Everyday Miracles

When Jenny was at a crossroads in her life, when she didn’t know what to do, she liked to take long walks in the woods. She found she could think more clearly when surrounded by trees—maybe it had to do with all the extra oxygen.

She had a handful of places she liked to walk, but one time, she found a new trail and decided to take it. She walked along, not really watching where she was going, and wrestled with her problem. Should she keep pressing ahead with her current relationship, which was heading into territory she’d never experienced before, or should she break up with her boyfriend and go back to the simpler life she was more familiar with?

Eventually she realized she’d spent too much time thinking and not enough time paying attention, and she’d walked farther than she usually did. She still had to turn around and walk the same distance back to get to her car. She thought she’d better do that, so she’d know she had enough energy left to finish. But something stopped her. She wanted to go a little farther, to see what was around the bend in the trail. The total distance was farther than she’d ever walked before, but maybe it was time to push herself.

Jenny came around the bend and stopped in her tracks. A doe stood on the trail, not five feet away. She looked up from cropping grass and stared at Jenny. Jenny stared back, afraid even to breathe. She’d never been this close to a deer before. The moment hung suspended.

Then it was over. The doe leaped into the woods and left Jenny standing on the trail, stunned. If she had turned around when she wanted to, she would have missed this. Since she had pressed on past the point of comfort, she got to witness something amazing.

The encounter felt like a sign, a miraculous answer to her problem. She would press on.

Jenny’s boyfriend asked her to marry him only a few weeks later, and Jenny said yes. They were very happy together. Jenny started to take long walks not because she needed time to think through problems, but because being in the woods made her happiness even fuller.

She often walked on the trail where she’d seen the doe. Over time she realized something that made her a little sad—she almost always saw deer somewhere along that trail.

“Why on earth would that make you sad?” her husband asked. “I thought you loved seeing deer.”

“I do. But the first day I saw one, I thought it was a miraculous sign, just for me. I married you based on thinking that.”

“Well, it worked out alright, didn’t it?”

“Yes. But I thought it was something special. I thought I got to see a miracle. Now I know it was just an ordinary, every day thing.”

“Or maybe it was a miracle,” he said, and kissed her on the nose. “Maybe when you take a risk, you end up getting to see miracles every day.”