55 Coincidences

I was raised in a Catholic family in a mostly Lithuanian-American section of Scranton, Pennsylvania.  By Catholic standards my life has not been a holy one, and I have not held true to the standards of the Catholic Church.  Let us just say that my father and a number of others would say that I have just not measured up.  My father particularly has said as much. Yet I do believe that God has found me.  I do not know why this has happened.    Certainly there are many more faithful, obedient, worthy, and intelligent people.  Yet I have had, to my mind, an incredible number of “coincidences” in my life, enough to prove to me at least, that there is a God somewhere out there who knows me, and who has intervened heavily in the events of my life.   I would like to think of this onslaught of “coincidences” as proof to me that an active supernatural being exists.  My faith says to me that this supernatural being is God.  Others with intransigent religious or philosophical beliefs may argue that my set of “coincidences” is evidence of something other than a loving God, or just simply nothing at all.  I challenge them with my own firm belief, evident in the stories that I will relate, in overwhelming evidence not only of a supernatural force, but evidence of a supernatural force that is very loving.  As all this “coincidence” happened to me, I felt shocked as the possibility that these events happened just by chance became more and more remote, actually unbelievable.  The weight of these events hit me very hard, and so repeatedly. My hope is that my story will be believed, and that it will be a source of firm faith in God for some of those who read it.  Rather than hoping that my story is the only one like this, I would love to find out that others will report that something like this has happened to them too.  I would be very willing to take any test on the veracity of these events.  Very many of these events are perfectly traceable. I have read recently that the temperature of much of “outer space” is something like minus-455 degrees Fahrenheit, and that the farthest known galaxy from us is 13.1 billion light years away.  Yet people still love their lives on earth and what is in them. They root for their favorite team, think they might magically hit the lottery, and believe that their opinions and their loved ones are somehow best in this vast, mostly cold universe.  There seems to be much room here for beauty, love, and feeling special. Is love not more important than the religious/philosophical belief system you or I were born into, in whichever country we were born?  I personally believe that the almighty force loves you, and he loves me.   Just as well, I seem to have heard that very many people have had at least a few experiences similar to the ones I am about to describe in this writing.  Please read on, and consider your own experiences too.   3