Everyday Miracles

By D'Ann Lawrence White

Life hasn’t been perfect.
Like everyone, I’ve had my share of sorrow, my moments of struggle.
“Character builders,” my dad used to call them. He died two years ago after facing the ultimate character builder, a life-and-death battle with cancer.
Nevertheless, even in my darkest hours I can’t imagine the depths of despair that drove Rose Miranda to leave her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son in a borrowed car June 30, 2006, walk into a Crown Bank in Lakeland, hand the teller a note and walk out a few minutes later with a bag of stolen money.
Friend and then-Tampa Tribune cop reporter Mike Wells was on call that weekend and covered the unsettling story.
“We had trouble finding anyone to take the kids,” Lakeland police Sgt. Gary Gross told Wells. “Apparently she doesn’t have many relatives here.”
Although Gross said the children appeared healthy and in good spirits, Miranda said she was out of work and had no money. No gun was found, but Miranda’s note implied she had a gun. Therefore, she was charged with armed robbery.
I was staggered by the sheer desperation it must have taken for a 23-year-old mother to summon up the nerve to rob a bank while her two children waited in the car.
But I wasn’t surprised.
Unfortunately, in my years as a reporter, I’ve witnessed my fair share of hopelessness and despair, and I didn’t have to look far. Right in my own community I’ve seen things most people expect to find only in Third World countries. I’ve seen homeless families sleeping in cars, children foraging in trashcans and elderly invalids left to lie for days in their own feces.
Every year I treat my son to a rather unorthodox Thanksgiving spent feeding the homeless. He watches in astonishment as destitute people emerg from cars, woods and from behind buildings for a hot turkey dinner beneath a shelter. He stood silently beside me while a drug addict described how he’d beaten up his girlfriend after someone sold him crack laced with embalming fluid.
You would think after more than two decades in this business I would become inured to heartache. But every story still reduces me to tears. If anything, I’ve become more empathetic over the years.
Despite their emotional toll, it’s these stories that give my job meaning. Sometimes they make me angry, sometimes sad and helpless, and sometimes the stories are so compelling, so powerful, they’ve changed my life and the lives of people who read them.
If I do my job right, I’m able to convey that sense of injustice, urgency, spirit and poignancy to the reader. Maybe I can bring some attention to a problem, maybe match a person needing help with someone who can provide the help or perhaps simply show the amazing fortitude of the human spirit.
Like that of FishHawk Ranch resident Dan Lynott when he attended the father-daughter dance at Lithia Springs Elementary School.
Dan had married Anita the year before and adopted Anita’s daughter, Mattie. Shortly after they married, Dan discovered he had terminal cancer. His greatest wish was to live long enough to dance with his daughter for the first and last time.
Nor would I have traded the hour I spent watching 9-year-old Sydney Simms and 8-year-old Zachary Tucker giggle as they played the Homer Simpson version of the board game Operation. Both were battling rare forms of cancer. With purple smudges beneath his vivid blue eyes, Zachary had that ethereal quality you’d imagine an angel might have, and I had this terrible ache in my heart as I watched him carefully retrieve Homer’s funny bone as if he hadn’t a care in the world other than winning that game against Sydney. It was then I realized that, without uttering a word, Zachary was sending me a message in his own shy, quiet way. I’d been taking life way too seriously. I hadn’t been spending enough time playing. I stopped at Wal-Mart on my way home and bought the same Simpson Operation game for my son and me to play.
I was struggling with a serious illness of my own May 9, 2006, when I received word that Zach was dead.
I consider it a privilege when people trust me enough to tell their stories, and I’m humbled when, every so often, they lead to a welcome outcome, dare I say miracle?
I’m not talking about the kind of miracle that parts seas or causes statues to weep. I’m talking about the miracles that occur when people respond with genuine human kindness. They’re not nearly as dramatic, but wondrous all the same.
Like the time sheriff’s deputies surprised a family of foster children with a new play set after theirs was stolen just before Christmas. Or when 4-year-old Thomas Tucker of Seffner received the life-saving therapy he needed for spinal muscular atrophy after his story was published.
Sometimes publicity isn’t even necessary. I happened to mention to someone that I knew of a single mother who was having some financial troubles. Before I knew it, word spread a senior adult men’s Bible study class at First Baptist Church of Brandon. The class wrote out a check to me, no questions asked. They figured my word was good enough. In effect, they’d given me a gift as well: their trust.
Granted, as Jesus told his disciples, there always will be poverty, sickness and despair. But, in my experience, there always will be people willing to help.
I wonder if Rose Miranda would be facing armed robbery and child neglect charges today if people had known how desperate she was, if someone had been able to tell her story.
My guess? We’d have pulled off another miracle.