It Would Take a Miracle...

Jun 27, 2025

Have you ever said, “It would take a miracle”…followed by something like:

for my broken heart to love someone else again
for my financial situation to ever be good again
to find a job that I love
to feel like myself again
to lose this excess weight and be healthy again
to reconcile with my family
to be happy with myself as I am
to have peace in my country?

Sometimes our personal situations, or even the circumstances around us, seem so very insurmountable that we simply miss the very people who are right next to us, who just stepped into our lives, who have come to make our lives better.

Today, as I was contemplating a completely different topic to write about, I saw a lovely quote, which made so much personal sense to me, that I figured perhaps there are others out there who might need to see it as well. This is the quote:

How often, while wishing for a miracle, do we fail to see that a new friend, a helpful colleague, or a medical professional might just be the miracle we’ve been looking for?

Almost four years ago, my miracle showed up in two different ways for me at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. After suffering through three years of constant anxiety, misdiagnoses, and hopelessness, I found a neurosurgeon who told me he would remove my benign brain tumor that was the cause of my anxiety.

Not only did he remove it successfully, but he rushed back to the hospital and saved my life twice in the hours after the surgery when an angry artery decided to blow out its wall twice. After the second emergency surgery, my doc told my loved ones that he thought he would operate on me until I died.

Yes, I have my world-class, Yale-educated neurosurgeon’s cell number…he gave it to me before I even agreed to have him do the surgery in case I had questions.

Before I agreed to go with my doc, I asked him if he would be around over the weekend after my surgery. He told me he wasn’t going anywhere until I went home.

I’m convinced that I would not be here if I had gone with the other surgeon I met at another hospital who told me he would only be around post-op if he was on call.

I did not know going in that I might need a miracle doc, but I listened closely to the options in front of me and chose well. And as you can see in the photo above, my doc called me his miracle baby (even though he’s five years younger than me) and told me that “someone must have been looking out for you.”

I chose the good man with the kind heart—the surgeon whose life’s work was dedicated to his father who died of brain cancer.

What about you, dear neighbors, who have been the miracles who have shown up, walked into, or maybe saved your life when you needed a miracle?

If there’s ever a time to share a comment on a post, it’s here and now. Our world on fire needs to see that miracles are still happening through kind-hearted people every single day. So maybe just for today, you can step outside of your comfort zone and share your miracle story with others in a comment below.

Notes For Neighbors

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