"I've noticed all sorts of really dumb things breaking..so I've been on the lookout for something wonderful to happen, because of this story I heard recently: Carolyn Myss, the medical intuitive who writes and lectures about why people don't heal, flew to Russia a few years ago to give some lectures. Everything that could go wrong did - flights were canceled or overbooked, connections missed, her reserved room at the hotel given to someone else. She kept trying to be a good sport, but finally, two mornings later, on the train to her conference on healing, she began to whine at the man sitting besider her about how infuriating her journey had been thus far.

It turned out that this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And he said - gently - that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible."

-Anne Lamott

"It makes sense, if you think about it. If you had any idea that something great, wonderful and life-impacting was to be born, you'd try to manipulate everything around you to make way for this thing, so that it could be perfect in your image of perfect. It's just that our image of perfect is not God's image of perfect so really, we'd just be getting in the way."

-Small Miracles