God is Always Hiring • Be the Miracle • God Never Blinks
An excerpt from Be the Miracle
Silence the noise.
The noise usually starts up as soon as the wait begins.
It doesn’t matter if I’m waiting on good news or bad news, whether I’m on the mountaintop or in the valley, all matter of doom-and-gloom scenarios appear. My first instinct is to interview everyone I know for an answer, which usually adds to the noise.
The moment I found a lump in my breast back in 1998, the voices started up full force. “It’s just a cyst…it’s a benign lump…it’s cancer.” Everyone had a story that ended well or a horror story that ended tragically, about their mom, their aunt, their sister, their dog that died of cancer.
I tried to shut out all the noise and prayed for a plain, boring, thank-my-lucky-stars benign lump. Deep in my gut, I was terrified. The lump had grown so fast.
As I waited for the lab results, the lump seemed to grow larger with each passing day. At first it seemed to be as big as an almond, then the size of a walnut half, then a whole one. Maybe I was just going nuts. I couldn’t turn down the fear swirling around in my head.
Then late one night as I was driving home from giving a talk at a church retreat, I found myself lost on a dark winding road in the Cuyahoga Valley. It was almost midnight and I was an hour from home. The trees grew close to the road and the fog rolled in from the river, hiding the way out. I slowed to a crawl.
Suddenly, deer appeared all around me. I was driving in the middle of a herd of deer. I had to go 5 miles an hour so I wouldn't hit any of them. They took their time, meandering around my car, leisurely strolling across the road.
Then a calm swept over me. The deepest peace emanated through me. I sat in complete silence. All the noise was gone. The quiet acted like a great eraser. It took away the confusion and the fear and the endless chatter in my brain. The drive became a prayer.
Somehow I knew in that moment I would be okay, even if the lump was cancer. I’ve never forgotten the gift of those deer, the gift of that silent night, the gift of that peace.
It made me realize that sometimes being lost is part of the long journey called life. I wouldn’t always choose the detours I end up on, like the Cancer Road, but those routes sometimes choose me and lead me exactly where I’m supposed to be.
How do you get moments of great peace?
You practice being open to them daily.
I practice being quiet every day. It’s like an ATM. You can’t take money out of that machine unless you have put money in. If you make frequent deposits, when you need money, it’s there. I invest daily in peace and quiet. Every morning, God gets the first half hour. It’s the most valuable time of the day. It’s the most important thing I do. I check in with my source of love, creativity, inspiration and beauty. I plug into my power source.
Try it. It will transform your life if you commit to it daily. Nothing usually happens during that half hour. I just sit in God’s presence, but later in the day, when I need it most, peace will come to me.
I’ve discovered that the best way to turn down the noise is to turn up the quiet.
“Read just one of these inspiring (and entertaining) anecdotes of morally heroic everyday people and you’ll be tempted to read them all – and then go out and change your corner of the world.”