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Reset Your Life

Writer's picture: Elizabeth GloverElizabeth Glover

Updated: Jan 6

What do you do when your life suddenly crashes and you find everything you so carefully planned for is spiraling out of control? This question came barreling into our lives this past year for Grady and I. And not just once. It seemed like we barely recovered from one bit of devastating news when another approached on it's heels. I don't have an answer to that question but I can tell you how we managed to both survive and thrive in the midst of it all.

Reset - That 5 Letter Word Changes Everything

reset. I stared at that 5 letter word as the Apple technician held my dying iPhone up for me to see. It had crashed and the only solution to possibly recovering the phone was to push the reset button. Nothing on the phone was backed up. I had been too cheap to pay the 2.99 per month for iCloud storage and now I was realizing the cost of that decision. All of my data would be lost. Years of photos, the daily journal of my life, notes, lists of important things "to do". All gone. It would be as though those undocumented years did not exist. There was no proof that I had been younger, thinner and prettier. No photos of the incredible 1 acre garden that I had helped our son grow on our land, complete with a beautiful green frog nestled inside a bright green stalk of corn. No selfies of me and my incredibly handsome and aging husband. I was livid. That's a word I use when an event happens that is completely unacceptable but completely out of my control.


I sat in the Apple store next to the technician who held my phone in his hand, oblivious to the devastation I was feeling. He waited for me to nod my approval for him to push the reset button so he could move on to the next customer. It was as though he held my life in his hands and all I could think was that he should do something. I wanted him to tell me that there was one more trick he could try. But he was like a Doctor with a designated amount of time to be spent on each patient and the resolution had to happen quickly, no matter the outcome. I guess I expected him to at least sit and grieve with me for a few minutes. Maybe rub my back and bow his head in sadness.


I nodded my head.

He pushed the reset button and it was gone.


To make a bad situation worse, the iPhone would not reboot after the reset and I was told that I needed to buy a new phone. Seven hundred and ninety nine dollars later I'm holding a new yellow phone with facial recognition technology. I'm told to look into the phone and tilt my head in all directions so the phone can remember me. I was scowling so badly I'm afraid the phone won't recognize me unless I put on my scowling face.


This morning I woke at 3:00 a.m. I can't sleep for thinking about my loss. I stumbled into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee and stared blankly at my new gigantic yellow monstrosity that has all the most modern technology but not the history of my life. I had started writing a book. There were weeks and weeks of notes that I had written to create the outline and suddenly I had nothing but a blank page. The reset button had been pushed.


Strangely it felt liberating. I can't believe I'm even saying those words right now, and so soon after my loss, but it feels as if I am somehow unshackled.


There have been some painful experiences over the past few years which have loomed like a dark, cold shadow on my present and future. Some of the injuries came from the actions of loving friends and coworkers. Some from trusted family members. I vented in my daily journal about my pain, naming the culprit who inflicted the pain, rehearsing the incident so it would be indelibly etched. Sometimes I thought about how, after I'm gone and people are sorting through my things, they would read about the culprits who inflicted the pain and the injustice I suffered and the culprits would be exposed for what they'd done and for who they are. I got satisfaction from that thought.


But now the reset button has been pushed and every detail is erased. It feels as though my soul has been purged too. Somehow I feel like I have a clean page to write a new story. One that is not entrenched in the pain of my past. My story will not be about people who don't know how to Be Nice. It won't be an instructional book about following the ABCs of creating a Nice life and a Nice story to make the world a Nicer place to live. It will be about pushing the reset button and starting the journey down a new path, leaving the memoirs behind so that new memories and experiences and adventures can come into focus and be snapped onto my fresh blank page.


I personally don't have much experience with living the Nice life that I would love to imagine I have lived. I am a confrontational person who is indignant at the injustice in the world. I'm also a "doer" and a "fixer" which mixes beautifully with my confrontational spirit, creating drama that can seem mean spirited, judgmental and unmerciful.


 I'm not writing a self help blog to fix your life. As you can see, I'm not qualified. But I am inviting you to join me on my journey to write a new story.


This morning I feel anticipation and excitement. I'm okay with losing the data that has depicted my life because I have decided to write a better story. I believe that I can reset my life and my story as often as this human device of my body does not crash and refuse to reboot.



Forgiveness - Love - Hope

My friend #TammyWebbWitholt helped to walk me through some trauma and gave me advice I have never forgotten. "Is the issue more important than the relationship?" Sometimes the answer to that question is yes. But most often the answer is no. That is when the reset button is named #Forgiveness.


My friend #WinnieStread told me that everything is reduced to love because love covers a multitude of sins. That is when the reset button is named #Love.


My best friend, #GradyGlover, has been my most encouraging friend of all. He has never lost sight of hope and has encouraged, and sometimes literally carried me, to hope in the future because (his words) "All things work together for good to those who are the called according to His purpose."


Survive and Thrive

Good news! We did Survive and we are Thriving!



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