Never Walked In High Heels

Declaring a Miracle

By the time I was eight years old, I was a religious fanatic. I was convinced by the televangelists that if I played my cards right, God was going to heal me. And, of course, with each morning would come the disappointment of not being able to play kick ball, still having to depend on someone for meals, and still being gawked at rather than listened to. On Saturday I turned twenty-five, and now I have good days where I appreciate having shoes for five years which still have never been walked in, or how one can use a stranger’s stare to her advantage.   But there are still nights where I go to bed praying for a miracle. 

This somewhat large concession comes with a massive amount of irony. Nothing will get me to walk out of a church faster than a little old lady saying that she is praying for God to heal me. I think its the idea that our idea of perfection is somehow supreme to God’s which I find infuriating. The only way the world can be perfect is if it fits our own view of perfection, and anything that isn’t how we think it ought to be is a flaw. It’s like saying God isn’t big enough to have perfection in any other way than what is easy for us to swallow.

What constitutes a miracle, as opposed to a coincidence or perseverance?  Biblically speaking, when Jesus healed the paralytic, he first said, “Your sins are forgiven,” and then he healed the guy. Which was the bigger miracle there? The act of healing, the act we more readily concede as ‘a miracle,’ actually only took Jesus laying hands on a man. The first miracle would take God walking among us for thirty-three years and sacrificing himself in blood. After erasing one’s sins, healing the guy would be a piece of cake.

And yet, we actually need to be reminded of the first miracle via Easter or communion. A bit of bread and a bit of wine serve as a mental check to ensure that the act that ransomed us does not slip our minds. Which means, without these reminders, we most likely would forget. So, if I’m likely to forget how I became liberated, how much more likely would I forget that I was disabled in the first place? It would slip my mind entirely, and I would pass carelessly through life - because that’s what I want on some level, an easy, unexamined life. I want a life that lets me credit myself for every day a survive. We all desire that, deep down.

I used to pray for a miracle, and in the process I would miss the ten thousand miracles that were there in front of me. In waiting for a miracle that came in the specific shape that I thought it ought to take, people would open doors at just the right time or someone would come to fill a spot in my life which no one else could fill. And for some, those might be coincidences. They do certainly look that way as we go forward in life. But looking backward… Well, often it seems as if today’s happy accident will actually look much more like providence tomorrow. And really, which is more amazing?: The single miracle that is so life changing that you forget what life was before it happened, or the ten-thousand small miracles which make up one’s life in the first place?