Appreciate miracles, big and small

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

– Albert Einstein (1879-1955)



Life is a miracle.

Not too long ago, a man who I’ve known for a very long time became incredibly sick. He’d always been the picture of health, built with that strong foundation that would lead you to believe he just might live forever.

And then, suddenly, everything changed.

When I went to visit him, we talked about this very thing. He said, “It’s not all that surprising when you think about it. What is surprising is how many days we get up feeling so good, with everything working the way it’s supposed to. The human body is a miracle machine!”

On a farm, we are reminded of this every single day in so many varied ways. We see miracles unfold so often that we sometimes forget that they truly are miracles. We see miracles, both big and small, quiet and mighty, and so many times we forget to count them in this way.

Here at last. I helped to deliver many calves in to this world, and there were times it appeared to be an almost impossible situation.

Once, I remember my dad was planting corn at another farm when my sister and I realized we had a first-calf heifer in serious trouble in the birthing pen. We argued, as teen-aged sisters are known to do, as to who was to stay with the prolapsing heifer and who was to run for the phone to call the veterinarian.

I bolted from that pen, unable to bear the groans of that poor cow any longer, and called for help.

When the veterinarian arrived, he seemed so calm in the face of what looked like doom to my sister and me. He told us we had done everything right, and though we would probably lose the calf, the heifer just might be fine.

Amazingly, the calf and the heifer both survived. We were able to walk that once-wild heifer in to the milking parlor just a few hours later, hook her in to the stanchions, and milk her without a hoof raised. That counts as a miracle in itself!

Miracles. Watching that wobbly legged calf stumble its way around that birthing pen in deep, fresh straw certainly seemed like a miracle to me. My sister, who had said she was never going to speak to me again, came in to the pen as I was feeding the calf for the first time and simply said, “Wow. We did it.”

My sister still speaks to me, all these years later. That’s a miracle in itself, too!

Bumpy roads. There are reasons, understandably, for us to despair as we walk along this bumpy road. There are many times that we have earned the right to rail against the challenges thrown our way.

But, there are an incredible number of miracles unfolding along the journey, and it is wise and wonderful to recognize them all as we travel along the incredible path of life.