The Real Story

What is a miracle? A text message from a woman’s dead father may help us understand.

Did you see the startling headline that read: “Arkansas woman texted father’s number every day after he died; she got a response four years later”?

That made the story below the headline sound like an outreach from the other side of the grave. But the actual story was far less sensational.

For four years, Chastity Patterson, then 23, of Newport, Arkansas, had been mourning the death of Jason Ligons, who, while not her biological father, had been so much like a father to her that she called him Dad.

After he died, Chastity continued to text his phone every day to update him about her life. While she didn’t expect a response, the daily texting was a way of dealing with her grief. In her message on October 25, the night before the fourth anniversary of Ligons’ death, she told about how she’d beaten cancer and hadn’t gotten sick since his passing. She also wrote about falling in love and having her heart broken, joking that Ligons “would...