Dear Susan:

I praise God that your influence has brought your husband to a faith and devotion in God.

I am reminded of my father's ambition to be a trucker. Way back in around 1962 or so he bought a rig. On his first trip, only a few miles outside of Chicago, the truck broke down. Some mechanic dropped a bolt somewhere that did damage to the engine. That bolt cost my father $600 (a lot of money in 1962) and his trucking career. His trucking career lasted about 30 minutes.

Sometimes these things just happen. There is no cosmic reason. Now while my father's desire to become a trucker was quashed he did have a good career with the Post Office and with a bookkeeping business. Nevertheless, this episode was considered by the family as part of a rather mild "family bad luck" that seemed to dog us over the years. I can tell several stories of this legacy in my own life as well.

The question that comes to mind in such matters, is whether or not there is a source to the misfortunes or if it is all just random happenings.

I believe there are five possible sources to the experience of an apparent "if I had no bad luck I'd have no luck at all":

1) The Coincidence of Life
2) The Coincidence of Perception
3) Faulty Behavioral Patterns (of self or others)
4) Faulty Decision-Making (of self or others)
5) Demonic Harassment

1) The Coincidence of Life refers to the fact that we live in a fallen world and "life happens." Even if we seem to get the short end of the stick most of the time it may still technically fall within the mathematical probabilities of coincidence. The bottomline is that we all suffer from the normal travails of life, some more than others. The problems of your husband's truck may come from this in that he may have bought a "lemon" of a truck, for example, and thus repeated problems happen.

2) The Coincidence of Perception refers to the normal human phenomena of "selective perception" (taking notice of something to the exclusion of other things). For example, I have had people tell me that they recently began to notice the number "5" wherever they go. They wondered if this meant something. All that it means is that somewhere along the line their attention was directed to the number "5" and now they are noticing "5's" all over the place (of course those "5's" were always there, they just did not notice them before). This phenomenon is often referred to as a person "has 5's (or whatever) on the brain."

Another aspect of this is that it seems to be human nature to notice negative events more than positive events. Thus, our "bad luck" may appear extensive only because it is the negative circumstances that we remember.

There is an old gospel song, "Count your blessings one by one." We tend to not do that. Instead we are more likely to count our tribulations.

Thus our "bad luck" may be perceptual in that we are perceiving only the bad and are not noticing the blessings, which if we counted may actually outnumber the bad things.

3) Faulty Behavioral patterns account for a lot of the things that happen to us. The tires on our car may go flat not because of "bad luck" but because we do not perform the proper maintenance checks on our automobiles. We lose our keys over and over again just when we are in a hurry to get to a meeting because we are careless about where we put the keys when we come home.

These behavioral problems can be easily solved: do the proper maintenance check on our cars; get in the habit of putting the keys on e a nail by the door immediately when coming home.

Such behavioral "bad luck" may run through a family from generation to generation because these bad habits and the like are learned by children from watching their parents.

In addition to our own behavior that causes us problems, the bad habits and behavior of other people can affect our lives too. We might miss an important bill because the postman was careless and delivered our bill to the wrong address. The plumbing may leak because the plumber was thinking about his girlfriend and not paying attention to his work.

Bottomline, behavior, most of it subtle and unconscious, is the primary reason why things happen the way they happen.

4) Related to Faulty Behavior is faulty decision-making. If our problems are not a direct result of behavioral issues then they most likely result from bad decisions. Often those bad things that seem to consistently plague our lives are a result of consistently making bad decisions. We may spend too much money, use too much credit, consistently choose the wrong person to date, procrastinate, etc. and then wonder why things do not work out the way we would like.

5) The last category is that we may actually be harassed by demons. There does exist such things as a "family curse." There does exist such things as demonic harassment. A family who seems to have a constant "black cloud" over their household, who seems to always get the short end of the stick, may be under some sort of harassment. But, all explanations need to be explored.

To make matters more complicated, it is also possible that the explanation to our problems is a combination of any two or more of these five possibilities.

When we are confronted with this experience we need to examine ourselves to make sure that we ourselves are not contrubiting to the problem:

a) Take note of possible behavior or decision-making issues that may contribute to the "bad luck."

b) Be aware of perceptual issues that may make things appear significant when they are not, or cause us to take note of only the bad things without balancing the good things.

We must also realize that sometimes our problems are just life hitting us in the face.

If there is any suspicion that demonic harassment is involved (alone or in combination with the other four explanations) then respond with spiritual warfare prayers.

In the Spiritual Warfare Catalog you can find prayers to Rebuke Spirits. Identify spirits by their attributes, such as the spirit of anger, the spirit of fear, the spirit of misfortune, the spirit of stress. Also take note of the Hedge Prayers of Protection. This prayer is asking that a Hedge of Protection be secure around the family to protect it from harassment.

Keep in mind, however, that even with living a good Christian life, saying ones prayers, offering devotions, and praying spiritual warfare prayers that sometimes things will not improve.

There are times that we may "need" to experience trials and tribulations. It may be what keeps us close to God. It is not unusual for human beings to stay close to God when there are troubles and to stray away from Him when things are going well. This is the "no atheists in a foxhole" idea. The Church herself tends to thrive under persecution rather than when things are comfortable and peaceful.

We have an example of this in the Bible (2 Cor 12:7-10). St. Paul had a "messenger of Satan" that harassed him. He asked God three times to remove this messenger. Three times God said no. The Lord told St. Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

St. Paul responded with: "I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong."

We learn from this that it is okay to ask God for relief from the harassment. We also learn that it is possible that God will not relieve us from the harassment and that we must accept this and trust in our Lord.

There are times when we must be "content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong."

Ask God for relief from the trials, but be willing to accept a "no" answer. Be willing to accept that perhaps the trials are needed in order to keep you humble, in order to keep you trusting in Him, in order to teach you the His grace is sufficient and nothing else is needed. If you allow it, these hardships will make your faith stronger.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary