We put blessings in disguises.

Last Friday, on a train to Edinburgh, my computer crashed. Periods of subdued panic ensued, which bled over into Monday when reality and better judgment forced me to face up and stop acting like the world had just ended.

You’d be surprised how much we miss in life. Grace is a powerful example of how much we are unaware of because of a lack of attention or care. Let me tell you: losing my computer peeled so much crap away from my crusty life-goggles and opened these eyes to so much. Trust is rewarded. Rather than try to construct a narrative, I am going to go with a bullet-point kind of list to just bombard you with the profundity of things that manifested the grace through mercy, compassion, generosity, etc.

-After a semester of travel and living abroad has drained my money big time, I am freaking about being near-broke when I come home. I am trying to squeeze pennies however possible--avoiding using the tube and bus, eating super basic £1.50 or under meals, and trying to think cheap when it comes to stuff that’s not on the bucket list. Well, God saw fit to smack me in the face with more concrete things than usual to remind me that I will be provided for with trust and conscientious thought. I’m not suggesting divine intervention in broken bus-card-readers, but God finds good in or out of EVERYTHING, as I will prove.
1. The Bains gave us £15 out of the blue to cover some Edinburgh fun since we were mindlessly bemoaning our increasing personal poverty in their car. We tried to refused but they super-insisted on it.
2. I was freaking about paying for my computer, appraised as a £130 job by the shop by the flats. Apple classified as it as a factory error or recall or something and replaced it for free.
3. I was worrying about the cost of going to Manor Park for tea and then a dinner because it was probably going to take 4 bus rides round trip (this is already in addition to the fact I was subsidized £60 by the program for an internship that involves like 15-20 £2.40 trips max). On the way out, all the card readers on the bus were broken--boom, free ride. I paid for the bus across town to dinner, which was a freakin’ delight. Four hours after arriving, I suggested at 11:30 I should try to get home to my Skype date, but David and Bonnie insisted I stay longer and that they’d paid for a taxi for me. I went home an hour later in a private cab with a delightful Algerian man. David gave me £40 and told me to keep the change. I gave the dude his £25 plus a £5 tip and somehow went home from being a dinner guest in a wonderful home £10 richer.
4. This all calmed my fears and recentered me. I have tax refunds waiting at home; I have entries in the photo essay contest that could net me £50; I have to sell my books back; I have a pending £40 reimbursement for research travelings. It’s gonna be alright, even if football tickets are a pain in the butt to buy.

-Monday afternoon, I got down to business. Momentum is an important thing. It started with letting go and trusting, which I admit I did too abstractly when I know full well it was only possible through God; it should have been a more positive, definite, active trusting in God. Nonetheless, he came through and gave me the strength. In three-plus days of intermittent working in big chunks, I finished a 15-page paper synthesizing my semester of research, a 10+ page paper for my awesome English class that my professor really liked provisionally, and...

-Once I stopped bemoaning losing one of my research papers and just got to work redoing it, it actually turned out better. I incorporated more secondary sources in a more varied and integrative way, and the result is better than the work I had nearly finished before. Ironically, it was a Catholic Social Teaching paper. I was preaching how family is the rock of society and the Church, and my family had been encouraging my spirits and checking in all week.

-My dad even sent a wonderful email, ironically from an old, janky computer my brother bequeathed to the house; my dad took it to Panera and wrote me a great little note. I learned that easy periods of life are ordained by God as opportunities for people to look outward and be there for others, and my dad’s being unemployed serves as a chance for him to do that for others, in this case me. I was on the up, gaining momentum and confidence, and he solidified my bounce back so well. What a pick me up.

-My friends were wonderful as well. What an avalanche of love. (sorry if I leave anyone out; I’m just trying to cite a few examples and I can’t remember all the great things people did) Galasso emailed me to make sure I had senior week housing. So many people joined my SAVE MY BOOK group to help me recoup the files, highlighted by Chris pledging $20 within minutes of my making the group and unexpecteds like Brad Klein hopping on board (You’re all heroes, but they were just examples). Then, Maria, knowing I could not get on Skype to talk to anyone, gets my London cell number, buys Skype-out, and calls my cell phone; so clutch as I was sitting in the London Centre lab at 9pmish wanting to go home. What a treat that was.

-All of my London circle of friends has had rough times recently: my friend Kaitlin had to go home just ahead of her dad’s passing; Maura’s family had their trip to visit for a week canceled by the volcanic ash; Kelly’s boyfriend wasn’t thinking and temporarily dumped her for no good reason; Megan’s dad went in for heart surgery; Dan was almost homeless for senior year. But somehow, we were able to be there for each other to varying degrees, with smiles, company, gchats and facebook messages, and pub chilling together. Obviously there are varying degrees of magnitude here, but we all held each other up however we could.

-Finally, when I had finished a week of good, hard work, admitting that it stunk to be stranded in London Centre and have to bother people to borrow their computers at the flats (thanks Steven and Dan!), I was realizing how life could still go on just fine. I had let go of worry and was content to let my computer sit at Apple till May 7 or be out of commission till June if that’s what had to happen. Just as I let go of worry and of need, that’s when I got my lappy back. While asleep on the 25 bus to Ilford on Friday afternoon, my phone rang with a random local number. I answered and got word that the lappy was all fixed. I was in disbelief and asked if he was sure; he double checked my name and confirmed it. So not 3-4 weeks later (so actually 3-4 weeks after I picked it up, took it home, and actually got it fixed) but 3-4 days later, it was fixed up. The restoration process in ongoing and I still have no Microsoft Word and some other crucial things like the book. However, I am slightly liberated, and my goggles were removed.

Sometimes we call things blessings in disguises. The problem with that expression is stems from our desire to understand and quantify God. We expect prayers to posed in question format an be responded to in direct answer format. We try to narrowly identify how we will be graced. In reality, we have to be open to God’s gracious blessing to come in any form. It can be abstract or intangible, through a person or action, or it can be something physical, like a hard drive crashing. I will not say that God intervened in the world and caused the computer to crash. I will say that God foreknew that would transpire, and in His omnipotence, He ordained how I could experience His goodness because of the bad or even in spite of it. Look at the list again. Any doubts of the preponderance of grace?

I’m saying every pitfall can produce a laundry list of good like this. And I beseech you to not read that all bad things contain this potential. We must not try to define or quantify how or why God will find good in the rough parts of life. We must just be open to it and realize that shortcomings in finding the good are on our part and not God. It comes down to faith and trust in spite of the bad because the Good and Love that is God is far superior.