It was one of the worst weeks of my life. I was depressed and felt like I had just pulled the trigger causing the death spiral of my family business. Computer consultants had worked on our server transitioning to a new, better system. And in the process, they accidentally wiped our server. The backups had become corrupted, and it appeared that all of our company data was gone. We had some backups from two years ago. But all the billing, sales, prospect, content and other data was gone. And I was the one responsible for the project.
Unfortunately, I knew that a data loss of this severity typically cripples small businesses, and could lead to a premature business death. I worried, yelled and stressed. I found a company that did data recovery for the FBI, Department of Defense, Apple Computers and Google. They were supposed to be able to work miracles. But even they said it looked hopeless.
So then I did the one thing that I should have done first as a Christian. I got down on my knees and prayed. Actually, I begged God for a miracle. But part of me thought, “Does God really care about my IT nightmare?” I went away to Kansas City for a prayer retreat with some friends who knew that I was severely depressed after this incident. They prayed with me as I sought God’s favor throughout the weekend.
On Friday as I landed in KC, the experts from the IT firm in California told me that we were facing a near 100% data loss. The tech who oversaw the project didn’t sugar coat the situation. He said that we should prepare for the worst and try to recreate whatever we can. There was one last routine they were going to run on the data. But this had a very low success rate.
I prayed and prayed and prayed. I asked for God to do something miraculous because I felt like the fate of my family’s business was at stake. I was mad at myself. I loathed my “former” IT consultant. Everybody told me that I should give myself a break. But I wanted to get in the car and drive until I couldn’t drive any more and never come back. I felt like I had killed what my father and brother had worked for all of their lives.
Through the weekend though I was constantly reminded of God’s love. He does indeed care about the little, big things in our lives. But I just didn’t know if He fixed computers too?
As I flew home on Monday, I made the dreaded call and got some unexpected news. I talked directly with the technician who worked on my project. He said, “It is remarkable. There was nothing there on Friday. We had one more routine run over the weekend. When I came back into the office on Monday, what we did over the weekend worked. We are looking at a full recovery.”
The technician added, “This is a miracle. Usually data sets that are that far gone are not able to be recovered like this. Something happened with the data over the weekend.” I almost ran around the airport saying, “God is King of the 1s and 0s.”
This encounter reminds me that I should realize that God cares about my business more than I do because He wants me to do all things for His glory. God does hear our prayers. And even when He doesn’t answer them as we desire, He is still in charge. I am thankful that God performed a miracle in this instance. And I know that He is worthy of praise despite the outcome. And it is reassuring to know that even colossal IT mistakes are under His control. 1s and 0s refer to computer code, and it isn’t a foreign language to God.
Facing many challenges in business, prayer and praise should be my first response, not my last resort.
By Chaille Brindley, Kingdom-Inc. Co-Editor