Biblical

I have never liked the picture. It always reminds me of an extremely unhappy period of my life.

I was 15, graduating from high school without a prom date and facing a dismal future in a midtown office.

My smile was forced to please the photographer who had 999 more graduates to photograph that sunny May morning.

Yet when my daughter resurrected it, and had it beautifully framed, I said “Thank you,”and packed it with my other memorabilia.

It traveled north with me, and in order to keep spacing on the shelves equal, it gazes down on me daily.

And today I realize why.

It reminds me constantly of the viability of miracles.

The 15 year old who looks down from the top shelf has a mass of unruly black hair and is wearing a nondescript white blouse that is obviously too large.

Her smile is forced, and it is obvious she is not a happy adolescent.

It is, also, an accurate depiction of me at that juncture of life.

I believed in miracles, they were a tenet of faith.

However, I was to learn within the next forty eight months they were not merely biblical fairy tales.

The unhappy high school senior had so much to learn about the the Lord’s plans and belief in miracles.

A lifetime later, the now aged woman gazes daily at the framed memory and tries to recount the miracles:

The prince who appeared without fanfare and shared her life for 57 years; the Fabulous Four, and the sheer amazement that any words she wrote would ever be in print.

The young unhappy girl in the graduation photo had impossible dreams, but they were all hidden.

Only God heard them, and made them come true.