Seriously, God...will I lose all my family's memories to this legalized extortion?
"Cause God, His light, His light, makes me shine so bright." Josh Thomas "My Love Mine All Mine (Christian Rewrite)"
My wife got a new phone and part of the deal was that we had to turn in her old Galaxy Note 10+ with a good fourth of the front screen cracked on the left side. Her media gallery was brimming with pictures and videos, so the plan was to transfer all the files to my external hard drive that I bought ten plus years ago. In that hard drive were pictures of our kids’ baby pictures, first day of school, birthdays, and vacations. Growing up I have literally twenty pictures to remember my childhood, so I didn’t want to repeat that trend with my kids.
After we bought the new phone and as I was preparing to transfer the pictures to the hard drive, we found our computers couldn’t recognize the external hard drive anymore. We were panicking. The level of freak out escalated when I brought it to a local tech repair and they couldn’t see the drive either. How many years of memories were on that drive? According to my wife, at least 8-10 years worth of pictures were there. Upon hearing that I could feel the blood drain from my face.
Over text message the repair team told me they could get an outside company to take a look, and if they found any files they’d post them on a website I could access. I only pay if they find something and I consent. How much was it if they were successful? The beginning price was $500.
Are you serious!? Am I being legally extorted? If they find even one of our family’s memories, who would say no? Who can put a price on their family’s memories? I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being taken advantage of, but did we have a choice? We agreed to the “ransom,” and I pleaded with God to work his power within the deep circuitry of that old, faulty external hard drive.
Through the night I thought about what if they weren’t able to recover those files? My long-term memory isn’t the greatest even when I was young, and I’m pretty sure I don’t recall what any of my kids looked like as babies without the aid of pictures. Lying in my bed, I became frantic thinking about what we’d be losing. Out of all the pictures, I worried about the pictures of my dad dedicating each of my kids during Christmas services. Those moments of him praying for them felt like the glue between my children and him. Then there were the pictures of my mom proudly holding her grandkids when she could still remember everything (before dementia set in). Before I spiraled into a pool of worry, I asked myself why was I so upset when I was usually the least sentimental person in any given room?
It’s because, right now, I cherish the past compared to my future.
I have so much to give thanks for and in many ways I look more fondly to my past then compared to what I see in the future. Not that anything immediately bad is coming, but in my head the future is more uncertain than ever. Nowadays, for the first half of our lives we are all trained to believe and understand that our individual futures are supposed to get better, not worse. You will eventually get out of the confusion of your 20s. The stock market is always going to grow. Technology is going to make life easier. Once you achieve a certain status you are set. I guess my question for God is whether this is actually true. Does life get “better?” Could it actually get “worse?” That seems to be the problem—how do you define better or worse in God’s eyes?
Maybe that’s why some hold on so dearly to the past while others rather forget their unfortunate past and forge a better future. We all just want to hold onto what gives us hope. For some the past was better. For others the future can only be better than what they have experienced.
Recently, on Instagram I read this comforting quote—give thanks to God for the past, and trust God with your future—simple but profound. Trust God with the future. My dad told me this all the time, and even in a recent dream about him that’s what he exactly told me (or what God revealed to me via that dream). It’s my lasting memory of him—don’t rely on your human wisdom or foresight, but trust God. Jesus said he was the Alpha and the Omega (beginning and end).1 He covers both the past and future.
To finish my story, the next day came and I got the technician’s text. As if the technician was surprised himself, he stated in his text, “It looks like they were able to actually recover roughly 379 GB of data from the drive.” We were so happy with the news and shelled out the ransom money to retrieve all the files and put the old and new files on a new hard drive. Maybe you can have both—the past and the future—but it has to stay together through thankfulness AND trust in Jesus. Instead of just my past experiences OR future glories being a light, I pray that TOGETHER my past and future together can be that light.
What brings you a smile—remembering the past or looking forward to the future? What can you give thanks for AND look forward to new beginnings?
Revelation 1:8 I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.