We all have the ability to create miracles, but instead we choose to complain.

I woke up this morning to find an abundance of beautiful, delicate, bright green shoots coming up in the seedling trays I planted just 5 days ago. What a glorious way to start the day! My husband was actually the one who came into the kitchen to tell me because he was just as anxious (if not more so) to see the results of our planting. Like a kid at Christmas, when we went to bed the night after planting he said, “this is the hardest part, waiting for them to pop through the dirt.” There is something so gratifying about planting a seed, giving it a bit of sunshine, warm air and water and watching it grow into something that can nourish your body in the form of vegetables or your soul, in the form of a flower.
When my daughter Kathryn died, the only thing that kept me sane was working in my garden. I didn’t even have a garden when she passed away, but within days of her funeral, I got to work putting one in. There is something about the smell of dirt, the feel of cool, moist soil in my hands, and the required delicacy and brute strength involved in gardening that I find cathartic. I hauled hundreds of wheelbarrows full of soil, laid hundreds of square feet of sod, dug a koi pond and placed landscape stones. Hoping the level of exhaustion I felt at the end of each day would miraculously help me capture a few hours of much needed sleep. It rarely did, as I would find myself, night after night, sitting outside under the moonlight, surrounded by the smell of antique roses I had placed in the memory of my daughter and the other children who had died of Trisomy 18, whose parents I had come to know. I laugh now thinking back to the manic fits of trying to kill the toads who invaded my koi pond at night to lay their eggs and in exchange, deprived my fish of oxygen which killed them. Cue Joan Crawford, in her Oscar gown, chopping away at the her rose garden yelling, “Tina! Bring me the ax!” Oh, it’s a miracle the wild ride of emotions of that chapter of my life didn’t kill me.

I have an understandable connection to gardening, but it goes deeper than the healing nature of it for me. Growing things is yet another miracle surrounding us everyday that we simply take for granted. Let’s face it, we take most everything for granted.

The house we live in that keeps us from sleeping out in the cold, uncomfortable conditions. The lights we turn on to see our way in our homes and the electricity we use to cook our food. The car we drive that allows us to take our kids to school and get to work. The men and women who pick up our trash and the plumbing systems that keep our environment from being disease ridden.

We turn on the faucet to get clean, fresh water to drink and clean ourselves because that is “just what happens” and we drive to a store to get food because that’s just “the way things work.”

We drive in traffic, oblivious to the miracle it takes for everyone to obey traffic norms so we don’t all crash into one another. We board a plane and don’t give a thought to the miracle of engineering that occurred to make air travel possible. The fact there are approximately 9,728 planes carrying approximately 1,270,406 people around the world at any given time is mind blowing, if you stop long enough to think about it.

The mere fact that nearly 7 billion humans inhabit this planet and it is orderly and not complete and utter chaos is a miracle. Yet, instead of seeing the miracles around us, we choose to complain.

The weather isn’t just as we’d like and it’s raining or snowing again. The temperature is so hot we can hardly tolerate to go outside to go for a run or play golf. Our amazon package didn’t arrive in one day like it was supposed to and our internet went down for 30 minutes so we couldn’t check Facebook.

As women we are underpaid and not recognized for the flawless creatures we really are. Men are over worked, under appreciated and overall taken for granted. If your skin isn’t white you are surely mistreated by the vast majority of the world and if you are homosexual everyone hates you.

If you’re rich, you’re over taxed. If you’re middle class or poor, you’re over taxed. If you have a job, you complain of the long hours. If you’re unemployed, somebody surely screwed you over and owes you something.

If you’re fat, you’re exhausted and it’s too much work to take care of yourself. If you drink too much, it’s because life is too much work and you deserve a “break” from reality.

We divide ourselves into groups based upon gender, race and economic status so that we can be sure everyone knows how much we suffer more than everyone else. Collectively, our respective groups have it so much worse than any other group.

Disgusting. We choose to overlook the miracle it takes for us to even be alive and the individuality we each posses. Instead, we reduce ourselves down to our gender, race, economic status or any other irrelevant classification we are currently using to get across to others just how bad we have it.

Maybe if you chose to recognize the miracles around you, you wouldn’t find living to be such a burden. You would be a little more selective about what you gripe about and maybe even take it one step further and create some ordinary miracles of your own.

In your hands is the opportunity to create miracles everyday. Spreading happiness and joy by smiling at strangers. Giving someone in need a little something you take for granted that could literally alter their existence. Acknowledge all of those people who have come before you who created the miracles you now take for granted. Thank the people around you who make your life the absolute luxury it is in this day and age. Go so far as to create something unimaginable that the world can benefit from for generations to come.

I think my husband and I get so much joy from watching seedlings grow because we don’t take the miracle of creation for granted. A person he and I grew together was returned to the earth within days of her birth. Those sort of experiences have a tendency to make you appreciate miracles and take less for granted.

Plant a seed; a seed you want to see in the world. You have the opportunity to create miracles. Stop complaining and get to work.