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While a newborn infant, my mother was thrown from my grandmother's arms while riding a mule-drawn buckboard and was run over by it. She was crushed by the wheels, and was blue and not breathing by the time my late grandfather got the wagon stopped and ran back to her. My late grandmother, a saintly and loving woman whom I miss very much, bent over my mother's lifeless body out of that wagon rut and prayed desperately to Jesus Christ to heal her newborn daughter.

Immediately, my mother began to breathe again. He normal color soon returned. She's hale and hearty today, may God be praised.

This took place on a dirt road in a Missisippi cottonfield in 1946. There were no paramedics back then, and the nearest doctor was miles away. Neither of my late grandparents had the slightest medical or lifesaving knowledge; they knew how to read, write, and pray -- that's it. Only a miracle could and did save my mother from an early grave, and I'm very grateful for it. My grandmother's sincere prayer was answered. Thanks be to God, my mother lived, as did I, and someday my children.

Why did my mom live while other children did not? We can't know. Sometimes God's supernatural Power intervenes to avert such nightmares; other times, He allows tragedy and heartbreak to occur. In either case, His comfort and healing are the true miracles. The Lord can bring a broken heart back to life, or start a still heart beating again, as He wills. And who are we to question Him? I hope that if such a tragedy every strikes my life, Our Lady will intercede for me to remember that a sword pierced her own immaculate heart too, that His ways are not our ways, and that "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the Name of the Lord."

Were it not for the mercy of God and the faith my dear Christian grandmother displayed on the side of that muddy country road so long ago, my mother would not be alive today -- and I would not be writing these words now. The fact that she lived and that I exist at all is a miracle as far as I am concered.

A miracle? Did you say "A miracle"????

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.