Counting the Miracles
Recently
I watched a little bit of the movie ’17 Miracles’ with my Dad. I liked the little bit of what I saw but was
busy and walked away to go do the million other things that needed to be
done. It wasn’t till later that I got to
thinking about miracles. I started to
think about that movie and the amazing things that happened to those people in
the movie, and then thought about my own life.
Did I have miracles in my own life? And the answer is a resounding
yes. I think God gives us far more
miracles than we are even aware of. We
are so busy with life, that we don’t recognize God enough and His hand in the
every day happenings of our lives. I
know I am guilty of that. So when I
watched that movie, and began thinking about the miracles in my or what had I
been doing that I hadn’t seen all the miracles in my life?! As soon as I started to see and recognize my
blessings and miracles, my life got so much better. (Crazy how that happens) So from then on I made a goal, to try and see
all the miracles, small and large in my life, and to also be more thankful in
recognizing where they came from and giving thanks.
So
here are some miracle s I have seen recently for our move.
· Ryan’s Phone. Ryan needed
to get a personal phone, since he had to give in his old one to his old
employer. (Of course he had to wait till
the day before we leave to do this, but hey he got it right?) We stayed at Ryan’s parents that night so
that they could take us to the airport the next day. When Ryan showed up with his new phone in
hand, I was so glad. But it wasn’t
working. He couldn’t get it to work; and after driving to a couple of different
stores dealing with rude men, leering eyes and rotten teeth, no one could help
us. We thought that we would have to buy him a whole new phone, which we all
know is ridiculously expensive. I
grabbed the phone and just started to fiddle with it, and what do you
know? It began to work! Now I know that this sounds small and pretty
insignificant, but if you are looking at it the right way, it really is a small
miracle. God knew that we didn’t have
the time or money to be running around and worrying about Ryan’s phone. So what does He do? He helps us out.
· Baggage. Baggage you say? Yup!
That’s right, baggage. You see,
traveling with little kids is kind of crazy.
I thought packing and lugging around stuff for myself was bad. But doing it for myself, Ryan and my 2 little
ones, is kind of overwhelming at times.
Anyone with kids can attest that kids come with an exuberant amount of
“stuff”. You don’t even really think
about it until you are forced to gather it all together. Why do they need all this stuff?! Who knows, but attempting to cram it all into
even the largest sized suitcase available is daunting and rather
unbelievable.
As I was packing our bags, I kept looking at all our things
and thinking there is no possible way, even if you are an expert
organizer/packer, that you can fit this all in there. But, after several attempts and a couple of
hours, it was done. What?! That’s right, we did it. I seriously believe that was a miracle. And if you don’t believe me, I would like to
challenge you to fit as much junk as we had into our suitcases.
· So in my stressed and busy
mind, I forgot to think about the weight of our luggage. Dumb?
I know. We decided to do Skycap at the airport rather than lug all of
our luggage and car seats around. I
hadn’t done this before, but it sounded good.
We pulled up, and a nice man started to help us check in right by our
car. Then he asked us to take our first
piece of luggage to be weighed. My heart
dropped at that moment. Oh no! I knew that our luggage weighed a ton! And I was right. I wont even tell you how much it weighed
because it is rather embarrassing. I was
panicking because I didn’t know what I was going to do! But something miraculous happened. This man, who was a perfect stranger, became
a saint that day in my eyes. He pulled
some strings and was able to allow us 8 pieces of luggage with no extra
fees! This was a miracle to me.
· I have not flown on an
airplane, and done the whole airport scene in 5 years. So I was a little worried about how it would
all work out especially doing it with an excited and rambunctious 4 year old
and a 2 month old baby. I was surprised
and happy about how things turned out for us.
It was a breeze! I felt like
where we should have been stopped and had waits and problems, we just breezed
through. Security, boarding, waiting,
takeoff, flying etc. it was all pretty great.
And I was so grateful. A small
miracle? I think so.
