I'm going through old emails today (I have some really old ones) and just came across a not-so-ancient message from November 2021 that a woman sent me after reading a post I'd written about miracles.
The miracle story she shared struck me as so strangely wonderful, it deserved to be made into a blog post. The person who sent it to me called it a boring story, but I heartily disagree. Her story was so honestly told, I didn't find it boring at all.
My wife is hyper-conscious of matching colors, so even though Laurel is an atheist, I can easily see her becoming a believer in Goddess if She were to perform a miracle along the line described below.
Enjoy…
I had a sort of insignificant and measureable (but significant to me) miracle. It is a boring and wordy story be forewarned.
Lululemon came out with the perfect workout top design, which is their most copied design (but poorly copied). But this design was discontinued by Lululemon loooong long ago and are unavailable. It's the only top I'm almost perfectly comfortable in and hugged in smoothly all over. Their materials are superb. It is expensive but lasts probably 10+ years if one avoids destroying the 4 way elasticity in high heat drying.
So I bought one or two used ones on ebay since they are very pricey even there, used. Oh LULULEMON has a HUGE used market.
So I'm super invested in this top. I found it several years ago in wine-red straps/trim and overall it is that color but blended ("heather"ed).
On the back there is a small section which is very fine net and it is a lighter unpleasant red, I was sad that it wasn't that deeper red, but ….particularly when I saw someone ELSE with the exact top at my fitness club and that back net section in their top is the deepest cool-toned purpley red.
It just killed me that that top looks so beautifully restful in that color in the back and my top seems garish in the light red on that small back section.
This went on probably for many months of me irking about my top, and more so when that lovely woman would come to my class and my eyes would follow that section of her top, how beautiful it looks, and I'm like why oh why oh why oh why is my top not that deep calm beautiful dark cool color, instead of the garish red color in that section.
Sometimes we"d wear our tops on the same day.
One day after many many months of agonizing about the garish red section in contrast with the rest of the top, I put that top on and the back section was now that deep darker restful tone, the part which used to be the garish red area. I kid you not.
Magically the garish red disappeared in the back and it was a darker cool toned purpley red. I have never told anyone this. Who'd care? Or believe it.
That material couldn't accidentally "get dyed" without the blended parts being affected. It is really hard to dye that kind of material at all. Nothing could have accidentally bled into that section that deep of a color and stayed, contained to that area. I also never mentioned this longing to anyone.
It's a small thing and probably didn't change the course of anything except made me VERY happy. Maybe that's why that miracle could happen. It is concealed and relatively insignificant. It was a shock. Maybe also because that implies someone hears all my inner whining.
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The miracle today Brian Ji is that you are not trying to explain it, dismiss it or claim she is wrong, that it isn’t a miracle. Nor is the woman doing that, but both you and she accept it as it is, without necessity of explanation. And you are both a little happier. It’s a tiny miracle, easier to accept. She is happy not only because she got what she wanted (miracles don’t always work that way, nor does getting what we want the basis for a miracle) but because she chose, perhaps in humor, to accept it as such. And that delight she shared and it resonated with you.
She accepted the fact that she didn’t do it. She didn’t take credit for it. And that makes it even more delightful.
Every moment can be like that. Even the hard ones contain, within them, a miracle. But these, and even the bigger ones are much harder to accept. So they typically go into the subconscious denial bin. As if they never happened, or remembered as a vague dream when they were in fact actual events.
But accepting the tiny ones is a great start.