The Miracle of the Mundane: Discover the Simple Moments That Can Transform Your Life

Welcome to Hey Tabi, the podcast where we talk about hard things out loud and explore the intersection of mental health and the Christian faith.

In this episode, we dive into the miracle of the mundane—those everyday moments that spark awe and wonder, even when life feels overwhelming. From practicing gratitude to noticing the little pockets of peace (think a quiet minute in a busy day or a stunning sunset), we’ll explore how these small gifts help us stay grounded, reduce anxiety, and reconnect with hope. If you’ve been feeling the weight of life’s challenges, this conversation is for you.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why mindfulness and gratitude can ease trauma and stress
• How to spot “mini miracles” in your daily routine
• Practical ways to keep track of the good—like journaling or “rocks of remembrance”
• Encouragement to embrace both big miracles and the smaller, no-less-powerful ones

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Hey Tabby Podcast
• 0:37 Exploring the Concept of Miracles
• 1:38 The Miracle of the Mundane
• 3:29 Personal Reflections and Experiences
• 7:17 Practical Tips for Finding Everyday Miracles
• 12:16 Encouragement and Final Thoughts
• 19:15 Closing Remarks and Resources

Transcript

Welcome to Hey Tabi, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here, and we are not take two verses and call me in the morning.
I'm Tabitha Westbrook, and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control, and how complex trauma impacts our health and well being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope.
Now, let's get going.

 Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tabi. I am so glad that you are here with me today. We are definitely going to talk about what I think is a really interesting topic and one that probably we will Should get more discussion, but maybe it doesn't. We're going to talk about miracles. First of all, do you believe in miracles?I know there are a lot of feelings around that for some people. It can mean a lot of different things to different people, but I am thinking about it in terms of, first of all, I believe in big miracles. Like the big kind, the kind where, the kind where prison doors open, the kind that are talked about in the New Testament.
I believe in all of that. 100%. 100 percent believe in all of that.  but I think that we are always looking for that big miracle. We're looking for the healing. We are looking for the deliverance. We are looking for all the big things. And those are awesome. Those are great things to look for and absolutely great things to pray for without question.
But I do think that we forget sometimes the miracle of the mundane. And that's what I want to talk about today is the miracle of the mundane. I was thinking about this as I am on a trip at the moment and long drives, which if anybody knows me, that is super, super common for me. I travel all over the place.Some of those little miracles are the ones that I want to really focus on today. And I want us to still pray big for the big miracles. If you need deliverance, if you need healing, if you need rescue, all of those things are so valid and so important to pray for, but in the absence of them or waiting for them to happen, there are still so many beautiful little things that happen in our lives that are essentially miracles in and of themselves.

And when we are able to orient ourselves to the miracle of the mundane, we see a little bit more of Jesus in that, and we experience a lot less anxiety and depression, and I'm going to tell you why. First of all, they ground us in the present. They ground is in the present and in gratitude. There is so much research out there about how important gratitude is for our mental health.

And to the point that  gratitude journals on Amazon, you're going to come up with  a million of them. And that is because there is so much research that just taking the time every day. That's a great way to express gratitude. It tells you so much about, okay, things aren't all as bad as I thought they were.And they give our souls a little bit of solace. They give our souls a little bit of settling. Now it's not going to solve all your problems. Like I'm not saying. Write out your five gratitudes and then you're going to magically feel better about everything. That is not what I am saying at all, but what I am saying is when you are in the middle of darkness and broken and you can find something good, it reminds us that there is still good.

It might be the tiniest sliver of good. But it still exists when we are really, really, really having a tough go, just being reminded that that tiniest little bit of goodness is in the world sometimes is enough. And sometimes it's exactly what we need to just keep getting us through. it can offer us just a little bit of peacefulness. In what sometimes feels like chaos. And so if you have ever had a home that had rambunctious kiddos in it And it seemed like it was all out chaos all the time and you go into the bathroom and lock the door And the bathroom is nice and clean and you've got it decorated beautifully and maybe you have  some sort of  I don't know essential oil in there.

That smells really good Then you might have just a moment when you're like man That essential oil is really my favorite. I'm so glad I put it in here that gives your soul just a minute of rest. And sometimes, honestly, those little pockets of rest, those little mini miracles, those little miracles in the mundane are enough to get us through the next hard moment, hopelessness is something that can absolutely steal from us.

And we do not want to give it a foothold that can make things so much harder and we are orienting ourselves More to darkness than light then that can be a really hard place and actually pull us down instead of helping us look up Again, I am NOT minimizing pain and tragedy at all. There may be the tiniest sliver of like, I am still breathing.And that's what I've got today. And that's enough. There is a book by a fellow out of Baylor, and I am losing his name right now as I talk about it. But the name of the book is On Getting Out of Bed. And one of the things that struck me about that book as so incredibly helpful, and I have shared it with so many clients Is that sometimes the one single act of worship that you have is just getting out of bed, maybe putting one foot in front of the other.

