A Treasury of Miracles for Women by Karen Kingsbury Page A

sick,” she would say during her daily visits to the nursing home. “But the doctors and nurses can help you here much better than I can at home. I hope you un derstand, Mother. I love you.”
    Eventually two weeks passed and now, as Miranda drove home, she felt terribly cheated. Her mother had been healthy, spry, and witty until this incident. She might have had years left if that nurse hadn't administered the wrong medication.
    Miranda sighed aloud. She was doing her best to avoid blaming the nurse. “Lord, help me to understand why this has happened,” she prayed softly. “It doesn't seem fair that Mother should be cheated of her last years of life after she's been such an inspiration to me and touched so many peo ple.”
    When Miranda got home it was nearly dusk, and Bill was still out golfing with his friends. She set her purse on the counter and thought how cold and lonely the house felt. Just three weeks earlier they'd had company over for dinner and her mother had been fine. Now she lay at death's doorstep, and Miranda struggled to make sense of the situation. How quickly and irrevocably life could change.
    “I need to get outside before I work myself into a full blown depression,” Miranda said to herself. She found her gardening gloves and pulled them over her hands, intent on pruning the dead flowers from her beautiful garden that ran alongside the fence in the front yard.
    She was working steadily among the flowers, still wrestling with the unfairness of her mother's situation, when she heard a man's voice nearby.
    “My, your flowers are so lovely,” he said.
    Miranda looked up and saw, standing on the sidewalk, a tall man holding the leash of a beautiful little dog. Mi randa smiled sadly. Her mother loved dogs and she cer tainly would have enjoyed this one. Miranda would have to tell her about it on her next visit.
    “Thank you,” Miranda said, leaning back on her heels and looking up into the man's face. She had lived in the neighborhood for thirty-five years, but had never seen this person before. Miranda glanced back down at her flowers and frowned.
    “They aren't as pretty as they could be if I had more time to take care of them,” she said. “My mother's sick. She's in a nursing home.”
    The man gazed at Miranda kindly. There was some thing unearthly about him, a glow almost. He waited for Miranda to continue.
    “She was given the wrong medication and now she's dying. I want to be there as much as possible.”
    She looked at the man, and was embarrassed to feel tears welling up in her eyes again. This man was a stranger and here she was telling him all her problems.
    “Don't worry about your mother,” the man said, his voice strong and gentle. “God is in control.”
    Miranda wiped an errant strand of hair from her fore head and brushed the dirt off her gloves. How strange that someone she didn't know would offer such words of wis dom. The man continued to stand nearby, watching her closely.
    “Sir, where do you live?” she finally asked.
    The man said nothing, but only pointed upward. In stinctively, Miranda's eyes followed the direction he was pointing, and she looked toward the sky. When she looked back down, the man and his dog were gone. There was no sign of them anywhere along the street, and there was no way they could have vanished so quickly.
    Miranda was shocked. She thought back over the con versation she had shared with the man, and she realized that she hadn't seen him arrive. He had just appeared with words of encouragement and then disappeared.
    “God is in control,” he had said. Miranda pondered the truth in the man's words and found that as the evening passed she felt less burdened.
    The next morning, Miranda received a phone call from the nursing home. “Mrs. Thompson, you'll want to come down as quickly as possible,” the administrator said. “Your mother has died very peacefully in her sleep.”
    Miranda shut her eyes as one hand flew to her mouth. Nothing could