Look and look again

I have wanted some things so badly that I was willing to do almost anything to attain them.  I have tried things I believed in and things I wasn't sure about, sometimes even things I was pretty sure I didn't believe in -- all in a desperate attempt to achieve what seemed impossible.

All of these things appeared to work to some degree, but the biggest difference between what really worked and what sort of worked was how badly I wanted it and how open I was to something new.

A primary example of this was wanting children.  I tried for years to have a baby.  Finally a friend told me about St. Gerard and I began praying fervently.  It was a last resort.  I needed a miracle.  Instead, it suddenly occurred to me that we should adopt a child and I wrote to all the agencies in our area.  They promptly wrote back saying to wait a year and write again.  Once more I felt so defeated, but then it also occurred to me that I had nothing to lose by writing right back and I did, telling them why I thought we would be good parents. Less than a year later we had gone through all the interviews and tests and counseling and on October 1, 1977 we were parents!

Miracle or not?  No one can ever prove it one way or the other, but that's not important and it isn't the point.

Sometimes the road to success is as simple as taking the right detour, doing ordinary things in unexpected ways for extraordinary reasons.