A Miracle on the Mountain

I don't know about you, but I believe in miracles. I see them every day. I actively look for them and find miracles in the most out-of-the-way places. Recently one of them happened to a young friend of mine.

This young man and his buddy had been up in the mountains working at a girl's camp. They'd selflessly gone up to teach a class on paint-ball and had stayed to work over night guarding the camp from bears, skunks, the occasional scorpion, and whatever else might go bump in the night. They'd stayed up all day and all night and the morning of the next day, volunteering with no pay but the knowledge that a hundred or so girls were safe and had fun that day.

Instead of sleeping before they went down the mountain, they took off after helping put the camp to rights.

This set of mountain roads are narrow; winding; have treacherous drop-offs which plunge thousands of feet to the valley floor; and lots of traffic of the car, truck, and bicycle variety. There are goose necks and switchbacks and blind corners. There have been a number of heartbreaking accidents on that stretch of road.

Luckily the driver didn't doze off on the upper slopes where the car could have careened off the cliff and plunged to the bottom, killing them both. He did it near mile marker one, where the shoulder is easy and not precipitant. He didn't hit another car. He over-corrected and rolled the car several times.

The driver was fairly unhurt (maybe a slight concussion) although he should have been thrown from the car.

The biggest miracles involved his sleeping passenger. That young man woke to find his hand crushed beneath the car. It was scraped and bleeding profusely. Luckily the driver and some ambulance personnel helped lift the car from his ragged hand.

It turns out that he was wearing a ring on that hand featuring footprints. It has to do with a poem called "Footprints in the Sand" in which Christ carries the subject of the poem during his darkest hours, leaving one set of footprints. That ring held the car off the boy's hand just high enough so the car didn't crush the bones, making re-constructive surgery possible.

The ring was unscratched.

The Caleb Challenge

I've read a beautiful article today over on Modern Mormon Men blog about middle-grade miracles called The Caleb Miracle. These aren't the wop-you-in-the-face miracles like Oscar Pistorius running in the Olympics as a double amputee. And they aren't the niggling ones like sunsets. These are the miracles that happen often when you hope and wish for something and pray for them.

The other day my son P. lost his wallet. It had everything in it, including, unfortunately, his social security card (he learned that lesson). We looked all over for that wallet, retracing steps, calling the bus station, etc. No dice. It was then that I began to pray that he'd find his wallet. I asked him if he were too and he said he was.

He's been having a crisis of faith lately, poised as he is, on the brink of adulthood and scared to death to jump off. So I've been finding every opportunity I can to recognize verbally for him, these little miracles. It's sort of a hobby of mine to note miracles and answers to prayer as they happen. I think it makes one more open to the Spirit and is a form of thanks.

The wallet didn't come back that day, nor the following two. I was beginning to wonder if the wallet hadn't been meant to bless some poor Illegal alien or something (don't even get me started). I took him to get his cards shut down at the bank and prepared to call up the Social Security place. I wasn't looking forward to the hassle, I tell you. I hoped that P. had learned to keep better track of his things.

But suddenly P. got a package in the mail. It was the wallet! And everything was still in it! All his cards (even his Eagle recognition card and social security card) were there. I took it in to him and told him, "Hey, P., you've just had an answer to your prayers. Check it out." That was a pretty good little miracle. Those happen all the time.