One night in 2015, I prayed to God in earnest for the first time.
I promised to do a backflip in exchange for a sign that he exists.
Something meaningful and out of the ordinary.
I fell asleep after reading a Facebook post about balance, duality, and the concepts of yin and yang.
The next morning, after walking through my front door on the way to work, I was greeted by a black and white cat.
Just a coincidence, I rationalized. Maybe even a stretch: black and white cats don’t inherently have anything to do with God, balance, duality, or yin nor yang.
It was out of the ordinary, but nothing to get worked up over.
So I went to work as normal.
Some time afterward, there was an issue with my paycheck where I was short $540.
After disputing the pay issue, I was sent on another shift.
During that shift, I had some down time and used it to browse Facebook.
That’s when I saw a friend’s status update wherein they complained about a water bill that they had an issue with.
Their bill was for $540.
The way they worded the status and the amounts of money involved increased my suspicion.
Paranoia electrified me.
Should I have let the pay issue slide?
Were people spreading rumors?
Was something more supernatural at work?
Could it be God?
Coincidence?
Unnerved, I showed the status to my girlfriend of the time, who we’ll call Emily. She acknowledged the uncanniness of the situation, but was able to help me calm down and rationalize.
Some time after that, perhaps a few months later, on one particular night, I could be found cuddling with Emily in my bedroom.
The cold, steely grip of a premonition accosted me.
I could see pentacles made of the visual snow in my vision.
In the interest of calming me down, Emily and I decided to go for a walk in the nearby park.
The premonition became overwhelming.
“Something’s going to happen,” I said.
Just then, an enormous orange light lit up the night sky and then vanished, leaving an unusually large amount of planes and helicopters behind.
“Did you see that?” I asked Emily.
“Yeah,” she replied.
“What color was it?” I asked, wanting to make sure that we were talking about the same thing.
“Orange,” she replied.
————— * ———— * ————- * —————-
Years have gone by since those three inciting incidents and they have been jam-packed with what they call Synchronicity; meaningful coincidences without any apparent causal relation:
• A friend showed me a string of posts wherein people that we don’t know were using my idiosyncratic slang the same way that I use it.
• While giving an intellectually disabled, echolalic client a therapeutic ride throughout the city, he said the name “Joseph”.
Imagine my surprise when my friend Joseph called my phone not even a minute afterward.
• While delivering food to a house, I broke my pen. The customer needed to sign something. What are the chances that they brought out their own pen, unprompted, just as I needed one? On top of that, they were the first customer I had to do so.
The synchronicities aren’t so scary anymore, but only because I’ve gotten used to the fear and the idea that God exists.
God is watching me.
I’d share more stories, but writing this out made me realize that I have to go take care of something:
I gotta go do some backflips.