Unexpected blessing:::what father is this?

Last week I got a free laptop.

These kinds of things don't just happen and it prompted me to look deeper into who a father is:

A father is one who always acts in the best interest of their children. He is one who lovingly provides for his children and longs to give them not only everything they need, but the things he knows they love, he loves to see his children light up. A good father is never negligent, but acutely aware of everything their child needs to live and goes out of their way to provide just that and more. A good father is one whose eye is never far from their children, but who takes care of them in all things. Who is reliable. Trustworthy. Safe. Dependable. Fair. Loving. Supportive. Encouraging. And true. This good father almost seems too perfect to be true. While I have seen earthly reflections of this in ways that have blown my mind, this true perfect father is only found in heaven.
That's just my definition of a father. Today.

God has always met all of my needs in a very personal real way.

For whatever reason, God’s will for my life was to know Him as Father in a way that is foreign to many people I know.

God has been all I’ve had for a long time.

Everything I have, God has literally given to me.

I remember reading something in A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God that talked about what he described “the tyranny of things” and the “joy of possessing nothing.”

I remember I read it at a time when I had just come to grips with the fact I was without a computer, for quite a while. This was last fall 2007 after my computer crashed that July. I had remembered a similar experience when my car was taken away from me and I went 15 months without a car.

Both of these situations taught me a dependence on the Lord I cannot even begin to put into words. Every time I needed to get somewhere or anytime I needed to use the computer, I had to ask. It forced me to be humble, to constantly be in need and to ask for help for the simplest of things like a ride to work or a ride to the grocery store.

Both of these situations taught me what it really means to have “everything” when you literally have “nothing.”

But the biggest axe was to my independence. It felt like having a limb cut off and both of these losses literally cut me off from the world in certain ways.

But where there is no way, God has always been the one who comes through and I can count on. I remember being jealous at some of my roommates, in any living situation I’ve been in, that anytime they need something they can just call and ask their parents. my family background and past forced me to develop an unhealthy reliance on self that I am slowly learning to transfer onto God and trust Him to provide through others.

But it’s always to the point of breaking and when you start giving up that He provides.

Several other things that I needed and didn’t have parental help to get it, God found a way.

I still can’t believe it. It has been since July 2007. 17 months.

I remember going without a car for about that long.

You learn to make due and go into survival mode. I have always had enough money to survive, but surplus to spend on things like that was unheard of.

So you learn to make it. You learn to depend on others for the things you need and to trust God to give you all you need.


I still find it hard to believe I have a computer again.

When you have had things taken away or go without things like a car or a computer or a job for a long time, they have new meaning in your life but your heart is focused on the giver, not the gift.

Because the gift can be taken away at any moment and you know you will survive.

But the giver is the one you cannot live without.

I recently shared this story of how I was given a laptop last week with some friends and I was surprised how many of my friends didn’t even know I didn’t have a computer.

If I didn’t have one I would’ve died. Or I could’ve never survived without one for that long.

The lord sees and hears every prayer. Every cry we utter to Him.

It was a gift straight from God, even how it happened and how seemingly out of the blue the conversation was.

I was floored.
I was in shock for at least 2 minutes and wondered if I had heard her correctly.

No one just gives anyone things anymore. Is the thought I’ve been having over and over. And in even sharing the story with friends or writing about it, the fear creeps up that I shouldn’t be telling people because it could be taken away. But that fear is something I recognize has no place in my life. It robs us of the joy God gives us. And it reveals the broken theology I can be drawn back to that says I don’t deserve good things or God doesn’t desire to give me good things.

Generosity is so rare, yet such a precious gift.

And the fact that God was the one who truly knew of this need and that I had just decided in doing my budget that Monday that buying a laptop was going to have to hold off for a while (although I was hoping to get one in December) I was incredibly floored at His timing.

Not that it has anything to do with me because God’s sovereignty is not based on anything I do or pray for

But somehow prayer works in building our faith and I know and GOD knows the conversations we’ve been having about this, but that have been unspoken to others.

But early that week I have come to letting it go. I had made it that long. I could make it longer. I resolved to let it go. And then it came out of nowhere.

I remember how blessed I felt. Still feel. And remembered something Donald Miller said in seeing an earthly father who loved to do things like take his son fishing or take his son to his favorite park just to see his face light up in delight and wonder and surprise… that his father loved to give him those things that truly made him happy and that it brought the father just as much pleasure (even though he didn’t care for fishing or the park) just to see his son happy was enough. He related that to God. He operates the same way. He is relational to the core and relates to us as a Father who not only gives us what we need, but loves giving us the things we just like.

This situation reminded me of this story Miller wrote about in To Own A Dragon as I could just feel the Father smiling at me and enjoying my wonder and surprise still even nearly a week later at this unexpected gift, but more blown away at all the Giver had to orchestrate to make it happen.

He is a good father, sometimes too good to be true. I’ve been learning to see the goodness of our Father in tangible ways like this and in the unseen ways that are just as real.

Let us praise His name, for our Father is good. He remains the same, in joy or pain.