Featured Book of the Week #7 - Counting On A Miracle

There comes a moment in everyone's life when you understand...

...that you don't control anything that's really important.

It breaks my heart to think about Jake standing next to me on the day when his tumor was finally discovered. He was really struggling to breath, but he was smiling at me. We both were sick with colds. He kinda' liked the fact that we were both battling the bug together.

But his cold nearly killed him.

And there was so much more about all of it.

The crying. The fear. The togetherness. The compassion.

Damn! I can write a book or two about it.

Yet what was odd about the situation was that following the operation I was standing at the foot of the bed, still so scared, when the chief surgeon approached me.

"I hear you're a writer."

Nobody's Home was out and had received some press and the award.

I nodded.

I think.

"I've always wanted to write," the surgeon said. "I think that's such a noble act."

I laughed. He'd just saved my child's life and writing was noble to him?

"Seriously," Dr. Caty said. "You should recount this story."

There was no way!

I couldn't re-live even a minute of it! I was going to go home and build a moat around the house to protect everything that was mine!!

But...two weeks later...at the same moment, honestly...it hit both Kathy and me. We were driving to a party. I remember it distinctly. We were on the Skyway. We were both really quiet. Still shell-shocked, actually.

"You should call Dr. Caty and write the book," Kathy said.

She'd stolen the thought from the center of my brain.

So I did.

I wrote from my journal entries. I've kept a journal of every day of my life since the 4th grade. It was all right there.

And the first person who saw the finished book was Dr. Marc Levitt. He was also prominent in saving Jake's life.

"Let me put it succinctly," he said. "This book should be required reading for every human being."

The single greatest sentence ever said to me in response to something I'd written.

Yet, the story had to be jazzed up a little. We needed a title. I believe that I had named it from a line from Jake's nightly prayers, but the publisher wanted it to be 3 or 4 words.

At that time Bruce had just released The Rising CD. Counting On A Miracle was a song about raised hope and gaining control over emotions that were fueled by something out of the control of the narrator.

"How about Counting On A Miracle?" I asked my publisher.

And to this day if you Google that title my name pops up...

...right next to Bruce's.

And here we are...

...a lot of years later...

with one miracle securely in the bank.

Thank God.