My son blames being a cancer survivor.
Unfortunately, I have no such excuse, so when the ball leaves my hand and heads straight into the gutter like it’s been personally assigned there, I've got nothing to blame but bad genetics.
We were getting absolutely creamed by the Ukrainian dad. Every time his ball connected just right, pins scattering like startled birds, his kids burst into cheers, loud and high and full of surprise-delight. My son responded by looking down at his rental shoes, turning one foot sideways as if inspecting it for design flaws. “It’s definitely these shoes,” he said with solemn authority. “Something’s off with them.” The Ukrainian dad just grinned at our lengthy excuses.
We were there to celebrate the birthday of one of their boys.
The younger one, big brown eyes, shy smile, bouncing on the balls of his feet, could hardly keep still between turns. When he bowled a spare, the whole group erupted like he’d just clinched the final point of a championship match.
The place smelled like hot pizza, fryer oil, and warm dough, the familiar scent of every bowling alley in America. Trays of cheese pizza arrived first, steaming and stringy. Then baskets of greasy fries, the kind you know you’ll regret later but somehow keep reaching for. Napkins disappeared and the baskets emptied.
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and the alley was busy, families and birthday parties and teenagers in hoodies. Bowling balls thudded. Pins crashed. A loudspeaker crackled every so often, though no one could understand what it said. Sports flickered on the TVs overhead, college football on one screen, some bowling championship on another. The sound of conversation, blurred and layered, rose and fell like tidewater.
And somewhere in the middle of that noise and laughter and pizza grease, peace settled quietly in my heart.
For those who have followed my writing, you may remember the second Ukrainian family I walked alongside, the family I helped about a year after the war broke out, was the family who eventually left due to being unable to renew their legal documents.
This is not that family.
This is the first family I helped, the first story God placed in my path and the family who lived with us for four months.
And their story is still unfolding.
They are still here, still navigating court dates and government letters and attorney calls. Still trying to learn English fast enough to keep up. Still figuring out stores and schools and how insurance works. Still hoping for good news. Still praying for the right to stay.
Which made the laughter in that bowling alley feel like holy ground. Sometimes miracles don’t look like parting seas or sudden deliverance. Sometimes they look like children laughing over pizza on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Sometimes they look like a father who can still smile, still hope, still bowl strikes. Sometimes they look like God stitching stories together one birthday party at a time.
And sitting there, watching those kids laugh, I knew:
We were in the presence of a miracle.
Joseph’s Dream
Night had fallen over Bethlehem. The narrow streets were quiet now, emptied after the noise and crowds of the census weeks before. A stray dog barked somewhere in the distance, then silence again. Inside a small house, Joseph finally let his shoulders rest. The oil lamp flickered, casting long, trembling shadows on the wall. The baby, their baby, slept in Mary’s arms, his tiny chest rising and falling in a rhythm that calmed them both. For the first time in a while, there was peace.
Joseph’s hands, strong, work-worn, the hands of a man who built things for others, lay open beside him as he drifted toward sleep. The smell of wood still clung faintly to his skin. His last thought before sleep came was simple and content: They are safe. We are safe.
Then the dream came.
At first, there was light. Not the gentle kind that seeps through cracks at dawn, but fierce and living, so sudden that Joseph shielded his eyes even in sleep. The light moved, and within it a voice spoke, steady and clear.
“Joseph, son of David,” the angel said.
“Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is searching for the child to destroy him.”
(Matthew 2:13)
When he woke, his heart was pounding. The night was utterly still, but the echo of that voice filled the room like thunder. He turned toward Mary, who stirred and blinked awake, instantly alert, because when an angel speaks, you remember it. This was not the first time for either of them. They both knew the sound of heaven’s call, and they both knew that when it came, you didn’t hesitate.
You obeyed.
“Mary,” he whispered, already reaching for the satchel. “We have to go. Tonight.”
There was no question, no resistance. Only trust.
Mary gathered Jesus close, wrapping Him in cloths. Her hands moved quickly, quietly, practiced by now in the art of faith under pressure. Joseph packed what little they had: tools, bread, a waterskin, a spare cloak. The small house smelled of oil and dust and fear. The lamp guttered low.
Outside, the world was wrapped in darkness. The air was cold, the kind that bites your lungs when you breathe too deeply. Overhead, the stars were sharp and bright, scattered like promise across the sky. They moved quickly through narrow streets, footsteps soft on the packed earth. The only sound was the faint rustle of cloth, the creak of leather straps, the small sighs of a sleeping child.
