Christine in NYC May 2011

Kindness begets kindness. This is one such story of miracles that wrapped its arms around the world.

[The following is a guest blog post from Christine Louise Hohlbaum]

Life is not a plan. It’s a journey. When we are mindful and embrace the slow, we create a space where miracles can live. This is a story of one such miracle.

As my mom and I journeyed NYC-bound on the WiFi-equipped Acela Express, we would soon learn not only people take journeys, but things can, too.

You see my mom lives in the belief that life is a God trip; God only knows where you’ll end up. She takes an unflappable position about life and its goodness. Even in moments of despair, she recognizes the gleam in that silver lining. And you know what? She finds it every time.

As we zipped up the East Coast toward Manhattan, I helped her set up her blog, aptly named Life is a God Trip, to celebrate her philosophy in an online space. Snapping a photo of her, I wanted to capture her joy. But little did I know that that photo would be the key to the camera itself.

We got settled in our hotel room, had a nice meal and retired early as we knew the next day would be long. Up at dawn, we breakfasted, then took a taxi to the harbor for a boat tour of Lower Manhattan. It was then that I realized my beloved camera, the holder of so many memories during my mammoth five-state five-week trip, was gone.

I should have sensed the camera had its own ideas. It had slipped from my lap and into my bag on the train. Little did I know it was practicing its escape!

Later that day, I half-heartedly asked the hotel security if they had seen the camera. They had not. Saddened, but steeped in my God trip knowledge, I acknowledged that the camera had decided to take its own journey.

And so it had.

Back in Germany, I gasped when my mom wrote me an email. Yesterday a woman left a comment on my mom’s blog, explaining she lived in Venezuela and that her mother had found a hot pink camera in a NYC taxi. She scanned the pictures to find a clue as to the owner’s identity. That’s when she came upon my mom’s photo of joy in front of her newly birthed blog. She must have read the URL, then matched her picture to the one on the camera. She was writing to ask for the address so that she may return it on her trip to Florida, where my own God trip in April began.

No, my friends. Life is not a plan. It is indeed a journey, one of joy and grace and miracles.

For this I am forever grateful. Thank you, Alexandra of Venezuela. Your kindness will live on in all that I do.

Do you have a miracle story? I’d love to hear it. Everything has energy. The more we share it, the more cohesive our world can become.

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World, blogs for PowerofSlow.wordpress.com and Psychology Today. She prefers to go at the speed of life with her husband and two children near Munich, Germany, where she acts, writes and plays interchangeably.

**Originally posted on Psychology Today. Reprinted with permission by the author.