family. It was the story of our lives that I had long forgotten. And to hear the voice of my mother behind these memories was a new feeling, a new emotion that I have yet to find a vocabulary for.

I then read a passage of prayer she prayed, a personal giving of thanks for each of her children, and something very old, and very forgotten moved within me. Two of her prayers had come to be, and for a fleeting moment I believed in the magic of what people with faith call “miracles”. I cried. I sobbed. I read it over and over and over again, feeling both grief and rejoicing. Grief for the part of the prayer that was yet to be or no longer is, and feeling an overwhelming joy for the part that had come to pass.

It changed me. I still doubt my senses like any other Scrooge would, but I’ve been shaken. I can surely say that I just might be looking toward the night sky more often again, awaiting a sign from the heavens that I’ve long forsaken to believe in. I don’t know if this qualifies or not as a Christmas miracle, but it was something my soul has been without far too long, and even though the grief weighed heavy in some ways, the joy brought a new hope back to life again. The remembrance and evidence of love when love is said to never die, makes me believe again that maybe, just maybe, everyone and everything will eventually be saved in the end. That would make a good ending, and all endings should be good lest the story be untold.