Friday the 13th

It's Friday the 13th. Do you have any stories about this day when you were growing up? Honestly, I really do not know the reason behind the so called "Friday the 13th" but back when I was in grade school, my classmates would tell a lot of things that we were not suppose to do. One of them was to not step on any cracks. I do not know why or how they knew about it but of course each of us would not step on the crack. But we forgot about that when we were already dismissed. LOL.

Some people believed that Friday the 13th brings bad luck. Do you believe in that? For my college friend, Friday the 13th is her lucky day. She enumerated a lot of good things that happened to her whenever it was Friday the 13th and that is the reason why 13 was her lucky number. I do not know if she still finds this day lucky but for me I do not have any specific lucky day however I believe in luck and that there are people who were really lucky in life. I am a believer of luck probably because when I was young my dad used to tell us about the positive events in his life and how the number 7 played a significant part. Lucky 7! Hooray! I remembered one article by @Momentswithmatti that I know was inspired by Jane where they talked about a significant number in their life.

I have a lot of favorite numbers and the numbers that were significant to me other than my birth number was 25 and 26. Why? My first surgery was on the 25th and I was brought to the hospital on my second surgery on the 25th. While my second surgery was 26th and I was discharged on my first surgery on the 26th. I even mentioned before that the months of June and July were the months that I feel unlucky or should I say that it was more on when my health was at risk. Do you have a significant number in your life? What was it about?

I know that I should not be thinking about being unlucky or any other negative things because our mind is powerful that it can  attract what we are thinking. But sometimes I cannot help but to wonder why things happened to me? Yes I have said before that I believed that everything happens for a reason. A reason that only God knows. Last year I did not think about June and July as my critical health months but I was still hospitalized. It is not that I want someone else to be in my position but I cannot help but to wonder why my friend who has always been on a one meal per day diet whenever she feels like she needed to lose weight fast never experience being hospitalized nor did she experience being under the knife. Or there are also those who have health cards and even a lot of money to pay for their hospitalization but they also did not experience the same thing. Then there are also those who do not eat vegetables and would eat a lot of unhealthy foods but they are still ok. I know I was bad to think of these kind of things but I really cannot help it. I would accept if you are to call me a bad person but I really did wonder about it. It made me question myself if I was really that bad of a person to experience those things. Do you believe that God punishes the bad people? Because it was what I felt before.

But with everything that had happened to me and my family, I realized that God was testing me and my faith. I remembered the story of one of my sisters in PREX (Parish Renewal Experience). We considered ourselves brothers and sisters during and after that. She narrated to us her story about having different cancers one after the other. Their family was tested and they even went bankrupt but their faith had been stronger than ever. She had survived 3 cancers and she and her husband are helping in the church.

I admit that I did not thought about my sister in PREX when I was already feeling a lot of pain last year. Instead I thought about how unlucky I was. I thought about a lot of bad things. I even questioned God for the things that happened to me and my family that I neglect to see that maybe there was something that was lacking. Now I have learned not to think about being unlucky rather I think about it as God's way of testing and challenging me.

There were some instances where I was also lucky before like when I won the cash prize in bingo when I was in high school. My mom would even let me play in some raffle contests when I was young but I usually won when it was unexpected. Then when I hit the adulting stage, I felt that my luck has somehow vanished into thin air. Even if luck was not on my side, I still joined in some raffle contests.

Whether you believe in luck or not, I hope that you would not have the kind of thoughts that I had before. I did not see that I was still lucky enough to be alive. I only think that I was unlucky for having such fate. I think some people are also guilty of thinking that way. They feel unlucky because they do not have this or they lack that but they neglect to think about how lucky they are that they are alive, they have a roof over their head, they have food to eat and that they have a chance to change their fate. We just have to think positive and that we have to think that we are still fortunate even if we are being challenged.

I will end this with the final word that was on the late night news today.

P.S. lead image is a screenshot from my phone's calendar.