Miracles are free. Accepting them is optional.

I believe in miracles.

Not the rock your world, holy saints and rising apparitions kind of miracles. But rather, the fundamental, change your life in this moment kind of miracle that awakens you to the truth that this moment is all you’ve got. Those kind of miracles say, you’d better grab it and run with it or lose the miracle of your life forever.

I know about miracles like that. I got one on a sunny May morning when I had given myself up for dead. Well, not dead-dead, but rather, the walking breathing dead kind of living that saps all energy from your body and leaves you without hope of ever finding a way back to the land of the living.

My miracle appeared in the form of a blue and white police car driving up and arresting a man who had been abusing me for the length of our four year nine month relationship. When first we’d met I thought his name was Prince Charming. I loved the view of the short cut to happiness he promised me and jumped onto the runaway train of his promises of happily ever after. I never expected to find myself lost in hell, in cahoots with the Prince of Darkness and praying for a miracle I never thought would arrive to set me free.

That’s the funny thing about miracles. They don’t come looking for believers. They just appear, like stars in a darkened sky coming out at night. It’s not that they weren’t there all along, it’s just we lost sight of them in the blinding light of day.

It was a miracle the police found us. He was hiding out, trying to escape the country, and I was hiding behind the smile I’d pasted on my face, pretending to be the person he told me to be, or else. The miracle saved me from finding out what the ‘or else’ might be.

Looking back, it was a miracle I was still alive. I had seventy-two cents in my pocket, a few clothes and my faithful Golden Retriever, Ellie, who had travelled that rocky road beside me, faithfully keeping step to my faltering footsteps as I travelled further and further from life as I knew it.

On that May morning, Ellie sat beside me as I rocked in catatonic disbelief that I had just received the miracle of my life. What was I to do?

Well, I knew I didn’t get a miracle to live in pain and sorrow. I knew I got the miracle to live in joy and so, I grabbed my miracle and set out to recover my joy. Step by step. Moment by moment. And, in the process I uncovered the greatest miracle of my life. Me.

I believe in miracles. I am one.