[re-post] God healed my bff on easter.

Easter is such an incredible holiday. How fitting that we celebrate the hope of Christ’s resurrection during Spring, the season of renewal and freshness. Today as I sang my heart out at church, my soul felt itself lift out of the depression that winter burrows deep down inside of me. Also, I love at church on Easter Sunday when the pastor says, “he is risen!” and we get to respond, “he is risen, indeed!!” Lastly, I love LOVE Reese’s peanut butter eggs. Why can’t we have Easter candy all year long?

I thought it would be fun to re-post a blog that I wrote this time last year. Enjoy…

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This story begins in Albania.

Some of you that know me well know about my baby ibook. I’ve had it for almost five years now. It’s seen me through the best of times and the worst of times: college, lots of mistakes, a semester abroad, heartbreaks, sleepless nights, and now most of the Race. I used to jokingly call it my best friend, because I spent more time sitting in front of it wasting hours on Facebook or writing papers than I did with any of my “real” friends.

I came on the Race knowing that there was a good chance that my computer would die throughout the course of the year. Five years is a long life for a laptop. My wish, however, was for it to thrive and survive the whole 11 months. I had faith that it would make it, barring any major accidents.

I had faith, that is, until month three of the Race. One day my computer unexplainably stopped working. It just wouldn’t turn on anymore. After pressing the power button repeatedly with no results, I started to mildly panic. I had a feeling my computer wouldn’t last the whole Race, but we were only in month three!

I ran upstairs to my teammate Ken, who knows a bit about computers. I handed it over to him. He messed around with it for a minute with no results. Then he said, “You know what, I feel convicted. I should have prayed before I did anything else.”

Right then and there he laid hands on my computer and asked God to make it work. He pressed the power button. Lo and behold, it turned on. It was a miracle. God raised my computer from the dead. Later that night, another squad mate, Sam, laid hands on it and prayed that it would last the rest of the Race. I was pumped. It was going to make it.

I was pumped, that is, until the end of February. We were staying at a hostel in Mombasa, Kenya, on a mini-retreat. My computer was sitting in a tree house when someone accidentally knocked the table over and it plunged ten feet to its death. The case was somewhat cracked open, things were out of place, and when I tried to turn it on, it showed a message that meant hard drive failure. I was devastated. What a terrible way for my best friend to die.

I emailed my mom and asked if she would send the start-up discs that come with the computer to AIM so someone could bring them out to me. Throughout the month of March I would periodically say a little prayer asking God to resurrect my computer, and then try to turn it on. Every time I got the same error message. I had no hope.

When we arrived in Thailand for debrief, I once again handed my computer over to Ken. This time he didn’t get the chance to work on it because he was pretty sick. The last day of debrief, Easter Sunday, I decided to give it a shot myself.

Nick came into the room to help me. We tried to put the start-up disc in to the drive, and it spit it back out. This happened twice. I thought, Great. The disc drive is broken, too. Then Nick pressed the power button. And guess what.

It turned on.

I’m not kidding. My computer came back from the dead. On Easter Sunday.

I went back into the room where Ken was resting and told him the great news. He simply said, “I figured it would come back to life. I prayed for it.”

How do I know that God loves me? Because he brought my computer back to life two times. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he cares for me much more than any bird or flower.

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P.S. Upon coming home from the Race, I was able to get a new MacBook. I am happy to report, however, that my computer is living on, being used by a high school student who was really in need of a computer for her school work.