No Small Miracles

By G. E. Shuman

Miracles happen. They really do. I’m not here to convince you of this fact. I’m just here to state it as I understand it. I used to think that big miracles happened, and small ones. It would, also, only make sense that if there were big and small miracles, there would likely be medium-sized ones, too. I used to just ‘believe’ in miracles. Over the years, especially recent ones, I have become solidly convinced of them. I want to tell you of one such ‘convincer’.
With our suddenly much-improved weather, it’s hard to believe that about three weeks ago I was totally stuck in a snow bank, at the end of my daughter Chrissy’s driveway, at the very end of a long, dirt, country road in Williamstown. Chrissy and her family, along with my wife and our youngest daughter, were not close by. In fact, they were in sunny Florida, visiting Mickey Mouse. (For those of you, whom, I have heard, read my last column and believed Lorna had actually ‘left’ me for a big black ‘mousey’ guy with huge ears, well, I have no words. People, it was a joke.) Our teenage son Andrew was weathering the storm at our home in Barre City on this particular day. In fact, at the time in question, I believe he was still unconsciously weathering it from his bed. I had ventured out to the woody-wilds (or willy-wags, as I have heard them called) of Williamstown, to care for Chrissy’s alpacas. Yes, I said alpacas. (Some people have cats. Chrissy has alpacas. I have owned cats. I vote for the alpacas.) This February vacation week I had been left in Vermont to shuttle Andrew to and from basketball games, and to shovel up, and I don’t mean just snow. I had been in the process of shoveling alpaca poo, and snow blowing my daughter’s family’s driveway, during this snow-shower, freezing-rain, hale-storm sort of a day. The more I shoveled snow and other stuff that day, the more I hated Mickey Mouse.
I had parked our minivan at the road end of the long driveway, and found it necessary to move the thing to snow blow that area. I got in the van, put it in reverse, and proceeded to experience an unexpected lateral ride, (Wheeee!) as the front of the van, almost surreally, slipped softly and slowly into a roadside ditch; immediately becoming buried up to its headlights in that day’s winter wonderland scene. How lovely.
I put the van into reverse and heard the expected spinning of the wheels. Then, as any experienced, slightly-aging New England driver knows to do, I tried ‘rocking’ the vehicle, by shifting gears, back and forth, from drive to reverse. I, again, heard the stomach-wrenching spinning of the wheels, and the car didn’t rock at all. Those snow tires spun just as nicely in drive as in reverse. The thought then came to me, that someone had once told me you could use your car’s floor mats under the wheels to help get you out. I immediately tried this, and immediately messed up my floor mats, while, once more, hearing the now-expected spinning of the wheels.
Next, after shutting the engine off, I tried something I had not yet done. I prayed. I am a Christian, and I pray a lot. I pray for safety for my family, and for God’s continued blessings. Many times I pray just to talk to Him. This time, for a moment, I prayed that He would help me get out of that ditch. I was feeling somewhat alone in this fairly secluded place, unable to un-ditch the van, and had just experienced a little all-too- familiar chest discomfort as I shoveled out the front wheels. “Real smart situation to get yourself into, George.” (I said that, so you wouldn’t have to.) If I actually had been smart, my moment of prayer would have happened several minutes earlier than it did. Then I would not have tortured my floor mats so. The truth is, I looked up from praying, opened the door of the van, and saw a huge town sand truck lumbering up the lonely road, toward me. The truck stopped beside the van, and a friendly man smiled as he opened his big door.
“Do you think you could pull me out of this?” I practically begged.
“I don’t know.” was his kind, gravely-voiced reply. (Sand truck guys always have gravely voices.) “I can put some sand under your wheels.” He continued, as he jumped down from the cab.
Within two minutes, he had sanded under my front wheels, and I had backed the van out of the predicament I had foolishly gotten myself into.
“Thank you so much!” I said, through panting breaths and rain-soaked face. “What can I give you for helping me?”
“Nothing.” replied the kind man, smiling back at me, as he climbed up into the cab of the huge truck. “Sand’s free.”
I thanked the driver once more, but, to my shame, I didn’t think to thank God until the sand-man had left.

It seems very strange to me that many people cower in impending calamity, and choose to give credence to something called coincidence when such calamity is, somehow, avoided. Things that need to happen, and do happen, exactly at times when they are needed, are considered luck, or fate. Indeed, to consider such things provision for our needs would require believing in a provider; something many people refuse to do. I consider my encounter with the sand truck to have been the supplying of a need in my life, at the very moment that I needed it. That truck could well have come to sand that old icy road hours before, or hours after I got my van stuck that day, instead of one or two minutes after I had prayed for help. I would ‘wager’ that the ‘luckiest’ of Las Vegas gamblers would never have bet on a many-ton, huge sanding truck suddenly appearing like that.
Not solely, but partially because of my experience that day, I no longer believe in small miracles, or medium-sized ones either. When you are the receiver, your miracle is as big as a huge town truck, full of sand, which did not send ‘itself’ to you.