Some days it might be washing your face. Some days your actual act of worship might be staying in bed. That might be your mini miracle of the days, having the space and time to just stay in bed and rest. And when we are orienting ourselves to as much good as possible, it gives us that just moment to catch our breath so that we can go through the next thing.

I want to give you an opportunity, just think about your day to day as you are listening to this, wherever you may be. What little mini miracles, little miracles in the mundane can you identify? Was it that your car got you all the way to work? Now that might not feel like a great big miracle or even a little mundane miracle, but it is nonetheless a good thing.Hopefully, hopefully your job is good. But at least it pays you. And maybe it's something altogether different. Maybe it was, oh, the weather forecasted storms and it didn't storm at all. Or maybe the storms weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be. So yay for that. I spend a lot of time in Texas and in the spring, I often feel like that when storms aren't that bad.
 your day today, maybe just make a note, whether it's a little voice memo on your phone or a little text you send to yourself or in your notes app, to just say, Hey, here are the little mini miracles today. These are these little moments that I can say, yeah, that was genuinely good.

You know, as I was driving, I have the worst altitude sickness of all time. It is so bad. We have tried everything physically, medically to fix this for me. And my body just does not like anything about 5, 000 feet. I have learned I am an incredible altimeter because my body will react so strongly when I hit that 5, 000 foot mark, I get super nauseated.However, that's a bit of a problem because I really do like big mountains. So I am not putting myself at risk and putting myself in mountains unnecessarily, but occasionally as I am driving, there is no other way to go other than through a mountainous area. Now, I do not stay in the super high mountains.
I did that one time. That was bad. And so as I was driving on this particular trip, I ended up having to take a detour that took me up to about, I'd say six and a half thousand feet in that detour. And my body was like, ma'am, oh goodness.
And I breathed through it knowing I was only going to be in that space for about 10 minutes. And I know I've got usually about two hours at that altitude before I I'm going to be in real trouble. And so I wanted to take the moment because I don't get them very often to soak in the beauty. And so as I was driving,I was really intentional about being present and just seeing those mountains around me. And just drinking them in with my eyes and truly enjoying them. And that for me was just this beautiful little moment of Hey, I don't get to do this very often, and I am doing this for me and my body in a safe way because, I'm not going to be here that long.

But I can enjoy that I have a slice of this. I can enjoy that I have this moment. there's another time that I was driving and was just really having a hard conversation with God. It was a really difficult time. There were so many tears. I was very angry with the way something had gone in my own life and just so sad about it.

So sad and mad and just all the feels. And I happened to be driving through this corner of Colorado, right around the time the Aspens were changing to that incredible golden color that they have. And in that moment, it took my breath away in beautiful ways and made me just go, okay, okay. I feel like God is seeing me.You know, I don't get to see the Aspens change colors again, mountain problems.  But in this particular instance, I did, and it was like a little wink from God saying, Hey, I see you, I know this is really hard, I know you're kind of mad at me right now, but I'm still here. You know, life, the hard parts of life, have a way of kind of giving us a gut punch that takes our breath away.

I think it is really important to find those little mini  that sunrise or that sunset that you just look out there and you're like struck by the oranges and pinks and purples in the sky and you just go, that's incredible.

In that moment, just soaking it in for just a second. Even if it's just a tiny little moment, it actually will fill your soul. And these really are those little gifts from God that say, Hey, I see you. I know things are sometimes really hard. In fact, sometimes Earth is, well, straight up a dumpster fire, if we're being honest about it, right?

I know I felt that way a lot lately, but  I'm not gone. And there's still beauty. There's still beauty and still goodness.I want to encourage you as you're listening to this to start orienting yourself to these little mini miracles, these little miracles in the mundane, right? And this is something we say at our practice quite often is that the healing happens in the messy middle. It is very unusual for a whole bunch of big breakthroughs.

Now we do have some in therapy and they're super great. I love that when it happens with clients. But there are often these tiny little movements. And when you look back over a year of those tiny little movements, you've actually gone super far. And I would love for us to begin just as people to orient ourselves.
To those little movements and go, Oh, there's a little movement right there. There it is. It also helps us reduce that stress and anxiety. When we're like, man, nothing feels good. Nothing seems good. Nothing looks good. It feels like there is nothing good. It reminds us that there is. And it really does help us manage some of the aftermath of trauma.When you're a trauma survivor, It's so easy to be hypervigilant and to look at the things that are really hard because you're trying to make, you are trying to heal from them, or you're trying to get away from the really awful things, right? And so when we do that, we tend to really focus on the negative and we forget that there is still good and that there is good happening.

