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(This is the second post in my Perspective series.  Part 1 can be found here)

Three days ago I discovered something.  It’s not good to have your phone in hand while dumping water out of a cooler.  As I tried to flip the cooler upside-down, my phone flipped straight out of my hand onto the asphalt below.  I picked it up to discover a hundred little cracks had shot across my phone’s screen in the shape of a spider web.

“Well” I said, “I guess I’m going to the Sprint store tomorrow.”

And Then?

And nothing.  There was no panic, no worry.  Truth be told, I had very little reaction whatsoever.  Bear in mind, my phone’s retail value is $499 and I’m on it constantly.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!”

“This is terrible!”

“Did you cry?”

These were all things people said to me.  As they witnessed my obliterated phone, they reacted far more than I did.  Why?  Because they didn’t know what I knew.

They didn’t know that everything was going to be all right, but I did.

I had been through this before.  A quick trip to the Sprint store, and I would have a brand new screen in 15 minutes without paying a dime.  Why?  Because I had a protection plan.  I had a guarantee that my phone was going to make it.

Why So Serious?

As I thought about all of the people feeling sorry for my phone, something started to bug me.  They were all worried for no reason.  It seemed senseless really.  And yet, for while now, I have been constantly worried.

I used to be a guy who was rarely anxious, who was generally optimistic, and deep down, believed things would work their way out.  When bad things happened, I thought it’s all part of the plan (that’s two Joker quotes in one post).

Sometime around college graduation, my perspective shifted, and I lost that hope.  Everything felt fragmented and broken, and I wondered if it would ever be whole again.

It was terrible.  I did cry (for the first time in years).  I had lived my whole life believing that I was created with a purpose and plan for my life.  Suddenly, that seemed like a lie.

An Epiphany

What’s crazy is I didn’t realize all of this had happened.  It wasn’t until I destroyed my phone and received unnecessary sympathy that I saw my own hypocrisy.

I was caught up in my own unnecessary sympathy.

And I thought about the confidence I had when my phone was destroyed.  It was the perfect display of faith.  I knew instantly, without doubt, without hesitancy, that things were going to be fine.  I might have to wait a little, but it would work out.

What if I had that kind of faith for my life?

What if when things fell apart I believed that it would work out, that God “would make a way”?  (pardon the terrible cliché)

So much of the negativity and life draining presence in my life was coming from me worrying about things that were in the past and couldn’t be changed.

That’s when I let go.  I stopped worrying and started believing that it was going to be alright.  I started looking at my life as being under a “protection plan” of sorts.  I remembered times in the past I made it through when I shouldn’t have.  I had been here before, I just forgot.  What followed was crazy.

For the first time in a long time, I felt optimistic.  As if chains had been removed from my limbs, I began to feel like I was heading towards better times, that my life was about to be repaired.

It wasn’t about hoping as much as truly believing and acting like I believed.

The Best Part

Once I got my new screen on , I couldn’t stop staring at my phone.  I forgot how shiny and beautiful it was.  It looked better than it did before it fell to pieces.  It wasn’t just fixed.  It was brand new.

That’s how it’s going to be, I thought.  Soon enough, that’s how it’s going to be.