This afternoon, as Willis and I were gearing up to leave the house and go have dinner with my parents, the boys were bargaining for the opportunity to bring one of their devices with us. It had been passing back and forth between them all day and of course no one had charged it. Still, we reluctantly allowed it to come even as we anticipated the meltdown when it inevitably powered down.

“If that thing still has a charge by dinner” I joked “it will be a miracle”.

Miracle has always been one of my very favorite words; I love the way it sounds, the way it dances off the tongue. The way that declaring even the most ordinary of extraordinary circumstance a miracle immediately bestows it with a certain light, elevating it from mere coincidence to something nearly divine.

The most basic definition of the word says that a miracle is something completely unexplainable, but I don’t know about that because I *understand* a lot of things that I think are miraculous.

I know the science of how children come into the world, but there was never a time in all of the ultrasounds and tests throughout my pregnancies when I thought I was looking at anything less than a miracle.

I could learn the make and model of every bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor in 1941, but that would not explain how my Granddad survived that day and lived to build my family.

And because we all live together on a miracle in a sea of miracle stars, it feels possible that the same wonder that creates and secures life might also be in the midst when you realize that running late had saved you from the accident, when you made that doctors appointment just in time, or even when you had enough toothpaste left for just one more night when you thought you were out.

We can understand it and still be in complete awe of it.

I am a woman, freed by science. I am a sinner, saved by Grace.

What a miracle.