God broke my stuff… a lot of stuff. And I asked him to… sort of. I was reading Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne again (a very dangerously challenging book…check it out… but don’t say I didn’t warn you). And I reached a chapter where Shane starts talking about living simply, how we don’t need so much stuff, etc. I started to think about this: it’s crazy how much stuff I bought to come live simply for a year. Most of the stuff I own is in my backpack… which I had to buy. I see poor people every day that have nothing and I struggled over which t shirts to leave behind this year. So I started to pray that God would show me how to be more content and how to live more simply. Then I had that, “man, I just actually prayed that… yikes” feeling in my head.
The next 48 hours looked a little something like this: Wednesday morning I decided to throw in the towel on my battle with my camera (Mom and Dad, for Christmas you’re getting a broken camera you can take to get fixed at Best Buy! Sorry for spoiling it). Wednesday night I was moving pictures around onto my external hard drive and the lap top died. I carried it across the room, plugged it in and the hard drive slipped off the table, swung daringly from its connector cord and dropped 18 inches to the floor. Because God is funny… this is also the right distance of free fall to break the hard drive…. now it buzzes like a cell phone and that’s it. In our room Lindsey found me stewing and all I could tell her is, “God is breaking my stuff because I asked him to.” Thursday, my wallet was stolen, removing any ability to do a little online shopping and replace my camera. (Funny wallet story: I never got it back. But, the day we were leaving a random Cambodian boy on a bicycle slammed on the breaks, asked if I was Sarah, and told me that he knew where my wallet was… and if I gave him money his friend would probably give it back to me… too funny). So anyway…this has basically been my story… yesterday when I pulled out my flash drive and it was mysteriously bent up and crushed… I just started laughing. What else can you do right?
The weirdest part of this is I am totally fine with it. When I tell this story I get a lot of “oh nos” and “I’m sorrys” but I don’t even want them. Parts of this obviously stinks but God actually listened to my prayers. I’m learning that if God wants me to pray for something… it may break some stuff, it may even break me, but I am going to be at peace. Amid all of the catastrophes I am having one of my most joy-filled weeks yet. I am learning how to be more dependent on my teammates for things like taking pictures and as long as God doesn’t start breaking cameras or this laptop I’m borrowing… they will probably continue to let me. And I’m learning more about praying. When I pray the prayers that I dread I learn so much more than when I just tell God what I want for Christmas… although a new camera would be nice!
“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
