This truly bizarre series of events took place a few months ago. But after posting last week about unreasonable requests, made in faith, and finding an article about the mathematical unlikelihood of the eggsperience I had, it felt timely to share these words.
~ AK
Every month, at least once, I visit Costco. Because I like to spend money, I guess. And every time I buy a double-pack of large eggs from the walk-in cooler.
And every week, as you’d expect, when I crack open the shells in the morning to make breakfast, a beautiful, yellow yolk slides out of shell and onto the pan.
Except for a few bizarre weeks in the days after my father passed away. As we were about to ring in the New Year, then into the Spring, a series of strange happeggstances started to take place.
The odds of cracking double-yolked e88gs
Apparently it’s a one in a quadrillion chance to crack eight eggs with double yolks in a carton of 12 eggs, according to this article by the Daily Mail in which Claudine Wilson from Manchester did the impossible:
The chances of cracking a single double yolker are thought to be one in a 1,000, however it's thought a second double yolker could be slightly more likely if the following eggs come from the same bird, at around 1 in a 100.Â
Even assuming that all of the eight eggs came from the same bird, the sum would equate to 1,000 x 100 x 100 x 100 x 100 x 100 x 100 x 100 - which would be 100 quadrillion.
What’s 100 quadrillion x 40? Am I doing the math right?
Because on December 31, 2021, I cracked 24 eggs with doubles (48 yolks!) and then between April 3-9, 2022 I cracked 18 more eggs with double yolks (36 more yolks!) from the same brand of large, single-yolked Costco eggs. A total of 84 yolks.
When I tell people, I get the full range of input, advice and skepticism (check out my recently posted YouTube video as an example):
buy lottery tickets
you’re having babies
you’re making this up
hey moron, you just bought cartons of double-yolked eggs, check the label
they must be turkey eggs
this happens all the time
they must be eggs from an aged-out chicken on the line
Okay. I get it. Believe what you want.
No, the toast I served the eggs with did NOT have the Stigmata
You know when you read news reports that a 93-year-old grandmother in a small Italian village found the face of Jesus on the meringue of a lemon pie? Or an Ecuadorian farmer discovers the stigmata in a statue of the Blessed Virgin in a quiet, forgotten convent?
Some readers may think this account sounds something like that.
For others, this is one of those moments where it just seems too weird to be true, and perhaps belongs in the back pages of the National Inquirer.
And, hey, maybe someone reading this thinks I should’ve made a shrine and invited the Italian Nonna and our agrarian Ecuadorian friend to pay homage.
What did we do with the eggs?
We ate them! I made a Wife Saver breakfast (thanks Best of Bridge Club) and the highest cholesterol omelettes in the world. They were delicious.
But there was a special delight in these bizarre events for my little family and I. As we walked through the heavy days of grief after losing a beloved grandfather and father, we took courage and encouragement from these little, wondrous signs. This tender mercy located inside the eggs.
We had just walked through a season when we didn’t get the miracle we wanted. The one we desired. But though we didn’t receive our answered prayer, it didn’t crush our faith.
Egg shells and a spiritual truth
The joy, the signal from above that there’s more, that there’s joy hidden throughout the created world to be discovered in surprising places, filled us with laughter. The realization that the portion can be doubled in unexpected ways pointed to a deeper, spiritual truth that we had to receive, even in our grief. Even if our experience taunted us or told us otherwise.
So, I guess I did enshrine this experience, a little. I haven’t set it up in my memory as something that I reverence or worship. But, rather, as a memorial stone of sorts, that reminds me and points me toward this truth.
Of course, a statement like that, placed beside my assertion that these eggs were unique in some way—from single-yolk producing chickens and therefore somehow, in someway super-natural—might doubly tick some readers off, or at minimum, illicit a double eye-roll. And I guess I’m just not writing this post for that type of reader.
Instead I share this strange but wonderful anecdote for those who see Heaven touch earth in surprising ways. People who’ll be helped by the reminder that unreasonable, inexplicably wonderful things take place even in our times. Who recognize they, too, will need to ask for surprising and unreasonable things they cannot themselves produce, but would joyfully receive nonetheless.
And as we await those types of signs and wonders, my family will crack open every egg with a sense of happy anticipation. And every new day will hold the potential for some kind of wonder.
The curious incident of the double-yolked eggs