How Do You Steward A Miracle?

 How do you steward a miracle?

It's a question I've begun asking myself in recent months as I've continued down the path of processing my personal journey and asking God what comes next. Years of studying the human brain have made it clear to me that we are hardwired for safety - that we are designed with the neurological capabilities to protect us at our basic core. Almost everything filters through the senses with the intention of keeping us safe in some capacity: our emotions alert us to emotional and psychological danger, our intuition, our hearing, our sight, and sensitivity to physical pain red flag us about physical harm, our memories even contribute with their ability to retain our hurtful experiences five times more than our pleasant ones, leading us toward hopefully never repeating that exact scenario ever again. And I am thankful for the many ways in which my own body has helped me survive so much in my life.    

Yet the downside of trauma is that the body becomes so accustomed to being "on" all the time that it forgets how and when to turn off. It's normal timing of when to shut down the stress hormones and reset itself back to a resting state gets thrown off, causing it to be in a hyper-alert space most of the time. Rarely does the body get a chance to breathe deep and relearn its regulated rhythms once again. It takes time and practice on the individual's part to teach the body and remind it of what it once did automatically before deregulation occurred. I've been in that place of learning and healing for a long time now. Perhaps some of you have also. 

But the thing is, when you're in this state of constantly trying to survive and feel safe, you become almost blind to the miracles around you. You are putting so much energy and focus into just doing what you can to function on a daily basis that you miss much of the goodness happening around you - either because you are too close to your own pain to see it or if you do see it all, you quickly forget. The world just starts to feel like one giant threat. Your receptor channels in your brain become dulled and unable to properly receive love and beauty and kindness and happiness. Even when someone or something genuine happens, you can't really enjoy it because the moment is quickly followed by a concern that something bad might be around the corner which could ruin it. You are continuously braced for the next terrible thing. And it's an exhausting way to live. But the body simply can't let you exist any other way. 

As I've slowly and steadily made my way along the healing road, my awareness of the miraculous has begun to open up. I've been able to start looking past the pain a bit and see the acts of timely caring or the avoided close calls or answers to fervent prayers that permeated my most broken chapters. Even though I knew these experiences were Divinely orchestrated in the moment, the crisis was so close to my face that I couldn't see past it and properly sit with how God was showing up. But now, I'm starting to be able to, and it's changing everything. In the tiniest of ways, I'm seeing a glimpse of the Creator's view of my story and realizing that I have a miracle (several actually) to steward. 

Someone I listened to recently said that you steward a miracle by letting it cause you to believe God for bigger things. I'm seeing that now. God does things in our lives that are intended to build upon one another and seed our faith for bolder prayers, greater visions, larger dreams. They are sent so that we will call them to mind in future times when we're faced with impossibilities or losses or hurts that are causing us to question and doubt. Because we have seen God move in the past, we ought to have even greater reason to believe He can and will do the same in the future. The promises contained in His Word and His perfect track record to back them up serve as our guiding light to remind us that He is always moving. Life with God is literally one big huge miracle in an of itself. The Bible is full of them... the greatest being what happened at the cross. After all, how could there be any hope for humanity without the Resurrection! I mean - people don't just rise from the dead on any given day. 

And to zoom out even further still, our very physical life is a miracle. The fact that we are descended from the one into whom God breathed the literal "breath of life" (Gen. 2:7), made in His image with dignity and the ability to mend itself, heat itself, cool itself, and rewire itself is beyond amazing. It's estimated that within the human brain there is more electrical circuitry, more wiring than all the computer systems of the world put together! Scientists have proven that the basic chemicals in our body, the raw material, can be found in the "dust of the ground." But they have also concluded that these chemicals are incapable of arranging themselves into cell tissues, organs, and systems apart from an input of intelligence, thus substantiating the garden-story that God "formed man out of the dust of the ground" (Gen. 1:27). Each one of us is more than just a collection of chemicals and light and water. We are His masterpiece - the crowning achievement of God's creation. And the fact that you are sitting here reading this right now with breath in your lungs and coherent thoughts in your brain and complex feelings in your spirit is proof that you have been "awesomely and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). 

So... how do we steward a miracle? And perhaps more importantly, how do we steward the miracle of our one, precious life? 

Do we ditch it in disgust, telling ourselves lies about who we are, how we look, what we have failed at, where we have been, and why we aren't worthy? Do we ruin in by our choices? Do we harm ourselves? Do we settle for less-than and conclude we don't deserve better? Do we let other voices determine our futures and our identity? Do we waste it on things that don't matter in the end? Or do we accept and embrace it as a gift from the Maker, willing to treat it as the unique creation that it is? Do we prioritize our physical and emotional well-being? Do we silence the negative stories? Do we surround ourselves with others who will be witnesses to the view of the world we see? Do we welcome the miracle, or do we throw it away? How we answer that is the key. 

Listen: I've been through some hard stuff, and I know you probably have also. Life isn't easy. We know that. But what if we began to look for miracles instead of constantly manufacturing worst-case scenarios? What if we began to see all of life as one big invitation to the ongoing saga of God's plan instead of a huge disaster waiting to happen? What if we started to live as though every day, every breath, every opportunity held the potential for something supernaturally intended and designed? Just maybe it would upend our world and lead us into all our days with an undying hope, regardless of the challenges in front of us. Just maybe, we could steward the miracles we've been given with a confidence that believes God can and will do it again. And just maybe 2025 could be the year we begin.