miracles Archives - Gindi Vincent

I’ve long spotted big miracles.

Finding a job.

Getting pregnant with triplets.

Answers to health crises.

And sometimes I’ve also resigned myself to the answer being different than the one for which I had prayed.

But it seems lately, within the past five years, I’ve become able to spot God’s love notes in His “small” miracles (small by human scale standards).

Boots found the day before flying to DC with snow on the ground.

Pizzas coming over our fence on the very day the kids had asked to have pizza for dinner.

But it’s not just the classically good surprises where I’m seeing God work.

A week and half ago, the eldest threw up in the middle of the night. The house is being remodeled, we’re down to one bathroom, and had no working washer and dryer. While I was sad he got sick, it was nothing short of a miracle he made it from my bedroom to the one working toliet in the house (no laundry required). And it was another miracle no one else in the house got sick. We’ve been in those circumstances where we were all sick at the exact same time and it’s NO fun even when you’re not remodeling.

Spotting miracles in the middle of the night.

Then this past week happened.

Loaded down with miracles hiding around the corners.

I was long overdue for an oil change. With a full time job and a heck of a commute, I’d not been able to squeeze it in for a couple of weeks. My clients were in Japan, so I decided I could get it done first thing Wednesday morning after dropping the kids at school and work while I waited. I’d planned to go to an NTB near the school, but my husband suggested I go to a small shop further up the road where he’d previously taken my car.

Embarrassingly, I sort of reacted like a petulant child. Mostly in my head. I thought, That’s inconvenient. Why can’t I decide where to take my car?

After dropping the kids, with full intention to carry out my original plan, I ended up at the last minute taking the turn to drive to the shop he suggested.

Shortly after taking my car in, the man came out with a serious face: Ma’am, your brakes are past the point of no return. They are gone. You need to have them replaced.

We had known for a while we had to get around to replacing my breaks, but life intervenes.

I called Bray, told him the price (and where I was), and he said I should get it done right then.

The lovely man drove me home so I could work from home for the next four hours while they repaired my long neglected brakes (and changed my long overdue old oil). Miraculously, I had absolutely zero meetings on my calendar. I responded to emails and waited for him to return to pick me up.

Yes, the bill was big. An unexpected expense.

But what if I had driven all the way to my clients, over an hour away, with my shot brakes? What if I hadn’t gone to the shop Bray suggested and no one looked at the brakes? Or what if another “upsell” shop found it but Bray didn’t trust the shop to provide honest recommendations?

As I left the car repair shop and drove to Lowe’s to pick up a light and fan I needed for the remodel, I thanked God for watching over me (and the kids!).

Once inside Lowe’s, I FINALLY found a ceiling fan I liked. I’d made up my mind that almost all ceiling fans are ugly. Utilitarian and required for our master bedroom because we live Houston, but ghastly. This one I could work with. I searched for a Lowe’s employee to help me. I met Perry. He was lovely.

Those are special order fans ma’am, that’s why we don’t have them in store, he informed me.

I was bummed but pointed to one box I had found in the corner. It was open but contained the very fan I was after. He told me the customer who special ordered it had returned it to the store and if I didn’t mind it being open he’d make me a deal.

Deal, he did!

After nearly buying a fan on line earlier in the week for over $300, I instead went home with my mark down special order fan with the price cut from $199 to $95!!!

Another big love letter from God, even though I’d done absolutely nothing but behave a bit like a petulant child when I woke up that morning.

Well you know I voxed my best friend and went on and on and on about it.

She’s one of the few people who doesn’t think I’ve lost my mind when I start jumping up and down over the small ways God gifts us with reminders that He loves the big and small things. He’s involved in the details of my life.

Some people I am close to won’t pray about the “small” things becausee they don’t want to bother God when He’s got so much going on. I get that. Why bother Him with this little “nonsense?”

Oh but think of all we miss out on when we leave Him out of all parts of our lives.

Priscilla Shirer talks about how it’s JUST AS BIG of a miracle that He knows us so intimately and can act in small ways to bring us joy and protect us as it is when He does something “bling-ier” to the outside world.

I am grateful for clean sheets when kids throw up and brakes saved in just the knick of time and sales on pretty ceiling fans. I’m spotting some of the miracles in the every day but I know there are dozens I miss. The best thing about miracle spotting though is your miracle-spotting-muscles grow the more you look for God in the quiet corners and busy intersections.

It was the worst of times, It was the worst of times…

Okay, that’s dramatic flare, but it’s hard to say it was the best of times because I was going down in flames.

Tuesday night, I sent a frantic message to two of my dearest friends via my phone’s Voxer app (the lifeline for me and my girlfriends).

“I think I’m going to lose it,” I started, always the picture of composure (*snort*), “but you don’t have to help me. You just have to hear me out.” And with that introduction, I was off.

This was the second such frantic Voxer message they had gotten in one week. I’ve had a lot on my plate lately, an extraordinary amount even for me, and I’ve stopped handling it as well as I should. Fortunately, after bad news upon bad news arrived last week, I got a break on Friday. My family and I disappeared for three days to a retreat in San Antonio where we laid by the pool and did very little of anything.

I came back refreshed and ready to go on Monday morning, only to have the week rapidly unravel.

First up, after several threats, our refrigerator irreconcilably broke down. The temperature gauge read 85° when we arrived back in town. Then I had multiple significant work presentations due with little desk time to actually get them done. On Tuesday, my mother fell in her home and was unable to get to a phone or the door. I found out because her friend who had run by her house to visit heard her through the door, and none of us had keys.

All of this against a backdrop of me leaving for a week-long work trip on Sunday which also happens to be my kids final week of school. Tuesday night, while preparing to attend our friend’s funeral the next morning, I discovered one boy had lost a shoe with no back up pair to be found and both boys had holes in the knees of their uniform pants, I started unraveling. As I wandered into another Lowe’s refrigerator-hunting knowing 45 people would be at our house on Saturday for the end of baseball season party, I left my frantic message.

But there is always beauty to be found.

Small miracles await at every corner.

And if anything, I’m more able to recognize miracles when I’m struggling most.

My mom was okay. They broke a window, got her up, and she called sounding okay. Her friends even came the next day to help her put her house back together.

A refrigerator, also miraculously, was delivered Wednesday at noon. We spent all Monday night and Tuesday morning without finding a refrigerator. Plus, the stores reported Saturday was the earliest delivery date (you know, during the PARTY!). Then, I walked into Lowe’s, having already been there twice, and found an in-stock refrigerator in the brand we wanted (somewhat over budget, but exactly what we wanted) and able to be delivered the very next day because the salesman determined a house with triplets and no indoor refrigerator was an “emergency.”

Bray found my dude’s missing shoe in the laundry hamper.

I drafted my two big presentations and had them to their audience in advance of the meeting.

The boys found church pants to wear to the funeral which didn’t have holes.

There is still a lot undone. Pressure and stress and overall end-of-May busyness that comes to loads of families every year.

But small miracles popped up at every turn.

And then, at day’s end, a huge miracle. The kind that is “more than all we could ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20) More on that at a later date.

It’s night’s end. Everyone survived. Our crew are all licking a few short-tempered wounds unleashed under pressure, but nothing that will leave a scar.

We’re okay.

Heck, we’re better than okay.

We’re the recipients of small miracles.

{The second in a series of essays On Living.}

Spotting Miracles

On Small Miracles