I received a miracle yesterday. Oh boy, you guys. Do I have a story for you.

First, really quickly – thank you again for everyone who has been doing their Christmas shopping through my Amazon link, www.amazon.com/shop/beautybeyondbones . It’s a free and easy way to support this blog.

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Ok. Here it goes.

This whole weekend, I’ve been staying with my brother and his wife while I’m in town in Ohio. My parents are on a weekend trip so I had the pleasure of staying with two of my favorite people in the whole world.

Well, yesterday morning, being Sunday, we went to Mass. I love Christmas time, and Advent in particular. Seeing the ginormous advent wreath dramatically suspended over the Church always takes my breath away with its majesty and beauty.

And the priest was talking about how, during this time of prayer and preparation for Christmas, the Advent wreath is like a gateway to Heaven, with our prayers shooting upward through it. And he suggested we all walk under it as we left church.

Cool idea, I thought. It added a new dimension to this massive bundle of holly and candles. So on our way out, we passed underneath, and in true blogger fashion, I had my sister-in-law snap a pic. Because…Instagram.

Driving home and checking out the picture she took, we were remarking at how, in it, it looks as though Jesus is directly blessing me. This was a truly candid pic, and somehow, my position directly underneath the wreath ended me right in what looks like in His “blessing path” from the mural on the wall.

Awesome. That’ll make a great Instagram post. What a stroke of luck.

So we went about our day. I took some photos for her website and new business. We had some lunch. And on a whim, my sister-in-law and I decided to go back to church and go to their “Christmas Lessons and Carols.” The Church has a world renowned chamber choir and this was a truly spectacular musical and spiritual event.

Well. All of the readings at the Lessons and Carols were about the Annunciation of Mary: the miracle of Jesus’s birth. How the angel Gabriel proclaimed that Mary would miraculously conceive of Jesus in her womb as a virgin.

But I kept seeing the word “womb” be used over and over in the readings. And to be honest, I thought to myself…odd choice of wording.

ANYWHO. On our way out of the Lessons and Carols concert, my sister-in-law and I stopped in the side chapel to light a candle. And during this time, in addition to praying for my mom and family, I just prayed that God’s will be done in my life regarding my love life, my health, everything.

Fast forward to that night. ((I told you…this is quite the story. So keep up, people! We’re just getting good!))

That night, I come to learn that it is “IBD Awareness Week.” For those that don’t know, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (one of the two IBD’s — Crohn’s and Colitis) when I was 16 years old, and I ended up healing myself through the Specific Carb Diet. (Hence, the recipes I have begun sharing on this blog every Wednesday.)

But thinking about how we’re preparing for the miracle of Christmas, I started to draft a post for tonight, about how miracles don’t always just happen. Sometimes the miracle is God’s spirit inside of us, giving us the ability to work towards the miracle itself. Much like my Ulcerative Colitis: God bringing the idea of this diet into my life, and then blessing me with the self-discipline to follow it every day. Thus leading to my complete healing of my UC! That’s the miracle.

And then along the same “work for it” lines: the miracle of my healing from anorexia – God equipped me with the disciple and strength to choose recovery every day.

So that was the post I was going to publish tonight. However, it didn’t quite settle with me, because as I have shared in the past, I am struggling with infertility. One of the devastating repercussion of severe anorexia and being so deathly underweight for such a prolonged period of time is that your reproductive system shuts down, and sometimes, never comes back…as was my case.

Even though I am now healthy, my reproductive system had never recovered, and I have never had a period, as my anorexia developed before I “officially” went through puberty.

So I was thinking that, how could I publish that I was living a miracle in my recovery from anorexia, when the #1 tell tale sign of an ED is amenorrhea?

My eyelids had become too heavy, so I decided to just figure it out in the morning with a fresh brain.

Well friends, wouldn’t you know, that on the evening of celebrating the miracle that took place in Mary’s womb, a miracle took place in my own, as well.

Yes friends, you can now call me Fertile Myrtle.

And I’m crying joyous tears as I type that.

Now, why on earth have I decided to disclose this mortifying information with the world?

Not just because I truly believe it was a miracle. Not because we’ve been on this journey together and your friendship and support has been such an important part of my story, but because God can make all things new, and restore, even the most hopeless of situations.

I had completely come to terms with my infertility and mourned that loss. I should have never counted God down for the count.

Advent is the time where we prepare for the miracle of Christ’s birth. Maybe it was the candle my sister-in-law lit for me. Maybe it was shooting my prayers up through the Advent wreath. Or maybe it was God working through my day-in-day-out dedication to recovery all these years.

I will never know. But I do know that I have a lot to thank God for.

***THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS ORDERED MY BOOKS, BLOOM: A JOURNAL BY BEAUTYBEYONDBONES AND “MY BLOGGING TIPS“***

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY!

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