Miracles come without warning too!

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 12, 2023 

We woke up on September 12th with a reminder that normal no longer existed. That's the way all survivors of traumatic events wake up to what becomes a different normal to us.

It wasn't just the people running out of the buildings. It wasn't just the police officers and firefighters running into them. It wasn't just the people in the area, or across from it in New Jersey. People all over the world watched what happened in real-time.

Then searchers operated on pure adrenaline being fed by the hope they would find their friends alive. With each day, it was all being slowly drained away. They didn't see what all of that was doing to them. With each passing year, they didn't know that day would become a continuous danger to them.

U.S. Marines pray over a fallen comrade after he died from wounds suffered in fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, April 8, 2004. AP Photo/Murad Sezer, File

20 years post-invasion, many Iraq veterans haven’t found peace on the Harvard Gazette is a reminder that those we sent into combat in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't see it coming either. None of them saw #PTSD coming until it had already dug into them.

Miracles came to survivors on 9-11. Firefighters and survivors on Stairwell B and more stories came out. They happened but we didn't know about them until afterward. Miracles happened in Afghanistan and Iraq too. Can they happen to us too?

And now for the good news. None of us saw the people coming to help us, but they came. We don't see healing coming until it arrives proving hope still lives. Not just in us but in those taking the time to help us. Had they not had hope they could help, they wouldn't bother. Honestly, it can be damn draining to work with people after trauma but they do it and most of the time, it is because either someone helped them at some people in their own lives or they knew someone.

We don't see the day coming when we can actually feel the smile come over our faces. We don't see it coming when we suddenly pick up the guitar and play it again, or let our fingers caress the keys of a piano. We don't see it coming when we pick up the paintbrush, molding clay, or any of the other tools we use to create something out of love. We don't see it coming when we sit and write our thoughts, and visions, or attempt to allow inspiration to flow through us. That all can happen after hope returns to us and we don't see it until it arrives. Miracles come without warning too!