April A to Z Challenge: M is for ...

Long ago, when my girls were still small, evenings were hectic. I was working four jobs at once, because I was a single mother. My time was scheduled with little room to spare.

    One evening, I was exhausted after cooking, washing clothes in the sink (I had no clothes washer and my job schedule made getting to the laundromat impossible,) getting the girls ready for bed, and picking up. I brushed my teeth, locked the door, turned out the lights and fell onto my bed.

    I was almost asleep when I clearly heard a voice in my head say, “Get up and lock the door.”

    Since I knew I had already locked the door, I ignored the “voice” and tried to fall asleep. Soon, I heard the voice again. “Go lock the door.” Because I tend to be a somewhat cautious person, I knew I had already locked the door. Yet, the phrase “Lock the door” kept repeating in my mind until I finally, in exasperation, got out of bed.

    My hand was almost at the light switch when I head something new, the voice saying, “Don’t turn the light on.”  By this time I was getting annoyed at “the voice.” I again started to reach for the light switch only to distinctly hear again, “Don’t turn the light on.”

    I walked, in the dark, out of my bedroom, through the living room, and into the dark kitchen where the sole door in my apartment was.  As soon as I entered the kitchen, I was appalled to see the bright blue flame of one of my gas burners. I had been boiling something earlier, had taken it off the stove, and in all the chaos of the evening, had never noticed that I had left the burner on.  If not for the voice telling me to first check my door, then leave the light off, I wouldn’t have noticed the flame and it would have burned all night long.

    Was it God whispering to me? A guardian angel? Regardless of what it was, I knew that that night something special had happened.

    M is for Miracles.

  Miracles are all around us. Babies are born, we make it to the bus stop right as the bus pulls up, the very item we need for dinner happens to be deeply discounted at the store. Sometimes the event is truly unexplainable, almost as if God has reached through the curtain that separates our realm from His, to assist us.

    My mom lived on the other side of town, back in the 90’s. The girls and I visited her frequently. On the way to her house was a 4-way stop sign. One day, while driving to visit her, I reached the sign, stopped, saw no other cars, then proceeded forth through the intersection. When I was nearly in the middle of the intersection, another car ignored the stop sign and came barreling through at high speed. I had to decide whether to slam on the brakes or speed up. In a moment though, I realized that a T-bone collision was inevitable so I froze and waited for impact.

    The impact never came. My foot was pushed to the accelerator by some outside force, and even though the laws of physics told me that there should have been an accident, the other car seemed to float invisibly through the interior of mine. I kept right on going, and so did the other car, on paths perpendicular to each other. I wondered if the other driver was also saying, “What the heck just happened?”

    I know I am not alone in experiencing life’s little miracles. What about you? What miraculous things have you experienced?