There are a few events in my life that could easily be filed under miracle stories. They often are—especially when they’re told by someone who loves me.
One of them nearly cost me my arm. It could have cost me my life.
In college. I went out. Drank to much. Accidentally put my arm through a glass window. 180 stitches later – I was sent home in a sling, instructions on how to care for my new wound that would leave a prominent scar that is still a daily reminder.
I did something stupid. There’s no cleaner way to say it. I wasn’t careless in a cosmic sense—I was careless in a very ordinary, human one. A bad decision. The wrong moment. The kind of mistake that doesn’t announce itself until it’s already happened.
What followed wasn’t prayer or angelic intervention. It was training.
I had just enough triage knowledge to understand what was happening. I stayed calm. I did what needed to be done. I reacted, step by step, until I couldn’t help myself. Others around me stepped in and took my words to heart.
I survived.
Not because someone reached in from another realm—but because I didn’t panic, and because a series of very human systems worked the way they were supposed to.
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Two ways to tell the same story
When I tell that story, it has two simple truths:
1. I was an idiot and I own that.
2. I stayed calm and reacted instead of freezing.
When my mother tells it, there’s a third element.
A guardian angel.
I don’t fault her for that. She’s my mother. From her vantage point, she almost lost her son. Fear demands meaning, and “angel” is a gentler word than “random survival.”
That’s where miracle stories often live—not in the event itself, but in the retelling.
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Attribution is comforting
At the time, even when I leaned more toward a spiritual worldview, I never thought of that day as a miracle. I knew what it was. I knew what I had done wrong. And I knew what I had done right.
Calling it a miracle would have relieved me of responsibility.
Calling it an angel would have erased the lesson.
Instead, I was left with something harder but more honest: cause and effect, mixed with luck.
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What we call miracles
Most modern miracles aren’t violations of physics. They’re moments when the worst outcome didn’t occur.
An accident that wasn’t fatal.
A recovery that happened faster than expected.
A mistake that didn’t end the way it could have.
We look at that narrow gap between almost and actual, and we fill it with meaning.
“Miracle” becomes a warm blanket.
“Angel” becomes a stand-in for relief.
But comfort isn’t evidence.
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What I believe now
I don’t believe miracles suspend reality.
I don’t believe angels redirect consequences.
I don’t believe God intervenes selectively in accidents.
What I do believe is this:
You either survive through intuition, preparation, luck—or you don’t.
That doesn’t make survival less meaningful. If anything, it makes it more fragile. More precious.
I’m grateful I’m here.
I’m grateful I learned something that day.
I’m grateful my mother found comfort in her version of the story.
I just don’t need a miracle to explain why I lived.
Reality is enough.
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