Sometimes negativity can take such a stronghold on your mind that you need to take a moment to flush it out.
Yesterday was great and I let nothing get the best of me. Right after leaving the office I got to work with painting the studio room. Every time I heard the humming of a vehicle a block away I hurried to the window to see if the UPS man had arrived. No I am not being sexist. A UPS man delivers my packages and I gleefully accepted the package he gave me, when he finally arrived.
My new Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens was contained beneath B&H's printed packaging tape. I was very pleased with my upgrade from Canon's 50mm f/1.8 lens. That is until the heart sinking Error 99 flashed before my LCD screen. Sometimes it would show up, sometimes it would not. Then the auto focusing on the lens stopped working.
I was not alone in this. I tried a few of the suggestions I found online.
Turning off the camera and removing the battery.
Using an eraser on the lens' contacts and the camera's contacts.
Taking a peek behind the camera's mirror.
One suggestion said to remove the lens, remove the CF card, and charge the camera's battery. But I had recently charged my battery and it was still nearly full. Why would I bother?
Still, I felt compelled to charge that battery. The only problem was that I couldn't find the charger!
First I checked the most obvious place, my camera bags. No luck.
I rummaged through the junk drawer.
I started looking through the piles I had made in the spare room. I was finally able to see the bare tops of flat surfaces, but a camera charger was nowhere beneath them.
Window seat bench? No.
Spare closet? Nu uh.
I found myself becoming increasingly angry with myself. Why was I so unorganized?!
I started to look through each and every one of my bags. I have a lot of these.
Nowhere to be found.
That was the last straw.
I had to stop and tell myself that the only way I was going to find it would be if I just settled down for a moment. Maybe praying about it would help. Yeah. That might help. Maybe I could ask God to tell me where it is was. Maybe He would answer me. Probably not, but it couldn't hurt, right?
I asked God to help me find my camera charger.
"Check your bags."
Ugh! No God. I already did that. They weren't in my bags! Frustrated, I hesitantly picked up my bags one by one and looked inside of them.
Not in here.
Not in that one either, God.
By now my arm was getting weighed down and I wandered around looking for a place to hang up my bags. I realized that such a place does not currently exist in my house, which is why they were in a huge pile in the first place.
I continued picking up bags and checking their contents. By the time I picked up all of my bags there was something small staring up at me from the floor, my camera's battery charger.
Seriously. I have no idea how it wound up way down there, beneath bags I haven't used since this summer, but I was thankful to have found it.
My mood lightened a little, but there was still no guarantee that my camera was going to work right with my new lens. I was disappointed that I had so quickly sold my similar lens.
I didn't really pray about my camera problems this morning, it was much more like begging and pleading with God.
I inserted my CF card, put in my freshly charged battery, and twisted my troublesome lens on my camera while crossing my fingers in my mind. I powered up my camera and pressed down the shutter button while wincing. I looked at my LCD screen. It took a picture! Wait, it might be a fluke though. I quickly snapped another picture. HOT DOG! Ok, let me try again.
And again.
and again.
I've tried it again at least 200 times now without any problems.
So maybe technology really does work some of the time, and maybe God really does answer prayer all of the time.
It probably wouldn't hurt to try.
