Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Jennifer Snelling

Christmas is the season of giving, love and miracles.  We all need all three in our lives.  The question is, are you a miracle worker to someone? 

Helen Keller was a child lost in darkness and silence when Anne Sullivan became her teacher, and did the seemingly impossible by communicating with her in the language of people who could see and hear.  For the rest of her life, whatever obstacles or opportunities arose, Anne Sullivan was with Helen Keller as a teacher and a friend.  When Helen Keller went to college, Anne Sullivan sat with her in class, busily scribbling the words of the professors into Helen Keller’s hands so that she could learn the same lessons as everyone else.  Anne Sullivan appeared in shows with Helen Keller, showing the world her abilities and proving to everyone that she could be a star, too.  Helen Keller became an inspiration to not only the disabled, but all people; and Anne Sullivan was named a “Miracle Worker.”

When Helen Keller was given an honorary degree at Temple University in Philadelphia, she said,

“In a very real sense I feel that you have shown me this distinguished token of your regard because you think what I have done may encourage others who have unusual difficulties to overcome.  But I also feel that every bit of the usefulness you attribute to me has been unfolded by my teacher Anne Sullivan.  She has been the house of my defense, and in her wisdom my groping hands have found their strength.”

Each of us has the ability to be a miracle worker to someone.  Though you may not know it, there have probably been people in your life who were lost in darkness and silence until you stepped into the void and communicated with them in a way they could understand.  Even if it wasn’t literally, you may have taken their hands into your own and spelled out greater wisdom and given them strength.  The memories of your help have gone with them into the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

“To laugh often and much, To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.  That is to have succeeded.”

You have succeeded.  People in our lives may leave or come home, but wherever they go they take a part of the light we show them, and they pass their own light on to others.  The words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may have said it best.

“Lives of great men all remind us / We can make our lives sublime, / And, departing, leave behind us / Footprints on the sands of time; / Footprints, that perhaps another, / Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, / A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, / Seeing, shall take heart again.”

How many lost, blind, deaf, forlorn and shipwrecked people have entered your life and, through your humanity, even if only for one brief moment, have learned to see, hear, and carry on?  It may have been something as simple as opening a door or looking into their eyes, and I’m guessing that many of them have never spoken of their deep gratitude to you for your actions; but I am also guessing that in their own way, they have returned the favor by helping someone who is in a place where they once were.  How could any of us forget the kindness, no matter how small, showed us by not only our greatest influences and friends, but even strangers?

My boyfriend had a parent pat him on the back when he was having an especially tough time as a teacher.  My mother has talked about a person who opened the door for her at a store once when she was pregnant and had my little sister with her.  One of the kindest actions ever shown me was one Christmas day when I was supposed to sing special music at church and came in the form of a simple, involuntary smile. 

I had come down with a cold and lost my voice the week before Christmas and the person who was supposed to sing with me had changed her mind.  After church, with my parents divorced, I was responsible for getting my siblings from one grandparents’ home to the other, as well as making sure everyone’s gifts were delivered.  I was overwhelmed, late for church and had not practiced my song.  Nearly in tears, I caught the pastor as he walked by and told him that I did not have any special music for the service.

He smiled at me with loving compassion and said gently and tenderly, “That is quite alright, dear.”  I felt such love and understanding that morning that I cried through the service and gained the small thread of strength I needed to carry on; and I will never forget that smile.

Helen Keller said, “It is that my friends have made the story of my life.  In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.”

Thank God for our true friends – the miracle workers.

“One is loved because one is loved.  No reason is needed for loving.”
-Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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