Category Archives: Home & Kids

The beauty of the little miracle

There’s a beauty to the little miracles. The ones that, to someone else, may not even seem like a miracle because that’s how personal they are.

These are the moments that show me who God is. These are the moments he speaks into my heart: I’m listening. I know you. I love you. I’m here. These are the moments that form the foundation that enables me to say, I know God.

Does that sound crazy to you? Reading what I just wrote, it sounds crazy to me. That I don’t just know about him. I haven’t just read the stories. My life is one of the stories.

I flew to California the other week with baby Isaac, now (!) 6 months old. (And isn’t he delicious?)

In the Uber on the way to the airport, just a few minutes into the trip, he started crying. I took a deep breath and popped a pacifier in. Instantly, peace.

Does this story seem unremarkable?

It would, if you didn’t know that Isaac had tongue tie and, when his frenulum was clipped at 3 months old, he stopped taking a pacifier.

It would if you didn’t know that I’d been trying to get Isaac to take a pacifier for weeks in preparation for this particular trip–and failing. I’d put it in, he’d spit it out. Repeat. Pretty much, there was no way I was convincing this kid to like it again after a 3 month lapse.

It would seem like nothing if you didn’t know I’d been praying about flying with an infant, which despite having 3 kiddos I’d managed to avoid until then, and specifically praying that Isaac would not cry at all during the flights. (I know–an ambitious prayer. I like praying ambitiously.)

It would seem like nothing if you didn’t know that Isaac, when tired and ready for a nap (which happens after a mere 90 minutes of being awake), became a shouter. A non-pacifier-loving, shouting baby.

Add those things together: a shouty baby who would absolutely not take a pacifier, on the way to the airport for a trip I’d been anxiously praying about, suddenly begins to love the pacifier. And proceeds to get through both flights with no crying.

Like, no crying. None.

Isaac taking that pacifier ten minutes into our big trip was a little miracle. Specifically given to me. That meant something only to me. Because God is the God of the big and the small, the whole world and also each moment in my life.

So . . . yes. There’s a sweetness to the little miracles. The personal ones, that no one else will quite get. Like this one–or a hundred other examples I could give you. And, I’ve been thinking recently, the needier I am, the more little miracles seem to happen. Maybe because being needy drives me to pray more–or maybe because my eyes are just more open.

It’s the little miracles in my life that have made me cry, and smile while I’m crying, and know–it’s going to be okay. He’s here.




Total contentment

New Year’s Eve, we stayed in. Me, my husband and our three sleeping kiddos.

Except one was not sleeping. That would be Alice, our five-year-old with the lion’s mane of golden hair and the disposition of a saint.

A running, leaping, laughing, shy, fearless, popcorn-eating saint.

And, just a side note, don’t underestimate the power of the static zap produced by the running and leaping in the dead of winter. When I see that blond head of hair standing on end as she hurtles towards me, I run. You’d run too.

Anyway, instead of sleeping, she was listening through her cracked bedroom door to the music we had on, playing with her new Christmas presents, and winding her music box.

When Adam and I had finished our dinner of scallops, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, and a Julia Childs sauce that had three sticks of butter in it (heavens help us), little lion-mane came peeping around the door.

Adam went in.

“Dad,” she said, “I like everything. I like sleeping. I like eating. I like playing. I just like everything.”

Hearing that was an arrow to the heart. One of those piercing feelings you get when something is so beautiful, and so fleeting, and so precious, and so fragile all at the same time.

One of Adam’s biggest fears when we decided to take the leap and see if we could have kiddos was that our kiddos would be unhappy. So the fact that for five years Alice has been so happy is, to me, so beautiful and wonderful, and a gift to him as much as to her.

My mother’s heart can’t help but ache at the thought that it can’t last. No one’s life is 100% happy. Eventually, there will be something she doesn’t like–a teacher. A kid at school. A job. Who knows. But I pray that the joyful contentment she has now will last through it all. That it will be a strong foundation in her spirit. That she will be unshakable, because her feet are planted on the One who gives the gift of joy.

Shine on, little Lion Mane.