The Miraculous Medal that Spurred our Hope and Healing

While I like to believe I always turn to my faith during life’s challenging moments, every now and then, something you may not see coming, knocks the wind out of you. You are left to operate in survival mode and may not even realize when you are losing hope. But eventually, you look back and see what was really happening!

This happened to me when my family suffered a devastating loss when a fire destroyed our home one afternoon. While I knew God would not desert us, I was drowning in the stress of our insurance process, ensuring the emotional well-being of our children, and the overwhelming process of hiring contractors to rebuild, not to mention daily living with three young children. It was not until we were let back into the newly destroyed home, after complete demolition of the interior, three months post fire, that I had a wake up call! Drywall was removed, flooring was gone and any appliances had been removed to ready the home for reconstruction. The five of us walked into a skeleton of a house that we used to know. It was incredibly depressing. As we lay our eyes on our recently demo’d house we finally realized that the rebuild could begin! We spent so much time worrying about what items could and could not be saved, we hadn’t even begun to think about renewal.

As I reflected on this while standing in our hallway, we hear a joyful cry from our daughter as she ran from her once-bedroom to greet us downstairs. In her hand, was an item . . . which was odd since E V E R Y T H I N G in our house was already taken away for cleaning or trashed. What could she be holding and why was she so excited?

Holding out her hand to us, she revealed her Miraculous Medal of Mary necklace. She received it as gift during her First Communion, years prior. It was hidden in her closet behind other important things when the fire occurred and was found by our construction crew during the demo. They found it, refused to throw it away and placed it in her room so we’d find it as soon as we walked into her room. It was the ONLY item left in her room. Her face showed surprise, excitement and amazement. How could THIS have survived? Without thinking, the words, “See, our Blessed Mother is always with us, no matter how hard times are,” falls out of my mouth.

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Even I did not realize what I said, at first.

Though our family had been through the most challenging time of our lives, we were reminded that Our Blessed Mother was not far from us, even through these rough few months. We found it particularly heartwarming that this construction crew, who did not know us, felt compelled to not include it in the trash pile. And then, had the thoughtfulness to hang it prominently within our eye sight so we would find it, unexpectedly during our first walk through as a family.

Finding this medal gave us all hope. It had been a very stressful and challenging past three months, and now, I felt like our family could breathe . . . the Blessed Mother revealed her presence to us. She gave us Hope when we didn’t even realize we were missing it!

How might she be trying to reveal her presence to you? Could she be working on your behalf and you just do not know it right now? Could she be asking her son to answer your prayers in the way He knows best? Might you have lost focus on this? Have you been guilty of giving up hope? I know I was at the time I was lost and overwhelmed in the day-to-day struggle of recovering from our fire. But this experience showed me to never doubt the power and love of our Blessed Mother.

Please know, whatever struggle, stress or reason for overwhelm right now, the Blessed Mother never ceases in her desire to help us! As a mother she knows our struggles and wants to wrap us all in her mantle of care and protection. Turn to her; lean on her maternal expertise and love, especially when you feel like you are losing hope!