Ian did equally well. I worried that he would be upset
because of the tight quarters and the pressure on his little ears. But he did pretty good. Ryan had to change his diaper a couple of
times during the flight (what a good guy!) but we arrived alive and no one was
crying. I call that a miracle as well.
· (This next one is a good
one) The miracle of patience. In my
head, I had thought up a great scenario about how things would play out after
landing. You see, I suffer from the need
to be in control and to plan and be prepared for every situation and
circumstance. I plan and organize things
down to the minute detail before it even happens. But when it came to this particular night, I
was sooooo wrong.
In our attempt at helping Nik to be good the
entire 3 and a half hours during our flight, we allowed him to have a little
too many sweet things. So by the time we
landed, Nik was rip roaring to go. The
combination of excitement, too much sugar, being cooped up in a small space for
too long, and being slap happy tired was a lethal combination. Nik was bouncing off the walls, running
everywhere, and it was driving me insane!
I was trying so hard to be patient with him and be nice, but it was 10
at night and I was tried and stressed and things were not going our way. Ian
wasn’t having any of it either. He was
done. In the place of my usually sweet
and smiley baby was a shrieking, crying and almost inconsolable baby. Isn’t this starting to sound like so much
fun? Hmmmm…
To make it better, we couldn’t find our baggage
claim area and since we had way too many pieces of luggage, we needed baggage
carts. But of course it would have been
too much to ask to have even one around right?
Oh yeah, there were none to be had.
Not only that, because it was late, all the baggage claim attendants
were off work and gone. So yup, no help
there. (Oh and to all those people through out the airport who liked to stare
at us, and judge us, thanks a lot, and best wishes to you.)
Ryan was
finally able to find one and strategically load our luggage onto it, which
didn’t work, but I applaud him for his efforts. (I should mention that after
landing, Ryan became this amazingly chipper and happy person. I hadn’t seen him be that way for a while, and
it was just what I needed to help get me through this particular night. I don’t know what I would have done if he
wouldn’t have been happy and positive about things)
Okay, so we now have our mountain of luggage, a
cart that is too bogged down to move, a screaming baby and a 4 year old
bouncing off the walls. No big deal,
we’re almost done right? I wish.
We still needed to get our rental vehicle. We had asked for a van, because we knew how
much stuff we had, but how to get it?
Ryan decided that he should take Nik with him and leave me with Ian and
our luggage. That sounded okay. I could do that. After about 30 minutes of waiting, I got a
call from Ryan saying that he forgot Niks car seat and had to come all the way
back to get it and then go back to the rental place. What?! Well that’s some great news. So Ryan gets back, grabs the car seat and
leaves again. I wait about an hour and
he calls telling me he is outside. Thank
goodness. But how am I supposed to go
out there with a cranky baby ,a stroller, a cart that doesn’t seem to want to
work, and a mountain of luggage? Do you
know what I did? I just left all that
luggage. Yup, that’s right. I decided that if someone was desperate
enough and mean enough to take any of our luggage after watching me struggle
and stress with it, then they could take it and I hoped it would plague
them. So I grabbed my child and left it
behind. I walked out and there waiting
for me was not a van, but a small car!
Oh no, this couldn’t be happening!
How on earth were we going to put all of our things into this car? Plus us?
Well, this would be interesting for sure. I stayed at our car while Ryan ran in to get
the luggage. I put Ian in his car seat,
and watched as Ryan put all of our things in the car. It was amazing; the trunk became Mary Poppins
carpetbag I tell you. It wasn’t that big
when you looked at it, but our luggage kept fitting. It was truly miraculous. By the time we had it all in and we were
settled into the car to go to the hotel it was 12:30 at night. We were exhausted, but I was so grateful,
because I had prayed for patience and help through the night and Heavenly
Father helped me not only with patience, but helped us with our luggage and
being able to make it through.
Miraculous? Oh yeah.
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