This is deep! I was raised as a reformed Jew, (and I guess I still am). In terms of the Jewish holidays, I celebrate them more due to culture/tradition than for religious reasons.

Anyway, I've had a couple of life experiences which have tested my belief system. The first was when I was raped/abused as a teen. I thought, If there is a G-d, why would he let this happen to me? Needless to say, I was very hurt and angry for a while.

However, a few years after that, when I was in college, I was driving back up to school from my home in Boston during a really bad snow storm. Since the snow came on quick, there was still a good amount of cars on the highway. Anyway, all of the sudden my car spun around. It must have gone around at least three times, because I kept seeing the trees go past me. I didn't know what to do, and kept trying to turn the wheel to gain control. The next thing I knew, I was safe, in the median of I-95, and even though many cars were zooming by, neither I nor my car had a scratch!

Now you can call this luck, and perhaps it is, but I certainly felt as though G-d or someone gave me a hand that day. (I've even thought that it may be G-d's way of apologizing for all the other shit I went through in my life.) Who knows, but I thought I'd share.

nic :-)