The lay off, the job hunt, the stress level that went through the roof, the holidays, a family cancer scare, then a 2nd one, the possible pregnancy scare (oh yes....we had to throw one of those in there, too). I've applied for 60+ jobs now and nothing has worked out, so as you can imagine, there are few relaxed moments going on at our house these days.
And then yesterday morning, we got (cue music from Jaws) the Blue Screen of Death on our one and only computer.
As I stared at the screen, I couldn't help but drop my head in my hands & whisper "Really? NOW?" In the midst of trying to search for a job (which requires daily job site searches), in the middle of trying to bring in a little extra income through freelance writing (which requires email, google and word processing software), during a season of life where I'm writing an article for the newspaper weekly (which requires email & word processing software), in the midst of watching our bank account like a hawk (which requires internet access).........you get the idea.
But is there ever really a good time to have your computer totally crash? Umm, no.
So yesterday morning I did the only things I could think of.
1. I posted a plea to facebook (I can send a text from my phone to post on FB) asking if any friends had a spare computer we could borrow.
2. I texted the picture above to 2 computer guru friends & asked for HELP!
Folks, I have go to say something before I go on. We are blessed beyond measure with amazing friends!! (God bless the invention of social media. I am perpetually amazed at how quickly you can post something & get it out to hundreds of people at once in situations like this.)
Within an hour, I had texts from at least 10 people offering to loan us a spare computer. (Who knew so many people actually have a spare sitting around??) I had 3-4 people calling to offering suggestions & advice about fixing our computer...recommendations to people who can work on it or ideas about how to fix it ourselves. (Although I've gotta say it here: I can OPERATE a computer, but I am CLUELESS about how to fix one!)
Our precious youth pastor came to the church on his day off to get us a spare laptop that the church owns. Thank you, "L"!! We got it hooked up & running. I used it to apply to 2 more jobs yesterday afternoon.
Then our dear, sweet, awesome, heroic friend, "M" came over to see what he could do about our pitiful 2005 model desktop that was giving us the BSOD. It didn't look promising at first, but he figured out a solution. He switched out our hard drive for one of his. It has a different operating system (Linux) than we're used to (Windows) so that's a bit of a learning curve, but it's totally functional and we can do all the things we need to do on it. He took our hard drive home & was able to pull all of our pictures & documents off of it and transfer them to the hard drive that we're borrowing. And tomorrow he's going to take our hard drive back home to tinker with it. He thinks he can get it fixed, folks! Still crossing our fingers on that, but hey...I have hope! (And of course because he's amazing he won't accept payment but we've got a few tricks up our sleeve so he will be getting something fabulous whether he takes money from us or not! ::insert maniacal laughter::)
Today, I got an email from a friend who lives halfway across the country, telling me to go to Best Buy & pick something up. She stated "You're going to need this." I went to the store & found that she'd purchased us some of the Windows software we're going to need to re-load when we either get our hard drive fixed or when we buy a new computer. What a COOL gift!!! Thank you, "A"! Love you girl!!
I could name all the million reasons the last 6 weeks have been horrible. Let's just be honest, the last 6 weeks have sucked dirt. But the last 24 hours have been such a sweet reminder that God cares about all the teeny details of our lives---even our computer, even our blue screens of death. While life has felt like one big blue screen of death for weeks now, I am reminded that my life is good....family & friends love us....people care and really do want to help if they can....and everything always works out in the end, somehow! (Rom. 8:28)
So while it seems crazy insane to say this, I am thankful for the BSOD that highlighted the awesomeness of our friends and the goodness of our God!!
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