I was seven years old then. The winter was especially snowy, and our yard turned into a white kingdom – waist-deep snowdrifts, trees covered in frost, and patterns on the windows as if someone had specially cut them out. At school, we were just getting ready for Christmas: learning carols, making paper angels, and I, like all children, was waiting for the holiday with trepidation. But that year I didn’t just want a gift – I wanted a miracle.

The thing is, I passionately dreamed of a big box of colored crayons. Not just five standard colors, but a real set – with purple, emerald, gold! I imagined how I would draw entire stories on the asphalt: castles with turrets, spaceships, underwater worlds. But just asking my parents seemed... too simple. I wanted it to be truly magical.

And then I came up with a plan.

One day, when no one was home, I took out a piece of paper (the most beautiful one, with Christmas trees along the edge) and wrote a letter. Not to Santa Claus, not to Santa - but directly to God. In my childish head, it was completely logical: since Christmas is His holiday, then gifts should come through Him. I carefully wrote out each letter, as they taught me at school:

"Dear God, for Christmas I really want crayons so I can draw beautiful pictures. Most of all, I need the golden one - it's like the sun. Thank you! Yours, Lana."

I folded the letter in four, went to the altar at home (we had a shelf with icons and a figurine of the Virgin Mary in the corner) and tucked it under the base of the statue. My heart was pounding – it seemed to me that I was doing something very important and secret. “If the letter disappears, it means God has taken it,” I thought.

Then the hardest part began – waiting.

Every morning, the first thing I did was run to the altar and check: is the letter still there? It lay there day after day, and my confidence slowly melted away, like snow on the palm of my hand. Maybe I did something wrong? Maybe I should have written “please”? Or maybe chalk is too small a request for such a Great Holiday?

A week before Christmas, I had almost resigned myself to the fact that there would be no miracle. But then Christmas Eve arrived.

We returned from the evening mass – I was in my best dress with a lace collar, my cheeks were frozen and I felt like the air was filled with something special. The house smelled of kutia and cinnamon, candles were flickering in the living room. We sat down at the table, started dinner, and suddenly my father handed me a small package tied with a ribbon.

"This is for you," he said simply.

I unwrapped the paper, and my fingers were shaking. And here it was – the long-awaited set! Not just a box, but a real treasure trove: twenty-four colors, among which was that very gold, and even silver! I cried then – not even from joy, but from some kind of aching feeling, as if I was heard.

"How did you find out?" I asked, wiping my cheek.

Then I did not know whether to laugh or be embarrassed. But now, after so many years, I think about it completely differently.

And I also understood then that faith is not just waiting for a miracle, but doing something for it. If I hadn't written that letter, the crayons would have just appeared under the tree - and that's it. But it became a story that I still remember.

What do you think this miracle is?

Lana Banana