A child playing with friends, a little girl having a conversation with her mother, a middle school boy going to the bathroom by himself, a father and son playing catch—to some these scenes may seem very ordinary. But to others they would be miracles. It’s amazing what the human mind is conditioned to believe is ordinary and what is a miracle.
Our son Connor spoke to us from the time he was one and saying his first word to the time he was a two-year-old chatterbox. This was somewhat normal to us. Our other two children, Cory and Courtney, who are ten and twelve years older than Connor, were the same way. They talked incessantly. We thought every child did this.
My son Cory, at a very young age, loved to watch a video about David and Goliath called Super Book. He would walk around with a plastic sword and cloth sling and proclaim as he swung his sling, “I will slay you, Gowiath [Goliath], in the name of the Lo-ward [Lord]. For Him is on my side!” The imaginary stone would be thrown, and he would then run over and knock down a toy Transformer, pull his sword out, and with a mighty swing cut off the Transformer’s head, which we had to tape back on over and over. He would then proclaim, as he held the Transformer’s head in his hand, “God has dewivered this Phiwistine into my hand!” I don’t know how biblically correct it was, but it was hilarious watching him do this. This is normal, right? Every kid does this.
Fast-forward to when my Connor was two years old. We would often hear him say without hesitation, “I love you.” Then, without much warning, he said nothing. Where previously he had played with other kids, he would sit in a corner and only play by himself. What at one time seemed ordinary now would be a miracle. For the next three years, we would barely hear our son put two words together.
We take so much for granted in life because it seems to happen naturally. I remember finding this out firsthand the first time I experienced a hurricane after coming to Houston. When the hundred-mile-an-hour winds and rain finally stopped, there was no electricity and no running water for days. What had seemed so ordinary a few days before became scarce and precious in an instant.
The truth is that life is a miracle. Miracles happen around us every day. Life depends on the little things we take for granted. One might imagine the most important of life’s miracles are big. But it’s God at work in the little things that shows how big God is. They are clever illusions to the human eye, but if you looked through God’s magnifying glass, they would be supernatural phenomena that make life happen every day.
No one understands that more than a special-needs parent. When you were preparing with joy and excitement to have your new baby, you dreamed about all the things your child was going to do. But it didn’t turn out that way. God had a scarier, bigger plan. You thought your child would do ordinary things like others, but God was going to show you miracles no one else could see, a blind spot coming into full view.
For instance, in America anyone can ask for and get a drink of clean or bottled water. Seems ordinary, right? Yet it would be a not-so-ordinary miracle for a child in Africa who lives in a community where the only water they have access to is dirty and diseased. A little girl having a conversation with her mommy seems ordinary for many parents, don’t you think? But, for my wife, Sam, and me to hear one sentence from our son after years of silence would have been beyond a miracle. Having a healthy child—outside of a cold or flu— would seem ordinary for most parents, right? Yet, to my friend Barb Dittrich, who has seen her children in and out of hospitals for years, this would be an amazing miracle. Barb shares her story from her own perspective:
Back when genetic testing was imperfect, we were informed that the results we got were inconclusive and there may be a chance that we could be the parents of a child with hemophilia. Hemophilia refers to a group of inherited disorders that cause abnormal bleeding. . . . Symptoms of hemophilia range from increased bleeding after trauma, injury, or surgery to sudden bleeding with no apparent cause.
We went about thinking, Not us! We’ve been through enough trials already. You see, our children had not come easily to us, and going through miscarriages and extensive fertility treatment, we had also faced other hurdles in our lives. Foolishly, we believed we had reached our “trauma quotient” for the next twenty years!
The shock of our son’s diagnosis hit us like a ton of bricks the day after he was born. “There is no easy way to say this. He has hemophilia,” the doctor declared upon entering my hospital room. Having had two nephews with the disorder, we had a vague idea of the expense and struggle we all faced in our future. Nevertheless, through tears and disbelief we whispered in prayer together, “Thank You, God, for hemophilia. We’re not sure why we’re thanking You, but we thank You anyway.”1
Why was she thanking God for the hemophilia? In the days ahead she would struggle with countless visits to the hospital, financial burdens, and numerous other challenges. So how could she find the miracle in the tragedy? Barbara said it like this: “Thank You, God, for hemophilia because, in our struggles, others may find hope.”2 She saw the miracle God was using her to bring hope, like very few could, because He knew she could carry hope while He carried her struggles. You can’t see all the miracles God is doing if your thoughts are entrenched in your own situational pain. I can’t tell you how much power there is behind the principle of seeing the miracle in the pain. Can you see what God sees, even when surrounded by negativity?
I believe we need to celebrate what we do have, not what we don’t have. Look at what’s right in your life, not what’s wrong. Instead of Barb seeing the hemophilia, she saw the miracle that first, she had a son. After going through miscarriages and extensive fertility treatments, it was a miracle that she and her husband could have a child at all.
One of my good friends, Javier, had a nephew with autism who didn’t speak. He would have severe seizures, and the hard part for his parents was that he could never express his feelings through words. Their son tragically died while having a seizure when taking a bath. When I asked Mr. and Mrs. Solis, the parents, how they were doing, they said something very powerful to me: “With all our son’s challenges, we know many people would find this to be a relief, but for us, we loved our son so much, and he was such a huge part of our lives—as a matter of fact, he was our life. We miss him so much, and we would give anything to have him back with us now.”
It’s hard to imagine facing the challenges of taking care of a child twenty-four hours a day. Yet these parents saw what many struggle to see—the things that were right with their son—which made the pain of his challenges not only bearable, but inspirational. Their love was unconditional. That’s the deepest form of love one can ever experience. That is love that only God truly understands. When you experience unconditional love like that, you are experiencing heaven on earth.
