Significance of 13?- Plumbing Miracle, other things

 Not going to write much. First, Dad is in an emergency. Dude wants to go out Wild West style. Husband and I are in talks about what to do since he's refusing our help. Haven't seen him in 13 years (coincidence here) and only for 5 minutes at that. Saw my half brother as a toddler only that one time. And I need to get back to translating. Hard to sleep with this all going on. 

Husband and I were talking. He's asking about my religious views. They make sense but they're complicated because they're unconventional for a Western Catholic. But we did talk and I said something like "I still want to know who fixed our bath tub. I heard that Saint Francis of Assisi can do that.  I got no verification." He googles and finds Saint Vincent Ferrer. He's like "You'd like this guy." I ate around that point, having been up since 10 PM the night before, slept, woke up at midnight, slept again.

I look at Saint Ferrer and if I was drinking coffee (it was brewing), I would have spat it out. He converted the Jews lolololol!! Kinda how I feel about that demented demon Jonah Goldberg. He needs Jesus. 

One thing that did strike me though is that from the day I set ablaze in public a crumpled page of pornography that I found in a bank parking lot when I returned from my smoke and prayer break back to the coffee shop, so that was Aug 9, it was on August 22 for the date that I pieced together for the first of three days of my Stigmata... 13 days. Weird. Ok. Sure.

My bath tub issue is hard to explain because only a plumber can understand how hard this is to fix. You turn the lever. Sounds like a machine gun BMP BMP BMP BMP BMP in rapid succession, maybe 3 blasts a second. You just have to keep playing with it until the noise stopped. This has been a chronic issue for years. You can't fix this unless you turn off the water to the apartment, which requires the landlord's permission. He's incorrigible for a few reasons

One, he's violent (he pushed my neighbor's mom). Two, he wants everyone evicted but can't do so. He tried to evict my neighbors for having had a BABY because the baby - no joke - wasn't on the lease. Three, he will take days to fix something that's really a 20 minute job. Four, we have offered to PAY for the plumber so long as he shuts off the water. Nope. Five, all of his fixes unravel within a year. Six, he hates cats and Saint Francis gave us two of them.  Seven, I'm not on the lease because a fortiori for reasons 1-6, we couldn't negotiate with him anyway. He has never seen me. I'm a ghost to him. 

His fix last May was a disaster to me. Husband put me in a hotel. Silence makes me go insane. I end up hanging out with a black guy who was walking his dog. Turned out he was a meth dealer. I found this out because as he gave me a cigarette (I asked him for one but I did relapse), he dropped some stuff. I helped him pick it up. I'm like "Oo, um, may I please ask you what is this? A few guys have offered it to me over the years in the neighborhood." It's meth. I was surprised how calm he and the kid to whom he was selling were. They were nice people. I came back from my room to pee, came back outside, and they split. Found the one to whom he sold. His name was Eric. He's asking if he can stay in my room. I'm like "Oh, I would but I can't do that.  I'm married." Then I get a text. Dealer is like "I split because I want you at my place." Always got to be calm and smile in these situations. Parted 30 seconds later.  Fortunately a security guard was making rounds and watching over me the whole entire time. We partied until 3 AM.

It was a disaster. I don't need to be in a silent room. A lot of flashbacks happen. It's really bad

Fast forward barely less than a year later, same issue.  Found a text on 28 April. Husband says he's going to have to take a Filipino bath.  Now I know when the issue started. The bath tub now was experiencing dramatic temperature shifts from super hot (maybe 122 degrees) for maybe 10 minutes to super cold. BAD NEWS. We called a few plumbers. No one would shut off the water without the landlord's permission 

I pray. This is how I pray. I'm very fatalistic. Maybe it's my virtue and curse...

I don't pray for intervention. I pray for Virtue to accept my fate. Always. I don't pray "Please Executioner, change your mind before your ax cuts off my head." I more pray like "Ax is about to come down my head. This is God's will. I accept his will. Have fun, ****."

Or put another way. When the Spaniards came to the New World, Nomadic Indians notably got impacted for their fatalism from a scourge like small pox. It's almost like "Chief Thundergod damns me. That is my fate. My days are now numbered. Let me rest." Many died for refusing intervention

So I'm in the bath tub Indian style with my legrs. It scalds your skin, then makes you shiver. I had to accept my fate. It's that simple. Next time, I use two cloths. One to absorb some of the hot water, put my head under the faucet (HOT!!), and do as thy will. It helped. 

It's about two weeks later. I'm dodging having to bathe for maybe 2 or 3 days. I'm usually at home anyway. Then something happens...

Same routine Indian style. It's like swallowing cyanide. It's so ungodly uncomfortable. And always in my mind is that everything I do is the means to an end to translate. What follows was not a prayer for intervention. I remember exactly what I thought intensely: "I can't do this * forever." 

Fast forward the next day, 11 May, it's a Wednesday, husband is out of town to do hydrotherapy for his arthritis, I do remember he told me that the bath tub was fixed. See, he showers before he works and before he goes out of town to his thing for his wrists. I know from a text that I did his laundry at 10 PM on May 10. I text him on the afternoon to confirm what he must have had on that Wednesday morning. It's past 12. 

The texts:

Him at 10 AM: "Thank you for doing my laundry.

I am SO GLAD it got the membership.

Already I'm feeling better. Physically, mentally. Just the drive, the waters I've already gone in, the mild exercise in the pool."

Me after 12 PM: "Sure. Bath was normal last night. Just an fyi"

Response: "Whaaaaaa? Whoa! 😲😲😲

When is fill the tub of use the "cold" part of the faucet. But it's still kind of hot."

Mine: "I don't know why. But it was. I don't think I just suddenly got used to it."

Him: "How's you?

What have you been up to, since on not there?"

Me: "About to work" [in other words translate]

Note that I don't work from calendars. If I'm texting at 12 "last night," I mean before I went to sleep

Bath tub got fixed on 11 May. Issue started on April 28. 13 days

I set the porno on fire in public on August 9. 

"Possible I'll get arrested but don't care. God's work. Set a page of porn left in the parking lot on fire ISIS style. Pretty great day between that and my translation work."

Note that I have not found porn, much less from a magazine, except for when I lived in a slum as a child. It was a crumpled up magazine. I felt something was off about that. I walked past it but returned. It was porno. I deliberated and set that MF ablaze!! Yes, destroy that demon!!!!!!!!

So that's August 9. First day of Stigmata? August 22. 13 days

So is 13 a bad number? After all, the Last Supper had 13 there. But the Blessed Mother appeared to the Fatima kids on the 13th of each month for 6 months 

I'll take that as a Miracle, just as what happened to the Fatima kids saw her last on 13 October.

As for Saint Vincent Ferrer... I guess not all miracles have to be dramatic on the level of an angel coming down from the Heavens to change the course of history. Maybe some are for humor: "I see you," might have said Saint Ferrer, having done a deed to give me the guiding light that I'm on the right path in both virtue and in thought, looking through his life to make sense of my own.

People are all into comic book movies and in doing self-help (Jordan Peterson) or spiritual healing from sex cults like OneTaste (my condemning of Lust from this topic equally led to a miraculous insight that I'll one day discuss from intervention) or Hindu shamans like I see at Whole Foods. Truly, the history of Christianity and of the Saints is the greatest story ever told in human history! And the Church has a place for everyone so long as you seek to increase your virtue. There's no greater individualism than in the Church itself. We can seek elsewhere but it's already right here. And like I told a friend, we can all try to intellectualize this stuff. What's the point? A believer only risks to rob oneself of so much