My Holy Week Vacation.

For over ten years, the company I work for had us on a rotating schedule........so many days on, so many days off.....working alternating weekends.
This meant that I usually wasn't always able to attend all the Holy Week church services I wanted. I'd always be off Easter Sunday, but I might have to work Palm Sunday or Good Friday. The fact that Easter is a movable Holy Day didn't make it any easier.
Often, if I wanted to attend Mass on Palm Sunday, I'd have to take a vacation day and that wasn't always possible.Holy Thursday and Good Friday were always opposite. If I was off Palm Sunday, I'd be off Thursday as well, but would have to work Friday.It was all very complicated and a general pain in the neck.
All that changed last year when we were put on a regular 40 hour, Monday through Friday, work week.Of course, last year I took the first three weeks of April as a vacation; we were in Philippines for Holy Week.
This year, I wouldn't need to use up so many vacation days attending church, I thought.I considered taking the whole week off but changed my mind. I'd be off both Sundays; we're getting Good Friday as the paid holiday- and since there isn't anything going on at St. Mary's the first part of the week- I'd only need to take Holy Thursday as a vacation.
That isn't the way it turned out.
As I mentioned in my last post,I awoke last Thursday with the most excruciating pain shooting down my left leg from my hip to my knee.The doctor's preliminary diagnosis is that I probably have arthristis through out my spine although he won't know the full extent until he looks at the x rays.He prescribed a corticosteroid but was unwilling to release me from work, not having seen the x rays.
I can barely stand for any length of time. I've had to buy a cane to help me get around. The corticosteroid has helped, somewhat, but there was no way I'd be able to work this week.
So, I did what I should have done anyway. I took the whole week off as a vacation.
There are some folks who would be inclined to believe that this might just be God's way of making me take this week off. Those are the same people who'd say that my hands swelling during last year's Good Friday Via Crucis in Sibulan might be a "stigmata", of sorts.
There are others who are equally inclined to say that it's all simply a coincidence and much ado about nothing.
It's difficult for me to know. I usually find significance where others find coincidence, so I, naturally, lean towards the first camp.
To quote Shakespeare,

Horatio:
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.