We have so much to be grateful for, despite our challenges. There is always someone in a more challenging situation who would trade places with us in a heartbeat. We need to notice the not-so-ordinary miracles happening every day.
If you want to see God bless you and manifest His presence in your life, start thanking God for the not-so-ordinary miracles. I will guarantee, in the long run, you will grow more and influence more people because of the challenges in your life than you ever could if you only experienced the blessings.
I’ve learned to thank God for the challenge we face— autism. Why? Because, without a doubt, I’m a better husband, father, and friend because of what we’ve been through. I’ve learned to not just love, but to love unconditionally. I see the miracles of life that other people may never see. I’ve had the opportunity to watch God use my son’s life to overcome the challenges of autism and to affect people all over the world. In some ways autism was a gift to change and mold our family to bring hope to others.
What are some practical ways to recognize the little miracles every day? Let me share a few I’ve learned. Every morning when I pray, I thank God first for things I normally might take for granted. I thank God for food to eat. What a privilege it is to have food to eat when there are so many who are starving or malnourished. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world—or one in eight— were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010–2012. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties. There are 16 million people undernourished in developed countries.3
A friend of mine is a principal at a school in the Fifth Ward of Houston, and they are having to give free breakfast and lunch to students because, if they didn’t, many children would not eat at all some days. You think it’s happening in third-world countries, but it may be happening in your own backyard. So, every day, when you look in your refrigerator or cabinets and see even a small amount of food, you realize that what might seem ordinary to you is not ordinary to someone else. When you think about it, every day you have food is a day to celebrate another miracle God has given.
To remember the miracles all around me, I also thank God for a house to live in. As I walked through the slums of Calcutta, India, and saw the conditions of people living in makeshift tin houses with narrow alleyways and no space in between, I thought, How can anyone live in conditions like this? How sad and miserable they must be. Yet when I talked to many of them, they were not sad and miserable. For the most part they were happy and thankful they had a roof over their heads and a communal toilet in the ground to use. They didn’t even mind taking sponge baths in the alley with their clothes on. Surprisingly, they looked happier than some people in America I know who have ten-bedroom houses.
I own a house in a middle-class neighborhood that is more than my family will ever need. I often walk through my house and say, “Thank You, God, for a house to live in. This is a gift from You, and please never let me take it for granted.” If you look at what you have as a possession, and not as a gift, you will never see the miracle. We hold on to possessions, but we receive gifts. When you look at the house you live in as a gift, thankfulness will usually follow. If you look at your house as something you earned, entitlement will make you think you deserve it. It’s tough for us to be thankful for what we have when we don’t notice what we have. Homelessness, just like special needs, is invisible to most people—even to the ones closest to us.
How would you like to look back at your life and realize that, even in what seemed ordinary, God was doing not-so-ordinary miracles? We have so much to be thankful for, but to see it, we need to intentionally recognize all God is doing.
Try this exercise. Every day I thank God for the things I have in my life right now that seem normal, but without which my life would be totally different. So I made a list of at least ten things:
1. A personal relationship with God
2. My wife, kids, and family to love
3. Friends
4. Food to eat and water to drink
5. A house to live in
6. Clothes to wear
7. A job
8. A car to drive
9. A church to go to
10. A healthy body to live in
When I wonder where I would be without any of those things in my life, I realize that every day I’m blessed with them is a miracle from God. Where would I be if not for the grace of God? What would my life be like without my wife, kids, and family? How alone would I be if I didn’t have friends? How hard would life be if I had no food to eat and water to drink? I would die. What would life be like if I were homeless and had no decent clothes to wear? What financial problems and relationship problems would I face if I didn’t have a job? How hard would it be if I had to walk everywhere? What would my life be like if my religious freedoms were taken from me? How different would my life be if I were sick all the time?
When you put it in those terms, you realize how blessed many of us truly are and that every day is a miracle. You’ve heard the saying, “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” I have another saying: “You don’t know what you’ve got because you forgot.”
With Connor, we try to keep an eye out for everyday miracles. We even started a website called ConnorMoments. com to record all our special moments with him. The other day he wasn’t feeling well and had to go to the doctor to get an X-ray of his stomach. When the machine moved over his stomach, Connor said, “Tummy, say ‘cheese!’” Another time Connor dropped a puzzle piece in the car, and he said, “Uh oh!” Samantha picked it up and gave it to him, and he responded, “There it is! Great job!” Then he clapped for her. One time we asked Connor who he loves. He said, “Mommy, daddy, sister, brother, and the pizza man.” We cherish these moments because there was a time he didn’t speak at all.
Let me encourage you to do a few things. First, thank God for the droughts, not just the breakthroughs. Second Corinthians 12:9 says, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”
Second, look around you every day and notice there are miracles happening everywhere. You don’t have to be given a million dollars to experience a miracle. If you simply woke up today, that’s a miracle, considering more than 151,600 people in the world died during the last twenty-four hours.4 But you may say, “You don’t know what I’ve been through.” I would say to you that if it happened, God can use it. Find the miracle in it.
Finally, declare, “All is well,” even when it’s not. The Enemy can’t fight back when you give him nothing to respond to. If you can find joy in the pain, you’ve taken all the power from the Enemy and given all authority back to God to perform a not-so-ordinary miracle in your life. Agree with God that you will listen for His voice and act accordingly. His plans for you are for good and not for evil. Thank God every day for the not-so-ordinary miracles.