Miracles.
They cause us to stop and wonder: What just happened?
Water into wine? (John 2:1-11)
Blindness into sight? (Mark 8:22-25)
Death into life? (John 11)
More than what … miracles cause us to stop and wonder: How did that happen?
And we stumble into awestruck silence when we realize there is no answer, no explanation … but God.
My friend, author Wendy Paine Miller, wrestles with the wonder of miracles in her debut novella The Disappearing Key. The story investigates how parents turn heartbreak into dreams-come-true. But have they accomplished the miraculous? Their choice ripples out, affecting so many others’ lives, raising another question: Just because you can, should you?
And here’s another question for you: Do man-made miracles exclude God?
In Your Words: How has your life been touched by the miraculous?
About The Disappearing Key:
Gabrielle Bivane never expected parenting a teenager would be this hard, but she never expected stillborn Oriana to live to see fourteen, either. The night of Oriana’s birth, Gabrielle and her husband Roy fused their genetic and engineering geniuses to bring back all that was lost to them—at a cost.
The secret must be kept.
Oriana Bivane senses she’s not like the other girls her age, but the time has come for her to change all that. She’s tired of secrets, but does she confide in the wrong person?
The life-giving key, suddenly missing, must be found.
Wendy is a native New Englander who feels most alive when she’s laughing, reading, writing or taking risks. She’s authored nine novels and is currently writing what she hopes will be your future book club pick. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and online sites. Wendy lives with her husband and their three girls in a home bursting with imagination and hilarity.
Download Wendy Paine Miller’s debut novel The Disappearing Key for $2.99 Click to Tweet
How has your life been touched by the miraculous? Click to Tweet
Man-made miracles: Just because we can, should we? Click to Tweet
Comments 21
Thanks for featuring me today, Beth. Must say I like your musing! Would love to discuss this topic in a book club with you!
~ Wendy
Loved sharing about your debut novella today, Wendy!
Ohhhh, how I LOVE the subject of miracles!
My mom was born with normal hearing and then contracted scarlet fever as a teen in the 50’s. She recovered, but slowly her hearing began to disappear. Her (awful) mother even accused her of using her hearing loss as a tool for ensuring the attention of others.
Mom learned to lipread and had the skills of an expert. She was quite a resource when we needed to know what people thought they were whispering in secret. But, she only used her powers for good.
But being in between the hearing and deaf worlds was not easy. Yes, there is such a thing as not being deaf enough. Prejudice is everywhere.
Along came the cochlear implant. Mom’s audiologist suggested she consider it. Then, after years of observing those who’d had the procedure done, FINALLY, Mom decided to give it a go.
The surgery required implanting the device on one’s skull, behind the ear, and then the long wait for the swelling to recede.
“Switch On Day” came one September 10 years ago.
Now, bear in mind, I could not talk to my Mm on the phone. We used a TTY/TDD, you put the phone’s handset on a machine that codes the transmission to a screen and one converses by typing at light speed. It’s cumbersome and slow, so trust me, deaf people LOVE webcams!!!
Mom even had to go to therapy specifically designed to deal with an unknown quantity of hearing recovery. Cochlear implants are completely arbitrary. One does not know what amount of hearing will be restored.
Mom went in to Switch On Day with maybe 5% hearing, in the extreme high pitches. She can hear a siren. They told her that depending on the estimated success of others, she *might* be able to use a phone in 3 weeks. It would take practice for her to regain what English words were lost…
They switched on the implant.
They spoke.
My dad cried.
100% recovery.
That afternoon, she called me on the phone. We cried and TALKED. For the first time in 19 years, we talked on the phone.
She still has the highest rate of recovery in Western Canada.
That tiny little thing in Mom’s skull? WE call it Mom’s miracle.
Wow, Jennifer, what a powerful example of miracle. I love stories like this and can very much relate because my mom has an inner ear disease that messes with her hearing and makes her super dizzy. Thank you for sharing this and I can’t imagine how that first phone call must have felt! 🙂
Miracle indeed, Jennifer.
What a beautiful story.
The critical factor in the miraculous seems to be receptiveness – an open channel through which God can work.
If there’s a hard shell of skepticism or cynicism, not even God can break through – well, He could, be being a gentleman, he wouldn’t. He won’t violate free will.
I wonder if that’s why there seems to be something of a dearth of the miraculous today – that we’re culturally attuned to doubt?
Attuned to doubt. Going to be thinking on that today. I agree with your point about receptivity. I also think a lot depends on how we define the word.
This book is first on my reading list as soon as I finish edits this week–yay, can’t wait!! I’ve definitely experienced the miraculous in my life…possibly not in ways that would wow lots of people, but definitely in ways that have wowed me…open doors when I least expected them…surprises I know can only come from God…stuff that only could be orchestrated by his hand…and I love remembering those things when I’m looking at a current situation and wondering how it’s going to work out or what I need to do or decide to make it happen. The beautiful thing is, God has proven over and over that He’s working behind the scenes and when He’s ready, He’ll let me in on the next step. 🙂
It’s so important for me to look back at times He’s come through. It’s a great reminder of His faithfulness. And yeah, thrilled you’ll be reading it soon! Behind the scenes work = my favorite.
Yes, Melissa: Even when we don’t see anything happening, God is still working. I have to remind myself of that over and over again.
Like Melissa, my life has been touched by the miraculous in small ways…..seeing how God provided for me when I didn’t know how I would fill up my gas tank to go to work, how He brought healing to both my mother and MIL from breast cancer, how He brought me the man who was so much more than I could ever imagine in a husband, how He gave us two incredible boys…..lots of little “everyday” miracles that made a difference to me. 🙂
Back to the point I made earlier, I think it depends on how we define it. I think we’re accustomed to imagining a grandiose water into wine examples when really the miraculous could be going on around us every second of the day.
Agreeing with both of you, Jeanne and Wendy. I think we can often overlook the everyday miracles because we are looking for the grandiose ones.
Agree with Melissa and Jeanne. Miracles abound around me…like my friend who had trouble breathing last week and after a CT scan, it was discovered she had multiple blood clots in her lungs. A miracle that one didn’t hit her heart. The tractor trailer that veered over the line, edging me off the road and at the last second pulled back. Not sure he ever saw me. Great post. Now off to get Wendy’s book.
Yeah Patricia, so glad you’ll be reading it! What also stumps me is why miracles for some and not for others. But then again I guess if I just looked at this differently too maybe I’d see miracles where I didn’t before.
I wonder that too sometimes, just like I wonder why bad things happen to good people. I’m reading a book by Warren Weirsbe about that.
Your post, Pat, makes me think: What miracles have I missed?
Long story short: Jesus Christ was risen from the dead and so was my heart and marriage – the first miracle making possible the second. Grace is my favorite.
Your book is now on my kindle, Wendy. Can’t wait to curl up with it tonight. I’m a big fan of the “just because we can, should we?” question.
Grace is my favorite too, Bernadette! So excited you began reading it! Hope you enjoy!
“A Course in Miracles” ! Keep up the GOOD work of helping people realize that miracles are OURS!
🙂 Danielle!