The tall beautiful tree in my front yard that shades my house and keeps us cool is withering. I called the tree doctor. He diagnosed stress from the weather this spring. He told me my tree would come back but possibly not until next year. In the meantime, I see its withered leaves and know there is nothing I can do to bring it back to health. It has to heal on its own with the weather and the water from the earth.

It strikes me that the tree is a lot like our lives. When the storms of life descend on us we seem to wither and droop. We feel helpless because there is nothing we can do for some of the stresses in our lives such as friend’s illnesses, financial problems and other things we have no control over. We can only sit and wait and heal until spring comes again.

I have said that it will be a miracle if my tree makes it. We use the word miracle lightly in our lives. We throw the word around as if we do not believe miracles can happen.

Dictionary.com describes a miracle this way:

1. an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause

2. such an effect or event manifesting or considered as a work of God

3. a wonder; marvel

4.a wonderful or surpassing example of some quality: a miracle of modern acoustics

Perhaps we are skeptical of miracles because we believe miracles have to be huge. The Vatican and Lourdes carry out scientific investigations of miracles of healing. They have to meet strict criteria to be called a miracle. We also may think of miracles as those in the Bible such as Jesus turning water into wine or Jesus rising from the dead. Jesus explained in the New Testament that miracles are performed by faith in God.

C.S. Lewis states that one cannot believe a miracle occurred if one has already drawn a conclusion in their mind that miracles are not possible.

I am currently reading a book on miracles titled “Expect a Miracle” by Dan Wakefield. This book is about miracles in everyday lives. I expected the book to tell of great miracles that happened in everyday lives such as miraculous unexplainable healing but instead the book opened my eyes to the miraculous things that happen every day that I miss.

Do we miss miracles every day because we are looking for something grand and bigger than life? Do we throw the word around because we feel a real miracle can only happen if it is huge like water being turned into wine? Or are miracles happening in small ways every day and we miss them because we truly do not believe in miracles? Or we believe a miracle cannot happen for us.

My friend recently had surgery for cancer. It went well. She has been though many surgeries through the years for this cancer. She has a cancer that most people do not survive with for many years. I consider her life to be a miracle. I am sure she does too.

I see a rainbow in the sky. I know there are many scientific reasons for rainbows but that rainbow always seems to appear when I need it most to give me hope. My mother dies and in the midst of a cold February winter and a mourning dove visits my window. The mourning doves hadn’t been around since fall. Usually they come in pairs. That winter, one morning right after her death, one mourning dove visited my window. To me that was a miracle and seeing that dove made me feel that things would be alright.

We can wait for the huge miraculous miracle to appear in our lives. Maybe miracles are what we believe are happening in our lives today if we look for them. Each day is a miracle.

My tree is withering but if just one leaf comes back it could be a miracle that there is still life in my tree. Pat Gralton makes this statement about miracles in her life in Dan Wakefield’s book “Expect A Miracle” as she decided to list one hundred miracles that she sees in her life. This is one of them.

“My garden is a miracle. It teaches me everything about life that I will ever need to know: anticipation, birth, joy, changes in color and texture, different shades of the same color, buds, dead blossoms, killing frost, burial, saying farewell, hope for the spring, renewal.”

Do you believe in miracles?

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send e-mail to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net or visit her blog at www.justalittlefluff.blogspot.com.