little miracles

I was watched a movie or a TV show one time and someone said "Everyday we're alive can be a miracle." I've had a few examples of everyday miracles in my recent life. The first miracle was Sunday night when I was able to witness the annual Perseid meteor shower when Earth passes through a cosmic river of debris following the Swift-Tuttle comet. My roommate, Alexis and I and some other friends drove to the hills south of Utah Lake to get away from city lights and spend quality time with Amazon-sized mosquitoes. It took 20 minutes and some 4X4-ing up some really steep hills to get there. The meteors were amazing and we saw everything from tiny faint streaks across the sky to huge, brilliant, softball-sized shooting stars. There was even one that, instead of shooting across the sky, slowly and gently fell towards the earth and then broke up into hundreds of tiny points of light. They were beautiful. We had fun passing the time by listening to friends play the guitar and laughing about Bryan Reagan. It was one of those celestial events that inspires unanswerable questions and reminds us how truly small we are in this universe. That leads me to my second miracle of the week. I woke up the next morning and could not find my cell phone. I wish I could say that it had no effect on my life and I didn't really miss it that much but that would be a lie. I just got a new job and was waiting to hear from them about when to come in for training and my mom was here visiting so we were coordinating airport trips and so on. If it had been any other week this summer, a missing cell phone would have gone mostly unnoticed. So I of course asked myself the inevitable question "Where did I last have my phone?" I remembered getting a call right before we went to Utah Lake and then putting it back in my purse before we left. That was the last time I saw it. My purse, like so many other purses, is full and items tend to fall out... a lot. So I recounted my activities after leaving the house so I could retrace my steps and hopefully recover my phone. First we took a load of blankets down and I sat in the grass waiting for Alexis to bring her truck around. Then we stopped at 7-11 for slurpees (duh). Then we picked up some friends at their house. It could have fallen out at any of these places for all I knew which would have been ok because people live around these areas and would likely see it and return it. The one place we went that night where people don't live and probably doesn't have a lot of visitors is the top of the hill where we watched the stars. Now, I'm a religious person and when I have a problem, I ask for help. So of course I prayed, and this is kinda how my prayer went: Father in Heaven, I've lost my phone. I know my cell phone is not essential to my eternal salvation or anything but it is kind of necessary in my life right now. Please help me find it. Please let it be somewhere that I will be able to find it and let it not be lying in the fields south of Utah Lake playing Imogen Heap Hide and Seek for all the mosquitoes to hear every time my mom calls. Amen. So I went about my day sans cell phone and when I got home, there was a post-it note on the table saying: "Robert (408) 567-blah blah blah. He has Sar's phone!!" I of course freaked out and called the number (using a roommates phone) This guy Robert explained that he had casually driven out by Utah Lake to do a little recreational shooting early Monday morning and had seen a black phone just sitting in the dirt. My phone was in the one place I had prayed it wouldn't be!! but this guy just happened to see it and called the last person I had called on my phone, which was my roommate Jackie. So, to conclude my really long explanation of my recent not-so-everyday miracles, I got my phone back. The Church is true. Robert: if by another miracle you happen to see this blog, THANK YOU for being in right place at the right time, for me.