God’s Sense of Humor
God shows her wonderful sense of humor as she provides just the right circumstances for my growth. (I use the female persona here just to shake you up a bit if you’ve always thought of God as a father figure.)
Check this scenario:
late September, 2006: I pick a writing theme for October–Tranquility–for my two writing venues, this blog and Suite101.com.
September 27: I write There Are No Bad Days, the story of a young woman whose life is changed forever after miraculously surviving a very serious brain aneurysm with only minor after-effects. In telling her story to my wife she says she no longer has bad days–all days are good because she’s alive. I write that we must learn from her experience to appreciate the gift of life, even when things don’t go the way we want.
October 2: My toolkit (a weekly feature on Suite101) for the week is Serene. What it means to be serene with a challenge to be serene during the week; there are helpful tips included.
October 4: I publish Tranquility: A choice place to live on this blog and What is Tranquility on my Suite101.com site. Both articles describe the benefits of being tranquil amidst surrounding chaos and turmoil, with helpful tips to use when confronted with this situation.
Oct. 6: My computer crashes–big time. The blue screen of death pops up but I don’t feel panicky because that happens every once in a while–no big deal. I’ll reboot and all will be well.
Not! This time all is not well. The blue screen repeats with every start-up, even when I start in fail-safe mode.
After exhausting my scanty toolkit of PC solutions I re-load the XP operating system from CD. After all, my critical files were backed up just a few days earlier. I don’t anticipate losing much.
After a few suspicious false starts re-loading the OS I finally get a basic XP system, way out of date, but operational. Now to restore my files from the recent backup and I’m all set. Wrong! Restore can’t read the backup DVD. Again, many machinations and manipulations of the DVD, including trying several programs designed to restore faulty backup files.
All to no avail. The backup data is corrupted, probably because of hard drive problems when it was created. My earlier backup is way out of date. Bottom line–I’ve lost several months of files and have a flaky PC to boot 
.
Do you see the irony here? My theme is tranquility. The articles I write describe the benefits and how to be tranquil in chaotic circumstances. So God, in her wisdom and using her terrific sense of humor says, “Experience tranquility despite the frustration and inconvenience of losing the tool of your occupation.”
Some might see this as a test or a lesson, or even a punishment for my audacity at telling others how to be tranquil in difficult situations. I don’t see it that way. I see this set of circumstances as a delicate and intricate tapestry woven to provide the perfect opportunity for me to personally experience my theme. Or not.
Thankfully, the difficulties did not include loss of life, serious injury or illness, or major property damage. Just the minor chaos of losing my PC and all the precious stuff stored there. But how often do we go bananas over just this type of problem?
Once I saw the irony and humor, I had to smile. What a terrific opportunity God presented. I get to take my own advice and experience tranquility in the midst of chaos. I get to start fresh with a new PC and new tools, file systems, etc. And I get the reassurance that God is really out there watching me and helping me to grow.
There really are no bad days.
Thank you God.