And so it really does help you have resilience, like, oh, I did get through this. Or, oh, hey, there's this thing in the past I totally got through. And this sunset sunrise conversation, smell, cookie, whatever, reminded me of it. And that is just super, super helpful. And also, again, because it reduces our feelings of anxiety.
It helps reduce chronic stress, which we know as trauma survivors, we all have. It also encourages our mindfulness practice. If you have ever done faith based advocacy with me, you know that we do that a lot. We teach a lot of those skills, those grounding skills. All of that is mindfulness skills. And so really, Like taking a moment to orient to something good is essentially practicing mindfulness.So if you've been doing that, look at you, you're amazing. And also  recording them gives you these rocks of remembrance. And this is something that I started doing years ago and that my church's recovery ministry does often. And that is like literally actually writing stuff on a rock.  I used a lot of journals.

For me, as my rocks of remembrance, I have an entire bowl of actual rocks as well with words written on them, or scriptures, or things that God showed me in any given moment. And the reason for that is we are forgetful. And when things are hard, to not remember anything good. I mean, half the time, I can't even remember why I went in the kitchen.
Why would it surprise me that I can't remember the good things in my life too? So writing them down and creating your own rocks of remembrance. Again, whether that's a voice memo, a note in your phone, an actual journal, or a rock that you paint or write on. Posca paint pens are really good for that. In case you're wondering, hashtag definitely not sponsored.but those kinds of things can be really, really helpful so that when you're like, oh yeah, I need to remember that there is good, you can have some sort of record of that. I have had families that will do  bulletin boards. They will do rocks of remembrance there. I am a big advocate, although I'm the worst at always doing it.
Uh, having a jar that you write things that you see those little mini miracles, those miracles in the mundane and put them in a jar and read them out over, Thanksgiving. And that can be really helpful. Now, if you're not in the U S and you don't celebrate American Thanksgiving, first of all, you're always welcome to should totally try it.
I mean, I like turkey, but maybe you don't like turkey. So maybe you shouldn't try it. But you can still get a jar and pick a thankfulness day. If your country doesn't have a thankfulness day, you can create one for your family. And those actually are rituals of connection, maybe rituals of connection to ourselves or rituals of connection to our family.
And what a ritual of connection is, it's just basically a time I set aside to connect with you. So I can set that time aside to connect with myself or with my family or both.  Those are also awesome places to put this kind of work.As you are noticing your miracles in the mundane, make sure you breathe them in. Really take a minute and let it be like an embodied experience if you are able, because I think it makes it that much deeper and resonate that much more inside of you. And really gives you that connection both to the space that you're in and to God.
I think it is always a good idea to maybe set a reminder on your phone or in some other place, especially if this is a really new potential practice for you and something that you want to try. It is so easy to forget. And I know that trauma survivors are like, Oh, there's this thing that I know will help me.
And I totally forgot to do it. I therefore am a terrible human. Because that's always where it goes for us trauma survivors, is it not? We are just terrible humans when we mess up because some reason we're allowed to be perfect. We'll cover that in another podcast, but you are allowed to be imperfect and that's totally fine.And so sometimes when we're learning something new or we're trying to orient ourselves to a new practice. Actually setting a reminder somewhere is really, really helpful and it doesn't make you pathetic or weak. It makes you human and you know what? We're all human. Another thing you can do is to share these little mini miracles with a friend or with someone that you trust, someone that you care about and say, Oh my gosh, I noticed this beautiful thing and share that with them.
There is such a goodness in shared joy. And when you're cultivating that space with your friends, you're going to find out that they're going to call you and be like, Oh my gosh, there's this little miracle that happened. It was really amazing. And then you guys are sharing these beautiful joys and celebrating the things that each other are noticing.
This would be the best use, I think, in my whole thought pattern here of a group text. And again, I know that things can be hard, and I'm not trying to minimize real pain at all, not even a little. These are just ways to orient ourselves to where there is still goodness, to take that breath and that break when we need to, and to remember that things do change, especially when things are hard.we're not guaranteed rosy outcomes here. We're just not. I wish we were. That'd be super amazing. There is still such goodness, such goodness that's available to us. And when we orient ourselves to it more often, then it's going to make those hard moments just a little easier. It's not going to make them easy.
I'm not going to minimize hard, but it will make them a little bit easier. So as we close this out, I want to just remind you that there is such power in the miracle of the mundane in this little everyday moments that if we blink, we'll miss them. They can just bring such goodness to your soul.

So if you found this podcast helpful and you really like it, share it with a friend, hit subscribe or follow, give it a rating on Apple Podcasts. And thank you again for hanging out with me here on Hey Tabi. I cannot wait to see you next time. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of Hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to Tabitha Westbrook. com forward slash Hey Tabi. That's H E Y T A B I. And you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.