I referred to it as “a minor miracle.” A friend of mine laughed, asking what I would consider to be a major miracle.

“The parting of the Red Sea,” I told her. “The lame throwing down their crutches and walking. The blind suddenly being able to see.”

She suggested that those might better be described as dramatic miracles, rather than major ones, and another friend then suggested that I call the one I was talking about a simple miracle, rather than a minor one.

What brought all this up was a recent experience I had. It started months ago when I noticed I was feeling tired and winded – as though I’d been exercising strenuously – after very mild exertion. At first I brushed it off, attributing it to various possibilities, like putting on a few pounds, slacking off slightly on exercise, getting a little careless with my diet, or simply getting older. When it continued to worsen, I saw my doctor and had some tests done, which revealed I was having a high number of PVCs – premature ventricular contractions. In non-medical terms, this messes with a person’s heartbeat and the efficiency of the heart muscle.

A new medication eased the problem, but didn’t eliminate it completely. Also, the medication could be used for only a short amount of time due to side effects with long-term use. So the next step was a procedure called PVC ablation, in which a catheter is inserted into various areas of the heart to locate and treat the source of the PVCs.

When I got to the hospital for the procedure, I was sedated and hooked up to about a hundred wires – at least that’s what it seemed like to me – and monitored closely. After an hour or so of observation, I was told that my PVC load had gone down to practically zero, and I didn’t need the procedure after all.

This wasn’t as dramatic as the parting of the Red Sea, the lame walking or the blind being able to see, but I put it in the “miracle” category anyway, especially after the doctor told me it was extremely rare for this to happen, and there was no obvious explanation for why it did.

I have my own ideas. For one thing, I know a number of people were praying for me. And these aren’t the types for whom “I’ll keep you in my prayers” is just something they say. These are people I know to be prayer warriors. Other considerations have to do with my personal beliefs – about faith, attitude, and gratitude, for example.

One of those beliefs is that dramatic miracles – including miracle cures – still happen today. And so do the simple kind, the ones that don’t grab attention or headlines, but still defy explanation. If we look for them, we’ll see them occurring all around us.

This made me think of a former coaching client who once told me she was going to look for a miracle every day that week.

“And you know what?” she said. “I found one!”

I’m happy I can now say that I did, too.

The column “Find Your Buried Treasure” appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on December 1, 2016.
©Betty Liedtke, 2016

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