58 pages • 1 hour read
Counting Miracles
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Themes
Search for Identity and Belonging
The three primary characters are connected by their shared search for identity and belonging. They’re all from different backgrounds and have different personal histories, but find themselves drawn to making new connections in their common setting of Asheboro, North Carolina. For Tanner Hughes, being in Asheboro inspires him to contemplate who he is and what he wants from his future. As a former “military brat” and Army Ranger, he’s accustomed to moving from place to place. He has no permanent residence, his nuclear family is dead, he’s unmarried and doesn’t have kids, and his friends are spread around the country and world. In the narrative present he’s therefore “no closer to settling down” and doesn’t know who he would be if he stayed in one place or committed to one relationship (6). His time in Asheboro grants him an unexpected sense of belonging and challenges him to imagine a more grounded life for himself.
By way of contrast, Kaitlyn Cooper and Jasper Johnson have lived in Asheboro for many years, but their new friendships compel them to rethink who they are and where they belong. For Kaitlyn, spending time with Tanner “underscore[s] how much she miss[es] her social life and reminds her that “she [is] more than simply a mother and a physician” (100). Relating to Tanner as an independent woman therefore “reawaken[s] that awareness of herself” and lets her rediscover her identity outside the context of her domestic and familial spheres (100).
Jasper’s newfound connections with Kaitlyn, Tanner, and Mitch Cooper similarly grant him a new sense of home and of self. By the end of the novel, he’s convinced that “God brought Tanner into his life, blessing him just as He’d blessed Job” (344). He becomes integrated into Kaitlyn, Tanner, and the Cooper children’s lives, which re-enlivens his engagement with his life in Asheboro. Ever since his wife and children died, Jasper has felt like a failure and a social pariah. However, with the help of his new companions, he’s able to remember what it’s like to be a father and a friend.
The novel therefore suggests that interpersonal connections might change how the individual sees herself and make her feel accepted, wanted, and needed. The characters’ lives and relationships in Asheboro indeed inspire them to do “some soul-searching” and, like Tanner, help them “to figure out who [they are] and who [they] want to be” (318). Asking these questions about themselves in turn helps them settle into their communal and social spheres anew.
Transformative Power of Love and Family
Tanner, Kaitlyn, and Jasper discover how transformative love and family can be when they open themselves to new relationships. They each have complicated romantic and familial pasts and therefore feel hesitant about being vulnerable with others at the novel’s start. Tanner’s grandparents have just died and he’s never been in a relationship longer than a year. He’s therefore used to being on his own and decides to take the job in Cameroon to escape his loneliness in the States. Meanwhile, ever since Kaitlyn and her ex-husband George divorced four years prior, Kaitlyn’s “life [has been] busy” and “occasionally wearying” (77). She’s put off pursuing new connections because of her roles as a doctor and mother. While a responsible and focused character, her tendency to resist intimacy has caused her to miss “out on a life of connection—not just romantic or physical connection, but the kind of spontaneity and shared anticipation that [comes] from a broader web of relationships” (214). The same is true for Tanner and Jasper as well. Jasper’s protracted sorrow over losing Audrey and his kids has caused him to hole up on his rural property and to avoid human interaction almost altogether.
Therefore, the characters are all isolated in their own way when the novel opens. Over time, their burgeoning connections with one another inspire them to reevaluate their lives and to open themselves to love once more. For Tanner, this means building a relationship with Kaitlyn and investing in her kids Mitch and Casey Cooper’s lives. The images of him eating dinner, going on outings, and playing games with the family are symbolic representations of a loving family life—a realm Tanner hasn’t been integrated into since he was a child. For Kaitlyn, this means “accepting others’ invitations” and embarking on new experiences with Tanner and her family (214). For Jasper, forming connections means allowing others into his insular life. Once he grants Tanner, Kaitlyn, and her kids family access to himself, he is blessed “with a new family” even “after so much ha[s] been lost” (344).
Embracing love, connection, and family manifests differently for each primary character and grants Tanner, Kaitlyn, and Jasper distinct revelations. Through his new relationships, Tanner discovers that “love is more than just an emotion” and that it’s “about sharing a life” (291). Kaitlyn’s connection with Tanner in particular reminds her that love can be encouraging and stabilizing. Jasper’s connections with Tanner and Kaitlyn’s family remind him what it means to be valued and purposeful; they also reawaken his faith and help him to embrace life again. Therefore, the novel shows how love and family can change the individual for good and infuse her life with meaning and purpose.
Journey Towards Healing
The novel’s primary characters are all on a journey to heal from their loss and sorrow over the course of the novel. Their fraught relationships with the past have complicated their lives in the present. In particular, their trauma and grief complicates their ability to build relationships and engage with life in a healthy manner. The novel thus suggests that until the characters are able to confront and claim their loss, trauma, and sorrow, they won’t be able to move beyond it. Indeed, after Tanner, Kaitlyn, and Jasper come to terms with the pain they’ve experienced in the past, they’re better able to move forward and imagine a new future for themselves.
Tanner’s parents’ and grandparents’ deaths are the primary traumas he’s working to overcome in the present. However, because Tanner is afraid of confronting his loss, he convinces himself that he’s okay and that his peripatetic lifestyle is unrelated to his fraught past. “Sure,” Tanner tells himself, “sometimes he wish[es] he’d known his parents, but he’d been raised in a loving home, and that [is] all that really mattered” (4). This moment has an avoidant, dismissive tone which illustrates Tanner’s resistance to facing his loss. He has developed a habit of “[p]ushing his [more difficult] thoughts aside” in order to quash his sorrow (4). It isn’t until the end of the novel that he learns to acknowledge how his “complicated […] personal history” has shaped his life over the years (213). He reconciles with his trauma by learning to talk about it with Kaitlyn, Glen Edwards, and Jasper. These conversations usher Tanner towards healing.
Meanwhile, Kaitlyn is trying to heal from her ex-husband’s betrayal and the aftermath of her divorce. Like Tanner, she tells herself that she’s fine in the narrative present and that although her life is busy, she knows how to be happy alone. However, her hurt response to Tanner’s revelations about Cameroon reveal otherwise. She experiences “disappointment, for sure, maybe even irritation. But her overriding sensation [is] one o […] ejection. Maybe even betrayal” (232). Kaitlyn’s emotional reaction in this scene reveals that she’s seeing her relationship with Tanner through her lingering pain over George’s betrayal. Until she reconciles with this truth and with her desire for love and connection, she can’t heal.
Jasper must similarly reconcile with his trauma and grief in order to move forward. Throughout Jasper’s chapters, the narrative frequently shifts into flashback—a temporal pattern that enacts how caught up Jasper is in his past. By the novel’s end, mentally confronting everything he lost years prior ultimately ushers him towards renewal and redemption. In these ways, the novel suggests that reconciliation with one’s past is the key to healing and happiness.
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