Miracles Great and Small

Eleven years ago, I had to leave temple in the middle of Rosh Hashana services so the doctor could implant my three "perfect quality" embryos. Religiously speaking, I am on the spectrum of enjoying a healthy dose of scepticism mixed with tradition. I'm not all that convinced about the efficacy of the praying business but then I firmly fall into the "well, it can't hurt!" camp as well. That morning I sat in temple and prayed my not-so-little ass off that the Big Man Upstairs would look after me and my embies which I was about to go and pick up.

Jews are jews, though, so somewhere in those prayers was a, "And listen, I'm *really* sorry but I've got to duck out of this whole praying thing a little early so I make it to my appointment on time. I know, I know, the sermon is the boring bit anyway, but you know, the poor rabbi only gets a decent audience once a year and then I'm going to go and kinda heckle him by leaving right before he starts yammering..." So I asked for peace, and for protection, and for life for my children, and for forgiveness from the rabbi since I was leaving right before his big speaking gig.

The non-religious part of me believes that the embies were good quality and all the scientific bits lined up all like they needed to in order to result in a pregnancy and live birth...and the religious one in me believes that on that morning, my embryos were written into the Book of Life just like I asked them to be. After all, it's the first day of the Jewish New Year that it is meant to be decided who shall live, and who shall die...and blah blah etc etc etc, very long paragaph about the haves and the have nots.  "Ask and ye shall receive," has never been more true for me than on that fateful Rosh Hashana morning.

As a result, every year on Rosh Hashana, I am reminded that my kids are living, breathing proof that miracles do actually happen.

If that's not a good enough reason to believe that there are forces at work in our lives beyond what we can see and touch and hear and feel...well, I don't know what is.