A Miracle - Part Two

To recap from yesterday, Todd dropped the computer, and a few days later it failed to boot up.

Part of my husband's job requires him to travel out of town on occasion. The next week after the computer failed to boot up he was going to Wilmington, which takes him through Durham where the closest Apple Store is. So he made an appointment to take the computer to the Apple Store to get a tech to hopefully salvage the information from the hard drive. Well, Shawn was in a lot of pain when he went to the appointment, so he doesn't remember exactly what was said. (He slammed his finger in the car door, injuring it to the point of needing stitches, as he was retrieving the computer from the back seat of the car for the appointment -- but that's another story.) Basically he was told that the hard drive couldn't boot up due to mechanical failure. It wouldn't stop spinning and therefore couldn't be read. The information was virtually irretrievable and the hard drive would need to be replaced. (We could have tried to send it away to a headquarters for a tech there to attempt to retrieve the information, but that would be a minimum of $1200 with no guarantee they would be able to salvage any data. Well, considering our budget, not to mention our sense of logic, this just wasn't a viable option.)

Oh, computers! Such a love-hate relationship! It's amazing what they can do for us, but they're also such a pain to deal with sometimes. When Shawn told me the verdict, I cried (briefly, mind you, but tears were shed). I had been trying to back up my pictures and documents in the two days before the computer crashed, but had been unsuccessful. Now all that information was lost... again. Just a few months before this incident we had lost a bunch of information on another hard drive. (I didn't cry only for the computer. I also cried because Shawn got hurt and he was away from home, and because all this stuff was happening at the same time while he was away from home.)

The crash occurred in early May. We packed up the computer and didn't touch it until two weeks ago. Occasionally I prayed for it and asked God to let it boot up just one more time so that I could retrieve the information. Despite my prayer, I never followed through with trying to turn it on to see what would happen. I must admit I was afraid of being disappointed, so I just avoided it. Shawn came to me a couple of weeks ago and said that he was considering trying to replace the hard drive himself. I told him, "Well, pray over it, and try to boot it up again one more time and see what happens." I told him that I had prayed that God would let the computer work one more time, but hadn't tried to turn it on. Well, Shawn had the courage to follow through where I didn't. He did what I said and came into the kitchen where I was a few minutes later with computer in hand. He said, "You'd better get the information off the computer right now while the it's working." I can't remember what I said next... Something along the lines of "God is so awesome!" or "Praise God!" or "Hallelujah!" or some other expression like that. I'm pretty sure I jumped up and down a few times. I asked Shawn what he did, and he said he just prayed over it and tried to turn it on, and it came on!

God is so amazing! Anyway, I ran and grabbed the blank CDs and proceeded to copy every file off the computer I could possibly want or need later, starting with the pictures, even though I was in the middle of making homemade brownies. Well the computer has been working ever since! As far as I'm concerned, it's a miracle. Some may try to explain it away, but the diagnosis was very grim, and what man couldn't do, God did. Enough said.