The ‘Little Miracles’ of Life
By Carol Leben
There are ‘little miracles’ happening all around us each day. A life is miraculously spared; circumstances change a life forever, an unexplainable occurrence causes us to view the world differently. We may hear something on the news, from friends or family, in the paper, it’s the buzz for a few days and then fades away leaving some of us wondering, how could this have happened, could it be true?
I, myself, was a fence sitter and rather skeptical in matters such as this. On the other hand, I was always on a spiritual quest, forever wondering why and how, seeking understanding and a deeper truth. I see now that there were probably many signs along the way that I had overlooked. So it makes sense that instead of a gentle knocking at the door, a more dramatic upheaval was in order to get my attention.
About two years ago that’s what happened.
At an age where I felt I should be fulfilled in my life’s work I realized that I had taken more than a few wrong turns. I had a God-given talent for art and as a child spent hours drawing pictures, but I had always been afraid to pursue that path.
I grew up in the Midwest, just north of Chicago. As a teenager I would take the train downtown to Michigan Avenue and wander through the Art Institute. I sat and admired the beautiful paintings and watched the hip looking art students sketch the great masters. As I watched I created a vision in my own mind of myself as a great artist one day. Sadly, I never took the steps to make that a reality. Later, after a marriage and now a single working mom, I worked in other fields while doing portraits and other art pieces as a sideline to make extra dollars.
Time has a way of making you take notice however, and the fact that the clock was ticking and my nagging feeling that something was missing in my life had not dissipated. So I left corporate America and, thanks to a friend, found a part time job that allowed me a lot of flexibility with health benefits to boot. I had made the decision to pursue life as an artist and I began painting murals and portraits.
I placed an ad in a children’s magazine and began getting mural projects immediately. Not long after this a new client had requested the look of aged stone on her walls. So I got to work. To begin I applied some terra cotta color paint to a plain, slightly textured wall and arbitrarily smudged it with a cloth to vary the tones. I stepped back to get a look at the pattern and shading and was stunned and speechless at what I saw. There was a set of eyes staring back at me, and not only was there a set of eyes, but a nose, a mouth, hair and a partial body. It was a face of innocence, a childlike image. I blinked several times. It was still there. I looked at it from different angles; I turned away and looked back. It was still there. I called my client to come and look at the image. We both stood in silence and amazement.
This wasn’t what she requested so I asked if she wanted me to paint over the mysterious visitor or if I should paint around it. I could tell she was very intrigued and guessed she would want to keep it, but I had to ask. She glanced at me suspiciously and dared me to touch it. We both laughed and stood there wondering what it could mean and why it appeared in that place. It was puzzling and haunting to us both. My client assured me she was getting no message or vibration from the image. So after I completed the work on her walls I took a lot of photos, stared at it over and over and then went on my way, thinking it would definitely be quite a conversation piece.
Over the next few months, I became increasingly guarded discussing the appearance of this image because I began to see a pattern and realized that there were many who were not quite on board with my story. I, myself, even started to doubt that it really happened.
Luckily, there were a number of spiritual souls whose paths I crossed who helped me understand that this image really was special; that there was a reason for its appearance and that I should be open to that. I focused on this and began to attract others fascinated by the story, some with intriguing stories of their own. This deepened my faith that there was some significance to the appearance of this image.
Not long after that I was at a gathering at a friend’s home. He was familiar with the story and suggested I show the photo of the image to his friend, a teacher at a nearby college who had psychic abilities, who was also there that day. My skepticism kicked in again, but I thought why not. I handed him the photo and he was very confident when he told me it was the image of St. Michael the Archangel as a child and that it was meant to be my guardian angel. Well this took me back a bit because, after all, it didn’t even appear on my wall and I had not considered that it could be an angel until that time, much less my ‘guardian angel.’
That gave me a lot to think about. But what? I mean what exactly did that mean? I attempted to be open to the possibilities; I pondered it in the shower, stared at the photo with expectation, thought about it while driving in my car. Nothing much came to me, except a decision to print the image on large size business card stock and hand it out to potential clients. I printed up a big stack on my computer and thought they looked quite nice. However, again I was faced with explaining how it all came about to potential customers. I felt uneasy about doing that and put the remainder of the cards in the console of my SUV and there they sat for months.
