Strangely At Peace

Last night, I played guitar for a women's worship service at a local story. I listened to a woman give testimony of a life filled with hardship being transformed by God's steady presence and grace. Shortly after hearing her story and responding by reading aloud a passage of scripture from my phone, my phone started an update that I honestly do not recall initiating. After talking with someone knowledgeable about iPhones and trying about 10 times to complete the update and/or restore, my phone is still frozen and will do nothing. I got my old phone reactivated until I could go to an Apple Store.

A lot has changed in my life over the past couple of months. I've said a lot of goodbyes to people at school and church. Things that were steady and certain are no longer so. Change is not my strong suit. Losing things and letting go is not my best gift. I'm the girl who is perfectly content with a 9-year-old computer, a 16-year-old car, and sheets that I've slept on since I was a kid, and I'm the girl who still has pictures of long-ago friends hanging on the mirror in her room so that I don't forget to remember and pray.

And so my phone locking up and me possibly losing all of my pictures from the Scandinavian Adventure that I still cannot find words about which to speak...It feels like another quiet release--another letting go that I wasn't expecting--another unwanted yet somehow needed exercise to stretch my soul. I am sad. And I would love for the phone to be healed so that I don't have spend ridiculous amounts of money on insurance, chargers, cases, etc. for a new phone. But...I am strangely at peace.

I am humbly and gently reminded that this world is so much bigger than phones and that the same God whose steady presence and grace has guided last night's speaker through much hardship is the same God whose steady presence and grace has guided me through the same. That same God will guide you, too, friend. And tonight, as I prepare to go to work tomorrow at a school that feels like a different place, with a phone that is much less smart than the one I was getting used to, I am so grateful.