Last week I lost my wallet.  I lost my wallet full of the only cash I would have for a week, my debit and my credit cards, not to mention my driver’s license, voter’s registration and Scuba Diving Certification.  What’s worse is I didn’t realize I’d even lost my wallet until a couple of hour’s later as I drove up to the StarBuck’s window and opened up my purse to fish out my money and my purse seemed to be unusually roomy. 
I immediately called my husband to see if I’d left it on the counter at home. I then called the coffee shop where I’d met my last client of the day at 4pm. The guy behind the counter said that they had not found a blue wallet.  By the time I had gotten to my Writers’ Group, it was 7pm. Luckily my friend Katy is an adventurer so she spontaneously suggested that the Writers’ Group go on a field trip to the coffee shop first and then to her rent house to turn of the sprinklers (we also ended up going to the Flagship Whole Foods downtown so one of our members could explore it safely surrounded by  safety of our group!).
Buoyed by the optimism of my friends I walked into the coffee shop to ask the girl behind the counter if they’d found my wallet (yet).  The place was packed outside with people listening to the latest groovy band playing.  As I waited for the girl to finish her conversation with a customer, I looked towards the table that I had been sitting at just a few hours before. Something encouraged me to go ahead and look under the table. It was really dark, so I couldn’t make out shapes too well, but I could tell that there was definitely something under there so I walked over, bent down and voila–there was my wallet with everything still in it.
I was grateful. So grateful.  And yet how quickly I forgot this little miracle because it wasn’t until my friend asked me to write an article about “the wallet” and I asked her what she was talking about, that I was reminded that I’d lost and then found my wallet.
Does this happen to you as well? Do you have miracles, however big or small happen and then you easily forget about them?  I love this quote by Terry Pratchert that says,

It’s a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong….It is used.  One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual.  Otherwise, human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying, “Wow,” a lot.  Part of the brain exists to stop this from happening.  It is very efficient, and can make people experience boredom in the middle of marvels.

I love that excuse, which is that we actually have something in place that prevents us from taking in all the miracles that happen to us, around us, for us, and from us.  I guess one way we can make sure that we remember at least some of our miracles is to have witnesses. I had witnesses to finding my wallet after so much time and in the most unlikely of places.  Another way is to record our miracles either in writing or by telling one another.  But I think the most important way to remember a miracle is to be receptive to the idea of a miracle first and foremost.
If we don’t see something as a miracle, how can we remember it?
What miracles have you noticed today?  Start simple.  If you’ve had a big flashy miracle, fabulous! But if you haven’t, don’t let this stop you from finding one.  Think of being receptive to miracles as if you are within one of those Hidden Highlight’s books from a children’s dentist’s office (like when you were little). Remember those? My favorite part of that book was the page where you had to “find” the hidden things inside of a picture. 
Think of your life as a Hidden Highlight’s page and the miracles are what you are looking to find. At first, it may seem like you are looking at an everyday occurrence, but if you look closer, you may find yourself face to face with a miracle.
Try it!