Everything was fine this morning, I woke up, said my morning prayers, brushed my teeth and so on. When it came time for me to open my car door, something utterly strange happened, the ALARM went off. My used 1997 Toyota Camry doesn’t have an alarm, or should I say when the car was sold to me last May, the alarm was shut off. My mind couldn’t process all of this. How could this happen? What was going on? Why today, I have an exam in 30 minutes. Did I touch the wrong car? Nope. This was my car with the St. Anthony medal hanging from the rear-view mirror. I quickly called my dad on my Nextel, he simply told me to wait it out and look for some exposed wires at the bottom of the steering wheel near the pedals. I looked in that direction and I saw, a whole bunch wires, some red, some blue and some green. They were all tangled up and resembled some type of rainbow spaghetti. He told me to simply give them a tug and play with the key in the ignition, so I did. I did for about 20 minutes and finally the alarm stopped ringing. I quickly got into my car and went to school. I was about 40 minutes late. Funny thing though, my exam was canceled.

Then later that day, when I was getting ready to go home, the same thing happened I thought all was well, but I guess it wasn’t. I tried to tug of the wires but that didn’t work, I tugged and I tugged till I couldn’t tug anymore. About 40 minutes had gone by, the ringing wasn’t going to stop, I kept going. I was getting nervous because I was parked in a residential area, filled with what mostly seemed to be older people. I could tell because many of them were coming out with there canes to take out the trash. From time to time, the alarm would stop but if I put my key in the ignition, it would start again. I decided to wait it out, and when it stopped I left it and called my father. I asked him to come to my aid. He told me he was coming. I then felt my phone vibrate, I had low battery. My father asked me for the address, I couldn’t remember the street I was parked on. I knew the cross street but that was certainly not enough because it went on and on forever. When I hung up the phone with him, I quickly closed my phone in an effort to conserve my battery. What was I going to do? I was starting to get cold (by the way I live in New York, where temperature is 26 degrees). Here I am all alone in my ice box of a car and I thought what purpose is this serving Lord (not in a rude way though)? About an hour later, with the little feeling I had in my fingers I called my father. He told me he was lost. I tried to give him points of reference. "I can see an elementary school in front of me", I said. He asked me the street I was on and I said " I don’t know." I needed to go and check. And as I went off so did my alarm. I ran as quick as I could to the corner and looked the number. At the corner I saw my father’s car. I jumped up and down to get his attention. He saw me and we raced to the car, me on my two feet and him in his Nissan. He came with his tools and went straight to work. He thought it would be best if we disconnected the battery. As my father and I were doing this, a Honda Element came rolling by and stopped about 40 feet from my car. My father and I thought nothing of it and continued to fiddle under the hood. Then a small woman popped out the vehicle with her phone in her hand. "What are you doing?",she said. "I am calling the police!" Her voice was very weak and faint but she meant business. The poor woman was shaking. She thought we were stealing the car. My father tried to approach her and explain the situation but she threatened to call if he got closer. "Oh Lordie", I said to myself. I blurted out, "It’s my car!" The woman still scared and probably still suspicious, yelled okay and went back into her vehicle and sped off. A few minutes later my father finally disconnected the battery and the alarm stopped ringing. Peace and quite never sounded that good.

Today was so strange and not typical to say the least. On our way home, in my father’s car, I kept asking myself and God, "Why?" I really wanted answers. "What would a saint do?", I thought. "He would ask Mother Church" When I went home I opened my Catechism of the Catholic Church where "we are told to be believe in divine providence, which is the disposition that guides his [God's] creation toward perfection." Which means that everything is happening for a reason, and that reason is perfection. Now whether perfection is for the greater good, I would think, but how did my situation impact the world for the good? I don’t know, but I do think that it is kind of interesting that when I got home and checked my email, Javier told me to start writing. What would I have wrote about if I did have this experience. I don’t know. Do you see what is happening? Our puny little brains can’t come up with the answers and maybe we will never understand why things turn out the way they do, but we got to believe and trust that God knows what he is doing.

Keep Trust & Believing!