Over the past two or three months, I've been considering a new computer. Mine was over eight years old and had very little memory. The monitor was so old that I could no longer find updates for the drivers. I could type only two or three documents without having to re-boot. Same thing happened with surfing for research. Ditto, dealing with photos for my Etsy shop.
Early on, I considered layaway, or buying at our local Frye's, or even Best Buy. When my middle-aged nephew lost his job on April 26, I downsized my dreams to a refurbished model rather than a new one, expecting him to be eligible for unemployment. When that became a no-deal because he was denied, I really worried.
On Friday, the 8th, my PC crashed. Totally. I had been praying all along for guidance for a way to handle what was inevitable. I lost all my files, all of them, but that was my own fault. I kept neglecting to back up, postponing during my worries and distractions.
Now, here comes the interesting part. Are you ready for this?
A long-time friend and neighbor in our senior mobile home park, about five homes down from me, repairs and rebuilds computers, evenings and weekends, after his regular job. I had Frank take the tower down to him. In an hour, he called to say it was completely fried. I had never, in the whole eight years, taken off the back and blown out the dust with one of those air-spray cans. Apparently I was supposed to do it at least twice a year. This fellow mentioned that he happened to have a tower he had rebuilt for a neighbor last year. That person never picked it up. It had a little more RAM than mine, and it came with XP, something I was familiar with. He gave it to me. Our household has swapped favors through the years, but this amazed me. I was thrilled.
I managed to get some of my old programs loaded and he had already set my Internet home page for me. Later that weekend, he remembered that I had been having problems with my monitor. He said I could have one that was gathering dust at his place. Like mine, it was an older CRT, but still better than the one I had been using. I hooked it up. I managed to get both printers installed.
By Sunday night, that weekend, I was up and running with a completely fresh set of equipment, all of it a bit better than what had crashed two nights before. Not only that, wonder of wonder, all the pieces matched and really, really looked good together.
Did God take care of my computer problems? He sure did, far better than I expected, although a bit more dramatically than I'd like. All I paid for all of this was the loss of my files, a valuable lesson.
Father, thank you with all my heart and soul, for taking care of my needs in your time, and in far better ways than I could ever hope for. And please, please, bless abundantly, my neighbor who was your angel during this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment