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Do you believe in predestiny? Is it possible that our free will is not necessarily free but a bit preordained without our knowledge of it at the time but in looking back, we can see odd coincidences?

Predestination is a theory of Catholicism. It teaches that an omniscient God preordains all our actions unbeknownst to us. He knows the beginning, the middle, and the end before we are formed even in our mother’s womb as taught in Psalm 139. He knows everything we will do or think or be even before our first breath.

I kinda believe in predestiny now. It seems crazy but it’s true.

30 years ago, when I was 15, I had to pick a confirmation saint. A confirmation saint is someone in the history of the Roman Catholic Church that you connect with and will be your guide and role model in life. Your life will be similar to theirs and they will help you.

I didn’t know who to pick. I just had a big book of saints to go through and I honestly didn’t care. I was a young teen and more interested in sports and boys and having fun. I was just going through this whole confirmation thing to please my parents and I wasn’t very religious.

I wanted a boy saint. They seemed way cooler. They did exciting stuff. The girl saints seemed kinda boring and lame except maybe Joan of Arc.

I came across some Italian woman named Catherine of Siena. I kinda skimmed over her life story, not particularly interested. I guess I picked her cause she was a writer and writers are pretty cool.

So I confirmed with Catherine of Siena and 30 years later, in hindsight, I realize my own lifepath became similar in its own little way to hers.

And I didn’t even know it for 30 years until one day, I stumbled upon an article about her life.

Catherine of Sienna was born in 1347, the year the bubonic plague first came to Italy from China. She was self-taught in reading and writing. She wrote openly with candor about spirituality and she had 2 greatest achievements. Her first one was writing. She wrote about church restoration and bringing the Avignon papacy back to Rome after the Great Schism and the fallout from Pope Boniface’s kidnapping and death and the end of the Knights Templar Order in France. She is one of only 2 females in the Church that holds the high honor like Thomas Aquinas of being a Doctor of the Church. She was a theologian scholar self-taught during Medieval times who was extremely brave as a woman to have the audacity to speak and write so openly at a time when women had very few rights or freedoms.

She died young at the age of 33 after completing her second achievement. The bubonic plague came to Siena. Many noblemen and women fled the city. Many people were dying and big pits were dug for the dead piled up outside the city.

Catherine stayed and she cared for the sick. It is said, she helped a lot of people.

That was her life in a nutshell. Short but quite brave for a Medieval woman.

I lived my own life and I honestly rarely thought about Catherine of Siena, my guardian saint. Years later though, I started writing too and often about spirituality. I overcame a severe respiratory illness too 5 years before Covid by learning about vitamin D3 supplements from a female alternative medicine doctor. Then, when the Covid pandemic hit, I was online a lot advocating strongly for vitamin D3 supplementation and fresh air, exercise, sunshine for the sick like the medical care done during the Spanish Flu epidemic. I wrote to people all over online about these things and helped spread these ideas.

My husband with diabetes got very sick with Covid. The local hospital was full so after he passed out and was rushed to the ER by ambulance, they sent him home with high temperatures but not bad enough to need a ventilator. We quarantined together on one side of the house while the kids were on the other side. He was very sick for 4 days. At one point, his blood sugars were erratic and he was sweating profusely with a temperature of 104 for 4 hours. I was staying beside him the whole time administering to him and ended up Covid positive too. At the time, they were advocating to leave your Covid sick family member in a separate area away from everyone else but I couldn’t leave him alone with diabetes and Covid so I chose to stay beside him and nurse him. Eventually the fever broke and we both survived Covid. We later donated our plasma with antibodies for Covid research or to help hospital patients. Years later, we moved to Vermont just as the covid surges were finally spreading too to that little state. Things got pretty bad around the Barton and Newport area. I got a job at a nursing facility. I hired nurses and LNAs during Covid and it was crazy busy with keeping up with covid leaves when the med teams got sick or doing backup payroll or paying bills for the center or keeping enough staff on the team. It was kinda awful at times to be honest especially when Covid swept through the entire community and all 3 wings of the nursing facility went into lock down with about 50 percent of the residents sick, one after another falling ill. It was a stressful time. At one staff meeting, they needed a volunteer to help spray disinfectant around all the building and the 3 locked down wings 3 times daily at 630 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm. Not many med staff had experienced Covid yet like we did in Kansas so I volunteered. 3 times a day 5 days a week for 6 months I sprayed disinfectant all over that building venturing into the shut Covid wards too with PPE. We made it through with only one Covid death as far as I know. I got sick 4 times with Covid but survived.

30 years ago, I picked Catherine of Siena with no idea at all how very important this guardian woman’s writings and challenges with bubonic plague would be in my future life.

Coincidence? Fate?

Or God’s preordained direction?

Who knows. Do I believe in predestiny now?

Yes. Yes I do.

He knit me in my mother’s womb. He knew me before I was even born. He knows my beginning, my middle, and my end and somehow, realizing that and realizing somehow he is guiding my hand in picking role models and guardians along the way ..well that is somewhat comforting.

Incidentally, the man 100 years ago that discovered Vitamin D..he’s from Redfield, Kansas, a place my husband and I had a home. His name was Elmer McCollum, a famous biochemist that cured rickets in 1922 by discovering vitamin A and D through lab rat research and testing. He discovered Vitamin D exactly 100 years prior to the Covid pandemic and when we moved to Vermont. Redfield is just a small tiny Kansas town of maybe 200 people. It’s the town where my husband grew up.

Coincidence?

Or the plan of God?