{November 10 2012}
Early this morning could have easily been the worst day of our lives. My husband and I had gone to store last night to get a few things and upon returning home we asked the kids to help us unload the car. They whined and complained as most kids do when you ask them to help. However, we worked as team and got the job done quickly.
It was vastly approaching 10pm and I was looking forward to getting to bed, but my husband wanted to have a document shredding party in the garage with his new shredder. We had been collecting quite the stack of important papers over the last 14 years and he was worried about someone stealing our social security numbers and credit card accounts off of the papers. The shredder was super loud, so he went out to the garage to shred, so as not to disturb the kids sleep.
I finished up some housework and then went to check on his progress. He still had a lot of things to go through and shred. I couldn't stay awake another minute and climbed into my bed by 11:30pm. Just when I began to drift off to sleep, I hear my husband frantically storm into our room and yell out, “My laptop is missing!" Barely awake I listened as he searched our bedroom. He was in a real panic. I forced myself out of sleeping stupor and got out of bed to help him search. I looked all over the house and his laptop was seriously nowhere to be found. We had to resign to the inevitable that it had been stolen.
He said, "Our whole life is on that laptop. If someone stole it they could ruin us."
The last place he had it was in his car. He couldn't remember if he'd locked the car doors when we went into the store and assumed someone had taken it and was now trying to figure out how to get everything off of it. We both began pacing the house, checking uselessly the places we had check several times before, hoping it would just magically appear.
Finally my husband resolved to check his office at work. It was now 12:30am; I was feeling tired, desperate, and hopeless. I dropped to my knees to pray for my husband to find his laptop. I pleaded, bargained, blamed, and cried in anger to the Lord, "Why would you allow someone to take his laptop? He doesn't deserve this after all we have been through, please help us find it." Then my prayers changed to a knowledge of faith. In the back of my mind I was hanging on to it and not going to give up hope.
I finished my prayers and began searching some more. I thought to check the garage, but it was too cold, so I just turned on the light and surveyed the area. I couldn't see his laptop amongst all of the clutter and didn't think he would have left it in there.
I then decided to check the driveway in case he set it down somewhere when he was unloading the car.
No such luck! My husband came home at this time and was completely distraught. I asked if he had prayed and he said," Yes." He also said, "I swore and was angry as well." No argument there...my prayer hadn't exactly gone over well. I could see that he was tired and ready to burst into tears. The only thing left was to accept defeat and make arrangements to order a new laptop and to call Life Lock to insure protection of our bank/credit card accounts and social security numbers of which were all on his computer.
Just before making the call, I thought we should not give up entirely and check the garage one more time. I mentioned that I had only looked from the doorway and maybe it was in there somewhere. He admitted he hadn't looked in there. He went out there and sure enough his laptop was lying right on top of the wheelbarrow. We were both in a state of shock!
He came towards me, my arms were stretched out to receive a hug, when all of a sudden he got weak in the knees and dropped to the ground, lifting his arms heavenwards and shaking them as if to say, "Hosanna."
Tears filled my eyes and we both were in awe over the whole experience.
He got up and embraced me. I mentioned to him the fact that we should probably go buy an external hard drive for his laptop. That way if his laptop ever really got stolen, our life would be protected. He agreed.
It was about 2:00am, when we finally crawled into bed. We both slumped to our knees feeling an immense amount of gratitude towards the Lord for an answered prayer. Yes, we were both a little stubborn in our listening and understanding, but nonetheless grateful the Lord was watching out for us and showed that he truly cared about our needs.
I love this thought by Author Gerald N. Lund,
"A vital part of a testimony is knowing that God is our Heavenly Father and that He knows us and loves us and will answer our prayers. I’m only now beginning to understand how deeply He loves us and how well He knows us. He knows our hearts. He knows our loneliness. He knows our fears. He will not force Himself on us though, because He respects our agency. We must ask. When we do, our Heavenly Father will confirm the reality of His existence. How comforting it is to know that the Creator of the universe is standing by to answer a child’s prayer."-- Answered Prayers
May I add, if we ask, we must listen in faith for the answers.
