There is a beautiful line in the Bible that says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Over the years, I’ve applied that verse to many things in life, such as gardens, grief, love, and new beginnings. This week, however, it unexpectedly applied to something much more ordinary.
My phone.
For over a year, I’ve known that the time had come to switch from my faithful old Android to an iPhone. Everyone around me seemed to glide through their glowing Apple screens while I stubbornly held onto my aging Galaxy like an old friend I wasn’t quite ready to leave behind.
HHH, being the patient soul that he is, took me to the store three separate times to buy the new phone. Each time we walked in with determination, and each time I walked out with cold feet. I would stare at the shiny boxes and suddenly feel overwhelmed. New system, new buttons, new everything. And the PRICE!!! Yikes. Change, even small change, has a way of rattling me.
After the third trip, HHH declared it would be the last time he’d be driving me to buy a phone. Now, knowing him as I do, I’m fairly certain he would have taken me five more times if necessary. Still, the point had been made. So on Sunday, I gathered my courage, sat down at the computer, and ordered a pale blue iPhone online.
Monday it arrived, and that’s when the real adventure began.
Transferring data from one phone to another sounds simple when people explain it. In reality, when the Android phone is quite aged and the instructions assume you have accounts you’ve never used, the process becomes something of a technological obstacle course. As Lumina held the lantern beside me, I tried and tried to move my contacts from one phone to the other. We explored menus, shared files, and pressed buttons that seemed determined not to cooperate. At one point, it became clear that technology had officially outsmarted me.
So I did what any practical person would do. I started typing. One contact at a time. Slowly, steadily, name by name, my phone book was reborn on a bright new screen.
And just like that, the season changed from Android to iPhone, and I now have a brand new phone. The old one rests quietly on the desk, its years of service complete, while the sleek new one waits patiently for me to learn its ways. Ecclesiastes was right after all. For everything there is a season, even for our phones.
