Mini Miracles

This morning, I couldn't find one of my favorite shirts, a red T-shirt with the silhouette of Toothless, the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon, on it. It wasn't in the drawer where I keep my T-shirts, and I hadn't worn it recently, so I knew it wasn't in my laundry bag. I thought it could have been left in one of the laundry machines and subsequently mixed up with someone else's laundry. But I also had to consider the possibility that I had thrown it away.

The shirt had been fraying for months, beginning to come apart in a way that I wouldn't be able to stitch back together. I knew I couldn't keep wearing it much longer. I suppose I could have made something else out of the fabric - a throw pillow, perhaps, but I knew it'd be ages before I made the time for a project like that, and in the meantime, it would just be clutter, taking up space in a drawer. I had to consider the possibility that, at some point, I might have decided to throw it away.

Thankfully, I hadn't. I found it laying between the wall and the washing machine, apparently having fallen next to the machine rather than into it. When I found it, I thanked God that I had, and that I hadn't thrown it away.

Yet, it wasn't a traditional miracle that had led me to finding my T-shirt. It wasn't miraculously spared from some unfortunate fate. I didn't hear any voices or feel any feelings guiding me to the place where my T-shirt was. I had just lost it, looked for it, and found it. That wasn't a miracle.

And yet, it was. It's a miracle that I'm blessed to own that shirt. I'm blessed with the love of the family members who made it for me. I'm blessed with the eyes that allowed me to find it. And I'm blessed to have had the wisdom to not throw it away (wisdom born, unfortunately, from someone else's less-miraculous experience with the loss of a cherished item).

I'm grateful for all the mini miracles that built up to the mini miracle of having found my shirt again, and I'm grateful that we are all blessed with countless such miracles. We all have more blessings than we realize, especially since so many of those blessings are small enough and constant enough to slip beneath our notice or be taken for granted. Yet, when we consider all the many mini blessings in our lives, we can become overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. In light of that, then, it's only natural to feel and express gratitude for the many miracles in our lives, no matter how miniature they may seem.