January Love Letter

Expect a Miracle.

Each morning, as part of my morning ritual, I look in the mirror and say out loud:
“Good morning, beautiful. I love you. I wish you a great day. Expect a miracle.”

The first time I attempted to tell myself “I love you” while staring at my own reflection was in the winter of 2024. I burst into tears. I couldn’t even finish the sentence. That summer, I had managed to claw myself out of an abusive relationship.

Now, it was a Tuesday morning, winter of 2026, and I was standing in front of the mirror, saying the magic words once more. This time, with spirit.

I went about my day: meetings, therapy cases presentations, lots of thinking and talking (my favorite). Then I got a message from Julia, my best friend, whom I had last seen in that summer of 2024.

We met when we were both living in Berlin. She’s from California and now lives in New York. I’m in Tel Aviv. Still, somehow, we talk almost every day. It truly feels like she is with me in every step of my journey.

A week earlier, it had been Hanukkah, and in the holiday spirit, celebrating miracles, I put a picture with the words “Expect a miracle” as my phone wallpaper.

I wasn’t thinking much about it. It just made me smile.

Until that cold Tuesday morning.

Julia was in South Africa on a work trip. After her colleagues left, she decided to stay and explore. But as Christmas and New Year’s approached, the idea of traveling alone across Africa started to feel more like loneliness than adventure. She was venting to me in long voice notes that I listened to between meetings.

At some point, I said,
“Julia, come here.”

Half jokingly. I always told her to come visit me.

We laughed about it.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to a message from her saying she was coming.

On Thursday at noon, we were hugging and bawling our eyes out in the middle of my street.

Neither of us could believe it was actually happening. Not seeing your best friend for a year and a half, while both of you go through major life transitions, is not just missing someone, it feels like phantom pain. Like an amputated limb that still aches. All of the time.

She landed in the Holy Land on Christmas morning.

She stayed for a week. I took her everywhere. Suddenly, the stories I had been telling her became shared memories. She slept in my bed. We shared our mornings. She met all the friends who had only existed for her through my voice notes, photos, and messages, including my neighbour (see October Love Letter). And now they were real. She was here with me.

But what made it feel like a miracle wasn’t just that she came.
It was that none of us had planned it.

A week earlier, she thought she would still be in Africa for Christmas and New Year’s. She never imagined she would find herself in the Middle East. And I never imagined that something I said half-jokingly in a voice note would turn into her standing in front of me forty-eight hours later.

There was no planning.
No coordination.
No “let’s book something.”

On Tuesday, we were on two different continents.
On Thursday, we were walking around my neighbourhood and having drinks.

It felt surreal. Like a dream. Like geography had briefly lost its authority.

That’s when I understood something about the sentence I say to myself in the mirror.

“Expect a miracle” doesn’t mean wait for something mystical.

It means stay open to things rearranging themselves in ways you couldn’t think of or organize.

Sometimes a miracle isn’t healing or insight or transformation.
Sometimes it’s your best friend crossing continents because the moment suddenly, unexpectedly, miraculously, feels right.

And now, when I look at myself in the mirror and say,
“Good morning, beautiful. I love you. I wish you a great day. Expect a miracle,”
I don’t mean it poetically.

I keep my heart open for some REAL miracles.

And you should, too.

I love you,

Alex.

❤️