Is God really punishing me for being a Saint?

Lately, I have a terrible streak of bad luck.

Last Monday, which is simply wonderful considering it was a Monday, I ran my sister's car battery dead by leaving on the lights.  It was the first time that I had driven to school since I received my learner's permit.  I came out of school and the car was dead as a doorknob.  Once the car battery was jumped, the radio wouldn't work because it needed a code.  WHEN DOES A RADIO EVER NEED A CODE? The next morning, my hair dryer decided that it wanted to blow cold air instead of hot air and blow only on low speed.  I went to use my mom's hair dryer and the next thing I know, it jumped out of my hands and into the toilet, while it was still plugged up! Directly after that, I hit my shoulder on a drawer and almost knocked the television off of the dresser.  Once that happened, I came to the conclusion that God was punishing me for some odd reason.

I'm a good girl.  I keep my grades up, I'm respectful to adults, I can be sarcastic, but I never mean it, and I pray for forgiveness and my family every night.  The idea of God punishing me just didn't make sense.  So, I then came to another conclusion that he wasn't punishing me, yet putting obstacles in my path in order for my faith to grow in Him.  That conclusion made a lot more sense.

This then lead me to think, why do bad things happen to good people? I know my streak of bad luck and the incidents involved in it weren't necessarily, "bad," because there's much more worse things in the world.  However, even the simplest of things lead you to think and question, "Why me?"

We live in a world full of hate, crime, and violence.  In the big world though, we each live in our own little worlds as well.  We get so caught up in having the perfect life, the perfect clothes, the perfect house, the perfect car, etc., that we forget to think of how some people have it so much worse.  When one little incident occurs, such as running the car battery dead, we can't help but think that it's the end of the world.  Why do we do this?

We're human, that's why.  We're created to be selfish human beings.  It's sin.  We don't realize how how well we have it until an unfortunate incident occurs.  It's like with the Bible; most of us only read it when we have lost our way and we feel as if our life is crumbling, not when we feel like we have it all together.

With my streak of bad luck came a huge realization.  It's true that we don't appreciate the life that we have until something awakes you from your perfect little world.  It's also true that bad things will happen to good people in order to get them to come back down to Earth. I feel as if my bad luck was my wake up call.  I need to start having more faith in God.  I need to stop being so selfish and realize that I already have more than enough.  I need to care for others a lot more than myself and I need to make more Christian-like decisions.  God wasn't punishing me. He was just making me realize how lucky I am.