how i lost everything (and what i found).

I lost everything. 

That’s what I informed the guy at the dinky computer store off the highway.

My whole life is on that hard drive. 

But instead of hearing the soothing sympathy I expected, the computer guy stared at me through his yellow-tinted sunglasses and stated, “No. It’s not.”

On Halloween, my hard drive crashed like a kid after too much candy. Except my hard drive and I didn’t go trick or treating. There was no warning. I hadn’t dropped it or damaged it. No water or weird glitches. It sighed with strange noises and it’s soul passed on into another dimension and left me with just the skeleton.

It’s dumb, but I put absolutely everything on that hard drive. Photos. Other peoples photos. Videos. Other peoples videos. Classwork. And you guessed it, other peoples classwork. Power points and papers. Designs and documents. Horrible high school pictures and four years of college memories and mistakes.

So how wasn’t that my whole life, Mr. Computer Man?

I spent the next week searching companies that recover data and eventually sent it in, hoping that they could retrieve something.

Nothing.

And somehow it didn’t surprise me. I think my heart knew my life wasn’t supposed to be in that hard drive, but that’s where I had been living.

I tucked away and took everything from there. My purpose. My comfort. My pride. My history. My life.

I guess you could say it was my life’s proof. Evidence that Molly Marko was here. That she did something. That she had something of value. That she did things that mattered.

But I don’t think God wants us to spend our lives saving the evidence that we existed on a hard drive. Because now I know that hard drives crash (and not even the nerdiest tech guys can fix them).

Instead, I think God wants us to store our proof in people.

People made by God’s hands instead of human ones. Wired to live forever and structured to store the exact brand of love you can give.

So no. My whole life wasn’t lost on that hard drive. Oddly, I found a whole new life in Christ again while walking out of that cluttered computer store. One I want to keep safe in someone.

Someone like you.

Molly

“Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?” Mark 8:37-38 MSG