Chapter 5
I don’t know a whole lot about our legal system, though I certainly recognize the value that law plays in our society. But I am not personally interested in it.
That being said, I will do my best to describe this part of my story as accurately and completely as I can. As I said, I’m not very knowledgeable on the subject.
Before I can get to the lawsuit, I need to fill you in on the circumstances that led up to it. I’m sure you’ve heard it said that it’s always darkest just before dawn. Well, I found out during my 30th year on this planet that those words are as true as any.
Why is it darkest just before dawn? Here’s one theory: when something new and unprecedented moves into our lives, there must be a clearing out period beforehand, a removal of debris. The field must be plowed, the chalkboard wiped with a wet sponge (something I’ve done thousands of times). All in preparation for something new.
My life during the months leading up to my infamous lawsuit could best be described as a clearing out, or perhaps a breaking down. I simply broke down. I gave up.
Many of you may know what I’m talking about. Some call it surrender, or reaching the end of one’s rope. The inability to care any more.
That’s what I experienced, and I’ll briefly describe it to you – just enough for you to see that suing God was a perfectly understandable reaction to what I was going through at the time.
As I said, I had lost my passion for teaching and was finding it difficult to even get out of bed most days. Driving to school was dreary. Walking into the classroom, trying to smile at my students, was a chore. It required every ounce of effort on my part, every day. And this eventually wore me down.
I also stopped socializing during that time. The more I agonized over my unsatisfying life, the less I wanted to connect with others. Perhaps I felt I had nothing to share with them, or nothing to gain by being around them. Perhaps both.
So there I was, dreading my job, shutting myself off from the rest of the human race, retreating into my own little world. There was nothing in my future that caused me any excitement. I was about as depressed as one could get.
And then something strange began to happen.
You’re all familiar with coincidences. They happen to all of us.
Well, it was around this time that I started to experience a lot of them. Not just one here or there, but many of them.
At first, I was amused by them. Occasionally I would mention one to a friend. I might say something like, “Hey, I was just thinking about California this morning, and here you are telling me about a trip you’re planning to San Diego – isn’t that interesting!” And they would nod politely, and then go on with the conversation.
But gradually, they began to occur more frequently. Now, this probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to you. And on the surface, I agree. Coincidences happen all the time, and although we don’t understand why they happen, we all know that they do. My problem at that time was that they began to happen all the time. Many times a day, someone would mention something I was just thinking about. A line in a commercial would state almost word for word something I had just thought moments before. Weird stuff. It amused me at first, but when it started occurring throughout the day, every day, I began to worry.
And what did I worry about? The one thing I had never questioned in all of my life: my sanity. It wasn’t an active questioning – I knew I was perfectly rational, I had all of my wits about me. I wasn’t hallucinating or hearing voices or anything like that. But the coincidences and synchronicities were beginning to rattle me.
They always caught me off guard. Sometimes I would smile at them, other times I would marvel. But they kept on coming, and I knew something was up. I couldn’t ignore them, pretend that they weren’t there. They were there. But I had no one to talk to about them.
So where did all of this lead? Well, the scientist in me decided that I needed to be logical and methodical. I decided to document the events as they occurred. One day I grabbed a notepad from the shelf above my desk in the living room and set about recording everything. I noted the date and time for each event, and I carried the notepad around with me. I dubbed it my “coincidence journal”, and I kept it in the briefcase that I carried back and forth to school.
Oddly enough, four days later the coincidences stopped. Completely. I had only recorded a few pages of events, and in retrospect they seemed like nothing. One was about broken traffic lights – I saw one on the way to school one morning, then one drawn by an art student that was hanging on the wall outside the art room, and one on television that night. So I wrote that one down. I did this for four days, and then the coincidences stopped.
A week went by, and still there were none. I pondered this. What did it mean? Why did they stop so soon after I had begun keeping track of them? Was there a reason? Had I caused them to stop happening? And why had they happened in the first place?
Eventually I forgot about the whole thing. I went back to life as usual, which at that time was pretty darn unpleasant. The bouts of depression were daily occurrences. I may have had one good day during that stretch, at least during the fall. I perked up around Christmas, as I always do. But soon afterward I was back to dreading most days and my uninteresting future.
Am I boring you yet? I apologize if so, but these are important details. Over the next year, my life would go from dreary and depressing to exciting and intriguing. And unless you have forgotten the name of this book, you can probably guess where that excitement would come from.
I was about to sue God.
And here’s why.
