a miracle

“Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything.” ~ William MacNeile Dixon

I was sitting with my little first grader the other day, helping him with his math. He is just learning addition, but up until this day, it had been with pictures to help him understand what he was doing. On this particular day, they started taking out the pictures and just leaving the numbers. After we did one problem like that, he looked up at with this thoughtful look on his face, and started thinking out loud..."so wait, if I add 3+4...." a light came on in his face, "that equals 7. Right mom. That equals 7!" I could just see the wheels turning in his head and a light shine on his face. If any of you have seen the Miracle Worker it was a similar feeling to when Helen Keller figures out that water was water. It was amazing to watch. It's almost as if I was watching my little boy transform himself into something greater, better, and with a greater light.

Well, as strange as it sounds this same thing happens when I see a baby born and a family made. There is a light, a glow, a nod from the beyond that this is right and good. It truely is a miracle...like so many others we encounter in our lives as mothers. The miracle of a family born, a child transformed, a mother made, a couple solidified....it is when we "have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything".