prayer-ocd

last night i was feeling kind of lonely. i said a prayer in my heart asking to be less lonely. almost right after the prayer a friend stopped by. after that a friend called inviting me to dinner. after that was over a friend texted asking if i would like to watch a movie with her.
these actions could have been a direct result of the prayer. or could have been coincidence.
i enjoy the idea of it being a result of prayer because that gives me a feeling of being able to have an impact on things in areas of my life i might otherwise feel unempowered.
or it could be superstition. or obsessive compulsion. i did not understand obsessive compulsive disorder until talking to a friend who has somewhat severe ocd. What i did not understand about the rituals is that they are done because the person feels that
by doing the ritual it will cause something bad not to happen.
understanding this i realized i have a certain degree of ocd. sometimes i may, for example, see a piece of trash on the street and feel if i do not throw it away i may not have good things happen to me. things that are not inherently related to throwing the trash away.
it seems that religion, whether it be true or false creates a sort of mass ocd. the religious participants engage in rituals with the belief that by doing them good things will happen, and if they are not done bad things will happen. so perhaps all my prayer and devotions are merely obsessive compulsive ritual. when i do them i look for good things to occur and so am able to find them.
or perhaps my prayer and devotion truly does create divine intervention in my life. i suppose i must, for the most part, believe that is true. otherwise i wouldn't waste my time as often as i do.