They passed homes where other families slept, unaware of the danger rising in the heart of a king. Somewhere, soldiers stirred in their barracks. Somewhere, a plan of violence was already being written. And between those two worlds, power and innocence, a young family fled into the night.
The road to Egypt stretched far ahead of them.
More than two hundred miles through desert and wilderness.
Days of walking, sleeping under stars, eating what they could carry, hiding when they must.
No maps, no caravans, no assurance except God’s command: Go.
By day, the sun would burn against their backs.
By night, the air would turn bitter and cold.
They would pass through Judea, skirt the edges of Sinai, and cross into the land that had once held their ancestors in bondage, now the land that would hold them in safety. Egypt, of all places. The same soil that had once meant slavery would now mean shelter.
Isn’t that just like God?
To redeem even geography.
Days blurred into one another, sand, sun, stars.
At last, after miles of barren wilderness and long silences broken only by the cry of the child, they saw the faint outline of palm trees and stone rising in the distance. Egypt.
The air felt different there, warmer, heavier, scented faintly with spices and dust. The language sounded like music they didn’t know the tune to. The roads were wider, lined with painted markets, unfamiliar gods carved into stone. Everything about it whispered, You are not home.
I imagine Joseph leading the donkey through a narrow street, the child cradled in Mary’s arms, both of them too tired to speak. The color of the buildings was strange, sunbaked clay the shade of cinnamon. The garments people wore were bright and flowing, patterned in ways Mary had never seen. The merchants shouted words she couldn’t understand, their voices rising and falling in rhythm with the clang of bronze.
Everywhere they looked, the world was new, and they were foreigners in it.
Perhaps they found shelter near a small Jewish settlement, others who had fled or migrated years before. Maybe it was there that Joseph began to work again, repairing tools, building furniture, shaping wood into things that would help others feel at home. Work had always been his way of worship. And Mary, with the child growing and laughing now, must have looked out at that strange skyline and wondered when, or if, they’d ever go back.
Home wasn’t Bethlehem anymore.
Home was wherever God’s presence rested.
Imagine the ache that never fully left, the longing for their own language, their own hills, the smell of bread baking in Bethlehem. But with every sunrise, I think they began to realize: God was here, too. The same God who spoke in dreams now spoke through daily provision, a roof, a meal, a kind face in a market.
And maybe that’s what faith becomes when the journey stretches longer than expected: learning to trust that God’s presence is not tied to place, but to promise.
The Cost of Beginning Again
We said our goodbyes there in the parking lot, rain misting through the air, headlights flickering against the wet pavement. The pizza was gone, the fries had vanished, and the sound of bowling balls crashing into pins had faded behind us. Everyone seemed content, a little tired, smiling in that warm way people do after a simple, good day.
We hugged quickly, laughed about who would need ice packs tomorrow for sore arms, and promised to see each other again soon. They drove one direction, we drove the other—two families who, on paper, share almost nothing in common, yet were brought together by a Savior who knew what we all needed.
Joseph and Mary probably didn’t understand their own path either. The road to Egypt must have felt endless at times, dust in their sandals, fear in their hearts, and questions they didn’t know how to voice. But step by step, God led them. Every moment of exhaustion, every unfamiliar mile, every turn they couldn’t see ahead, He guided them exactly where they needed to be.
And that’s the same truth that threads through the lives of this Ukrainian family. It’s the truth that runs through mine, too. We make plans, but God directs our steps. Sometimes those steps lead through places that feel foreign or uncomfortable, seasons that stretch our patience or test our faith, but they always lead somewhere purposeful.
We don’t always get to see where the story is going, but we’re never walking it alone.
The God who guided a carpenter and his young wife through the desert, the God who carried a modern family across an ocean, is the same God guiding you and me through every uncertain season. He knows where we’re headed. He knows what we need.
And sometimes, if we pause long enough to notice, we find that the miracles aren’t always in the dramatic rescues or the parted seas. Sometimes they’re in the small, quiet things:
A shared meal.
A child’s laughter.
The sound of rain in a parking lot after goodbye.
All the ordinary moments that prove God is still guiding, still providing, still redeeming geography, one story, one step, one faithful “yes” at a time.
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