One day I was driving past a hospital not far from my home and for some reason became very interested in the medical professional building that had just been built next door. I felt such a strong urge to turn that it was like my vehicle turned itself into the parking lot, almost as if on autopilot. Next, I found myself parked at the entrance thinking about the murals I had seen in medical offices and that this would be a good place to pass out my ‘angel’ cards.
I went in the building and distributed some cards on the first floor. Many of the offices were still vacant, so I looked at the roster near the elevator. I was surprised, happily surprised, to see that my gynecologist had moved to this building. Her old office was way across town so it had been almost three years since my last well-woman checkup. So I thought ‘what a coincidence’ and went up to the second floor to make an appointment.
The next week I went to my appointment. My doctor was always interested in what was going on in her patient’s lives and asked what I was up to so I showed her photos of my work and particularly the ‘angel’ picture that brought me to her. She was fascinated with the story of how it came about.
I told her I was feeling good, except for a minor female issue. So I assume that since I hadn’t been to see her in a long while, she did more extensive testing. She did a procedure that revealed some cysts on my ovaries. She felt they weren’t anything to worry about, but sent them off for testing. It was early December and she said she would call me after the first of the year.
Three days later she called me to come in and sat me down in her office. She had a sad look in her eyes and I began to feel some fear. She is one of these rare doctors that really do feel your pain, and with heartfelt compassion she told me that I had endometrial cancer. She remembered the angel story and told me that she was glad my ‘guardian angel’ had sent me to her office because we caught it early and she was very hopeful. She referred me to a gynecological oncologist, the surgeon who would do the necessary hysterectomy. My mind was racing, I thought, I’ve read a lot about alternative medicine, maybe a natural cure would work. What about healing through faith? I thought of the guardian angel, hoping this all would miraculously disappear.
I went to the oncologist and in conversation he asked what I did for a living. I told him and showed him my photo book, which I keep in my purse. He stopped at the photo of the angel and complimented me, so I cautiously told him the story of how it brought me to my gynecologist’s new office and then to him. He agreed that it really was my guardian angel because he also felt confident that we had caught it in time and he instructed me to schedule the surgery with his nurse immediately.
However, several weeks had gone by and I hadn’t scheduled the surgery. One day while babysitting for my grandson, Alex, I answered the telephone. It was my oncologist, himself, and he asked me why I hadn’t scheduled my surgery yet. He really caught me off guard because I never expected to hear his voice and doctors usually have their nurses call the patients. So I proceeded to babble off a list of excuses, even the one about trying a natural approach rather than surgery. As Alex gurgled away in my arms, the oncologist asked me who was making the little noises. I told him it was my grandson. The doctor’s swift reply was that if I wanted to be around for my grandson as he grows up I would schedule the surgery now, today, because otherwise I would not – be around.
I did so, that day as a matter of fact.
The surgery was successful and no radiation or chemotherapy was required. The oncologist happily told me that he was confident that he got it all and today, two years later, my follow-up tests have given me a clean bill of health.
I feel very blessed and get an amazing feeling when I reflect on the gravity of what has happened to me on this journey, how the angel saved my life, the events that took place and what would have happened if I had not been led to my doctor’s door.
What made me look in the direction of that new medical building which I hadn’t noticed before, even though I passed by there often? What force turned my vehicle into the parking lot? I wasn’t even thinking about doing that. I stopped right at the entrance of the building and couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to go in and pass out those cards. What made me decide to do this? What made my doctor do the extensive tests she did to find the cysts? How long before I would have otherwise made an appointment for a checkup? What made this busy oncologist, who I met only once, decide to call me personally at home and be so brutally honest? Was the psychic college professor right on the money when he said the image was my guardian angel? How could an image like that just appear from smudging paint on a wall?
Many things happen in life that we may never be able to fully explain, but I can tell you that I am no longer the skeptical one. I know I have a guardian angel, maybe several of them. I believe we all do but some of us let the ‘miracles’ just pass us by and we close our eyes and hearts to any spiritual possibilities. For others it may take some prodding before our eyes are opened; and then there are those who joyously open themselves up to any and all miracles, large and small, that present themselves to each of us every day.