There are neither big miracles nor small miracles. All miraculous experiences are equal. And yet, we can experience miracles much more deeply as our minds open more day by day. We overlook miracles much less than the previous day. We feel them much more deeply than previous day. And we can share the experience much better than the previous day.
Every year on Thanksgiving Day, I start writing down my miraculous experiences of that year. When I do so, I am asking Holy Spirit, “please help me to remember miracles that I overlooked.” Usually, the writing starts so slowly. It’s not easy to remember. Then it accelerates and by Christmas Day, my list includes more than 100 miracles.
I don’t want to pass any year without it being full of miracles.
One of the miracles I experienced right before Thanksgiving this year is one a friend of mine shared with me.
The friend has been studying the Course for more than a decade. She never misses my ACIM class. And we never miss having lunch or dinner together at least three times a year.
She is a very successful businesswoman in her middle forties. Last early summer, she found that her business associate, Mrs.S, was planning to take off from work for one month or so. She asked, “What’s going on?” Mrs.S hesitated to answer at first but said, “I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. I’m going to get an operation and stay in the hospital for a while.” My friend immediately started the prayer to Holy Spirit and simply said, “So sorry to hear that.”
Mrs.S hesitated again and said, “It’s stage four already.” My friend noticed that her voice said, “Do you feel you have a heavy stone in your mind? If you like, it’s my pleasure to hear it, anytime.” She didn’t mean to say so. Holy Spirit talked through her voice.
A few days later, right before the procedure, Mrs.S called my friend and asked her to meet. At a café, Mrs. S told her that she had some trauma from her pre-teen period. Her parents didn’t get together well. Her mother had an affair at home, and her father started coming to her bed in the middle of the night. After her parents finally divorced, she never saw her father again.
She also said that she’d never told this story even to her beloved husband. It was her first time spitting it out. My friend said, “For me, you are still the same. You are my friend. It’s not changeable.” Mrs.S spilled tears and said that she was released and felt she was accepted. My friend told me that she also cried at that time with Mrs.S. Their sense of powerlessness, which was like a heavy stone in their mind, melted at least a little.
What happened next is that her surgeon canceled the operation because he found the cancer cells were widely spread already, and surgery was impossible. Mrs.S was told that she would live only one more month or so.
When my friend visited her in the hospital, she said, “Ok, let’s accept that. And what do you want to do in this last period of your life? I’d like to support it.” Then she added, “You maybe see your father.”
A while later, Mrs.S decided to ask her father to visit her in the hospital. He arrived in a wheelchair, accompanied by his new wife. Mrs.S hadn’t known about either of them, the new wife or the wheelchair. She hadn’t made any plan about what to say, how to be. And when she saw her father, surprising words came out of her mouth. “Daddy, think of me as three years old, and hug me, please.”
He hugged her and said, “Forgive me. I love you, dear.”
At that moment, “the heaviness” in her mind melted and vanished, she said to my friend later. She knew that she was accepted and loved. She also realized at that moment, I believe, that she had always been accepted and loved.
The healing was done. That’s why Mrs.S, my friend, and I, who am the third party, none of us were surprised that her cancer completely disappeared after that.
She returned to work four months after being diagnosed with stage four Cancer. Yes, just four months later.
It is a wonderful example of two people being with the Holy Spirit. Instead of worrying or trying to help recover from sickness, Mrs.S‘s friend simply showed compassion and gentleness with Holy Spirit. Then her holiness was naturally transmitted to her friend’s mind.
Of course, the holiness in me, who is sharing this story now, is so shining, too. I could actually “sense” the shine in me. That is our nature. There is nothing our holiness cannot do. Our mind is absolutely one, and we can sense it.
(This essay first appeared in Miracles Magazine Vol.16~No.1~Issue 91~Jan./Feb. 2017)