I don’t know why I said that. All I know is that when I heard they were going to have a raffle, I started thinking to all the times Sandy and I had won raffle prizes. The first time I won a prize was at the Strand Theater in Lewiston, Maine. I was four or five years old and had just switched seats with my brother Dicky because he didn’t like the one he was sitting in. As soon as we were settled in our new seats, a theater employee got up on stage and announced that a prize was going to be awarded to the person sitting in the lucky seat. That Saturday, I won a large round box of bubble gum and a green Boy Scout flashlight with a bent neck.

I also recalled winning a raffle for half of the stadium receipts at my grandson Jordan’s football game in Healdsburg, CA a year of so earlier. Joe Montana was hiding away from kids who wanted his autograph in the announcers booth behind us because he had two sons playing in games that day. His wife, Jennifer and their daughters were sitting a short distance away from us. Besides these two instances, and Sandy and I winning a painting and a wreath at a city function here is Santa Rosa, there was nothing else to base my statement on.

Moved by my mysterious confidence, Justina shook her head up and down in excited anticipation. There were 80 to 100 parents and children in the room that night as she kept being called back to the stage to collect her prize. As I recall, she won almost 50% of the raffle prizes. After the first couple of times, everyone in the room watched her in disbelief as she walked to the stage and back to her seat time after time. If it wasn’t for the magic involved, we would have felt guilty about her winning all those prizes.

As Sandy and I reviewed our winning history after reading your post, we both remembered how spiritual the process was. It was as if an inner voice or impulse urged us to trust ourselves in that moment, if for nothing else, just for the fun of it! Can we do the same thing with Mega Millions in the California Lottery? We’ll see.

Why can’t we apply this same process of believing to other things we value? Why not believe that we’re naturally loving, truthful and joyful, just because we can? To change what we create, we must change what we think. Thanks for your input, Janet! Happy Holidays.