A Broken Screen

My computer screen went out, it was like Paul says, "Seeing through a glass darkly...very darkly...and then not at all" (That's a paraphrase). So Jim was kind enough to loan me a laptop. Now in ten years of using laptops, I have never dropped one. I dropped it. When I started it, the screen was not dark, it was just like a "test pattern" with various lines, some purple, some black, some white.

My first reaction was, anger at myself, my second was: maybe I can fix this. I hope Tony Dye, our IT guru, does not read this blog. Being much more of an artist than an engineer, my first thought was about when I was a kid we would bang on the side of the TV if it was fuzzy. It sometimes worked. So I (Tony quit reading now) tried it. For a split second I could see the right screen! Then it went away. I hit it again....no success...then again, and again from various angles. Once in a while for a split second I would see the screen as it should have been.

So today I had to admit my fault. I am using another loaner from Cristin. Pray I do not drop it.

But, the screen got me thinking on two levels. The first is that the window to reality that we have is distorted; Paul was right. We can try and clear it up ourselves by banging on it. Maybe we will see something for a split second, but that is no help at all. Or we can admit to the manufacturer our window is broken and ask Him to give us eyes to see and ears to hear.

We should be careful; our family of origin, our actions will frame our window and can distort it further. If we do things that are damaging to it, we will have a harder time seeing reality. We may permanently damage our window for this life time.

So I am resolved again to be careful when holding a laptop and to be careful to look to the Maker for further clarity when the picture of life is fuzzy.