We were sitting around the kitchen table, the four of us: The Husband and I opposite each other for maximum eye-rolling/grinning visibility; The Kid between us on one side of the square, moving toward his big boy cup only when bribed with his favorite foods; and Little Brother on my lap, fresh off a catnap in his swing that he alerted us was over by way of a crying jag. My back hurt, my arms ached, my eyelids threatened to “rest” for a minute, and bath and bedtime still loomed ahead, along with the nightly kitchen cleaning, and I felt the weight of it all on my shoulders, which tensed under the pressure.

I cast a glance toward the window beside the table, the glass that gives us a view to our backyard and our neighbor’s. Tonight it afforded me a corner of sunset: pale blue sky and bright pink clouds. And then, our neighbor himself, The World’s Greatest Granddad (so his sweatshirt says), who lost his wife to Alzheimer’s two years ago and now lives there alone in the sunset of his own life. He puttered around his backyard garden before making his way inside. He doesn’t invite pity, with his warm demeanor and constant smile, but his solitary figure did inspire gratitude within me where, moments before, there had been frustration and exhaustion and a distinct lack of perspective. This table full of life and love and I hadn’t even felt past the tightness in my shoulders.

I wondered what we looked like to him as he stood there in the shadows of his garden-yard with a view into our picture window, our four-sided and full table. The thought overwhelmed me instead of burdening me, and just like that I had new eyes and shoulders.

A few days later, TK greeted me at the door as I came back from a run, and, feeling charitable due to the endorphins coursing through my veins, I beckoned him off the porch and into the front yard. The sun was shining and promising a balmy January day. We spent the next half-hour chasing and being chased, and after a few minutes I noticed that we was paying less attention to me, staring instead at something on the ground. I realized he was noticing his shadow–not for the first time, but playing with it now. As he and his shadow ran alongside each other in the bright winter sun, TK laughing gleefully, I made a mental note to save this one in the archives–this Moment with a capital M. So much of my day involves getting from one moment to the next, scheduling the moments, managing them.

This was not a moment. It was a Moment, one not to manage but behold.

I have a friend who wants to believe in more, who wants to call that “more” God, but is held back, and expresses a desire for the return of miracles–obvious moments that are easily attributable to Someone, Something else. I’ve half-jokingly responded to that with, “What you’re looking for is a magician.”

But maybe the miracles and the magic aren’t that far apart after all.

There is the miracle, after all, of a three-year-old who speaks his own language and holds his head straight and runs, this year, unencumbered in the sun where last year he tiptoed, top-heavy, in the snow. There’s the miracle of the occupied swing in the red room, the fat-cheeked baby inside looking like his older brother’s twin. There’s the magic of feeding Little Brother while TK stands beside us, always one hand resting on me as if he knows he’s meant to be a part of this. There’s the magic of LB’s first laugh, and of a boy who runs the length of a football field to try and catch his shadow.

Because I’ve spent much of my life running from shadows, terrified of specters called “mystery” and “uncertainty” and “anything other than my own agenda”–all of which have populated the past three years in spades. But where they appeared, so did grace, and its watershed Moments: realizations that the opportunities to run scared, to fear, are also the  opportunities to trust. Aren’t all the Moments the same, really? Choices between practicing fear or trust, living from brokenness or wholeness, offering indifference or love?

Seeing mundane or sacred?

I’ll admit I haven’ t watched water literally turn into wine (note to self: business idea!), but I have seen hearts change, countenances soften, shoulders loosen–and that’s just me. I have learned all that can be accomplished from the pit of exhaustion and all that can be yielded from a place thought empty. I have seen flashes of the divine while changing a diaper and been nearly blinded at midnight by a tiny grin. And there’s this: I have regularly taken it all for granted, have wished it would speed by, have nestled into ingratitude and indignation, and yet here we all remain, with grace showing up anyway. Never stopping, never not here, never not offering forgiveness and redemption and beauty and if this isn’t a miracle, I’m sure I don’t know what is.

TK sits beside me as I type, which is hard to do while Mickey Mouse Clubhouse fills the room–even harder once he hops off the couch and tries to ride my leg (his newest hobby). But there’s that laugh that gets me, those eyes giving me a sideways glance paired with a knowing grin, and though I know there are moments I will mess up in a hundred ways, I also know there are Moments that are too grace-filled to be broken. Moments that take the fear out of shadows and the tension out of shoulders and the drudgery out of days and look as miraculous and magical as I let grace reveal them to be.