Real Life Situations:
1. What do you when your 13-page research paper is deleted the day it is due?
2. What do you when your phone dies and your alarm fails to wake you up for a class where your absence results in a 10% knock-off from your test grade?
3. What do you do when you spill hot tea all over your laptop on finals week?
4. What do you do when you come home to find your relatively new phone soaking in a bowl of water?
These four scenarios all happened to my friends and I over the course of this past semester. As my semester comes to a close, I look back on these memories fondly. I know that’s a strange way to describe these pretty awful situations, but let me retell these stories so you can see why:
The Aftermath
Scenario One-
A research paper that I had poured hours into was due last Monday. It was worth 15% of my grade and the topic was difficult. As I was wrapping up my essay, my Word Program crashed. I was not worried – this has happened before, and Word always saves an Auto-Recovery document. However, when I opened the Auto-recovery file, I was horrified when I saw only remnants of my paper. There were only a few introductory paragraphs on the page – the last 15 hours worth of my writing were all gone.
I called several tech-savvy friends as well as the Office Word help line, and they all told me the same thing: For some odd reason, my Word Program had glitched and recovered the wrong Word file. Unfortunately for me, it had saved the first version of my document,and all my work from the final draft was forever gone .
To be honest, I shed a few tears, but the pain was short-lived. I realized there was no use crying over it – it was gone and crying wouldn’t bring my essay back. I prayed that God would give me peace, and the next day, I told my professor about what had happened. She was much more understanding than I had ever imagined. She graciously extended to me one more week to rewrite my essay, and as a result, I was able to write an even better research paper! Rewriting the essay taught me patience, gave me more time to do more thorough research of my topic, and overall helped me to feel really grateful for the second opportunity I was offered.
Scenario Two -
My friend woke up an hour late for class last week because her alarm did not go off. She began to panic as she realized 10% would be taken off her test grade. She had worked so hard to do well in this class, so she was completely dismayed by this case of bad luck .
When she rushed out of her apartment to her car to try to make it to class on time, she saw that her car was blocked in by a tow-truck that was towing the car in front of her! A police officer came up to my friend and asked her if he could help her with anything. When my friend explained that she was late to a class, the police officer offered to drive her to school .
When he dropped her off, he handed her an excuse note to give to her professor. The professor accepted the note and did not take 10% off my friend’s test grade! Another case of a bad situation being turned into a good one!
Scenario Three -
My friend was in her last class of the year when she accidentally spilled hot tea all over her MacBook. It immediately shut down, and all of her final papers were stored on it. The Apple Store said there would be no way of fixing it or retrieving her files. The laptop’s memory card had been completely water-damaged.
My friend was discouraged, but she had faith in God to bring about a miracle. A friend of hers helped her to retrieve all the files from her laptop, but could not fix the damage. She sent her laptop to a repair shop and even they could not repair it. However, the day the shop prepared to send her laptop back, they told my friend that her laptop miraculously turned on! They had not even tried to fix it, so they could not believe their eyes. The computer technician told her that, “this has never happened before.”
My friend got her laptop back in pristine condition, and just in time for the new semester to begin! Her faith exponentially grew after this incident, for she saw with her own eyes that God will always provide a way, even when the situation seems hopeless and impossible.
Scenario Four -
About a month ago, I came home to find my cell phone at the bottom of a bowl of water in my sink. Oddly enough, it had fallen off the ledge of my sink into the bowl by itself when I was out walking. I brought the phone to multiple phone technicians, and they all told me the water damage was too immense to fix be repaired.
Thankfully, I had an older backup phone that I had lent to my friend to use, and even though I felt bad for having to take it back from her, she was able to get a new phone for herself at a great price! Unfortunately, I had lost many of my contacts and files that were on my previous phone. Even though I was a bit upset over the fact that I had lost my relatively new phone, I had the peace that God would bring something good out of this situation.
Sure enough, my dad decided to see how much it would be to get me a new phone with a different cell phone carrier. He found a better deal that would cost him $150 less per month! They would also give me a new phone for free! So ultimately, God used the situation of my broken phone to save my family more money in the end! My faith in God grew as a result of seeing how God was faithful to me, yet again.
The Conclusion
These situations were all bad, really bad. We live in a fallen world, and a lot of times, things happen to us and we will not understand why. But instead of focusing on why bad things happen, choose to focus on how you respond to the situation. Being negative, angry, bad-tempered, and sulky about something won’t help to fix your problems – it will only make them worse. But if you choose to put your faith in God and trust that He has a way of bringing the best out of every dark situation, you will be a whole lot less stressed and a lot more happy. Your joy will not come from your circumstances, but it will come from knowing that no matter what happens, God loves you and is on your side.
People may think that the Christian perspective is way too idealistic, but I’m telling you these stories because I want you to see that it is not an idealistic perspective - it is a life-changing perspective.
