Finding Magic in the Ordinary

I was a preemie, born two months early and weighing less than a bag of flour.

Doctors didn’t think I would make it.

My mom went into shock from blood loss and had to have a transfusion, and life became one big battle.

While having coffee this morning, I realized how everything life had thrown my way over the years has compounded to allow me to tell stories, to weave together brokenness and shards into tantalizing tales.

All of the seeds of hope sprinkled throughout the years have created a beautiful field of wildflowers that bloom. How is it possible that all of those moments have created a daisy chain, a crown which I wear on my head to make the fantastical?

Be it my connection to the Brothers Grimm — I studied at the university they taught at in Germany, to the fairy tale highway, to that of German and the Norse/Germanic gods, to Latin and Hebrew.

To combine my training and education and travels (my struggles and triumphs — be it learning Hebrew, traveling in underground tunnels in Israel, dipping my toes in the Meditteranean). To all now culminate in fashioning tales that combine all of my life’s experiences–these seeds– to be beautiful.

The ground, me, who was once considered barren, now can produce so much beauty.

This scorched ground instead rose, thrives, and waves her banner of beauty despite the ashes, dancing in flames, taming them, walking with them, and allowing them to reveal the shadows and all it is that hides therein.

Maybe it’s the change in the season, the hope rising, but the lessons I’ve learned have always produced such bounty and fruit.

But this year, as visions of delight appear, I can’t help but be reminded of the little girl that danced in wildflowers, wished on dandelion fluff, and found magic all around her.

I’m so happy to still know that little girl in me.

May today you embrace the magic you wish to see!