In 1998, when I was asked to host a new show on PAX TV entitled It’s a Miracle, I said to myself, “Great idea, but will anyone really care about all of this ‘good news’?”
Five years and hundreds of stories later, I have my answer; people LOVE good news, and yes, they DO care.
And I care. Every week I have gotten pleasure and spiritual sustenance from bringing these wonderful true stories to the television audience. I am very happy now to bring them to you in book form, and I hope they will touch you as much as they’ve touched me. I’m more convinced than ever of the abiding relevance and impact of narratives that reaffirm the essential worth and dignity of people – stories that tell about the mysterious but undeniable power of our spiritual lives. Whether these stories are about healings, separated and reunited loved ones, miraculous escapes from harm’s way, or simply about people reaching out and changing each other’s lives for the better, they all have the end result of affirming our shared humanity, and they all give us hope.
The world is, as they say, forever changing and forever the same. In the wake of September 11, 2001, life feels different. There is fear and anxiety, grief and anger. An imagined innocence has been lost; an imagined security has been shattered. But, in important ways, things remain the same. In the midst of disaster, people depended on and came through for each other in the enduring need for community. We are still looking for happiness and love, inner fulfillment and fellowship, as well as security and success. We still need each other, still reach out to each other, and the stories in this collection are evidence of that. One person helps another. A dream comes true. A second chance is given. The impossible comes to pass. So, no matter how dark the view may be from where we stand, we might try to remember that a miracle is always happening somewhere, and that – just as in these beautiful stories – something wonderful is always possible, for us and the people we love.
Enjoy!
– RICHARD THOMAS
The Great Depression hit Otto Sloan’s family, like so many others, hard. When his parents separated, Otto was sent to live with grandparents in Colorado. But soon, economic hardships once again forced Otto to move.
“Back when I was, oh, ten or eleven years old, my grandparents sent me to live with and work for Mrs. Rowan and her husband. So I went there to help and worked there with them. And I did that for some time,” recalls Otto.
It was while living there that he met Betty Jean Hodge, the daughter of a neighboring farmer.
“My earliest recollection,” says Betty Jean, “was when I’d get on the school bus, and he’d be on the bus, already there. And then he would look up at me, with a kind of smile in his eyes.”
“She was a very pretty girl, I thought,” says Otto. “And I wanted to speak to her then. But I didn’t. I was very bashful, you might say. I never would look at her direct, into her face or anything like that. I always cast my eyes down. I still do that to this day.”
As the years passed, Otto’s and Betty’s paths continued to cross.
“There were occasions when Otto would come down with the horse and he would round up the cattle,” says Betty Jean, “and I would always beg him to let me ride the horse.”
Otto wasn’t sure about that, however. “I said, ‘No, the horse is a one-man horse,’” recalls Otto. “I said, ‘It’d be better if you didn’t.’”
But Betty Jean persevered. “I had asked him and pleaded with him so much that Dad finally said, ‘Otto, you might as well let her on it, because she won’t give up until you do.’”
“So he was hoisting me up on the horse,” says Betty Jean. “And he wasn’t sure just how to go about doing that, because he was afraid he might touch me in an immodest place on my body. He was very careful of that,” she remembers, laughing. “He wanted to be precise in getting me on the horse.”
“So I finally ended up making a stirrup out of my hands, and had her put her foot in it,” says Otto. “I raised her up that way—and the horse just flew, it seemed to me, full blast for home.
“I hollered at her, ‘Drop the reins, drop the reins!’ She wouldn’t drop the reins,” Otto says, laughing. “If she would’ve dropped them, the horse would’ve stopped.”
The horse finally came to a stop at the end of the field.
“And I looked up at Betty, and you could see that there was fright in her eyes,” recalls Otto.
“I kind of leaned over and he put his arms around my waist,” adds Betty Jean. “And