The morning of the event, I was not in a festive mood. My husband and I lived thousands of miles apart, as he was overseas on deployment and I was in our home state attending college. It wasn’t ideal, but God helped us through it. I was often awake into the early morning talking to him on the phone and on webcam, and the previous night had been no different. So I was tired. Also, because I had changed so much in previous months, people weren’t as willing to spend time with me anymore. I even felt compelled to avoid spending time in my room because my roommates disliked me so much, so for now I was basically just sleeping there. I had been resting for some short amount of time when the event music started.

It was no surprise to me that it was rap music I was hearing. It almost always was when students were drinking. I supposed I would suffer the offensive lyrics and noise until I could fall back asleep. However, with each passing song I felt like this playlist took the cake. It was as if the makers of the playlist had searched for the most obnoxious songs they could find and compiled them to make everybody hear them. I was overwhelmingly sad, and got up out of bed to find my mp3 player. My husband had given me this little mp3 player at some point, but for the past few days it hadn’t been working. As I grabbed it I asked God from the very bottom of my heart to make it work for me, even though I thought it was broken.

I got into bed and put earplugs in my ears. I put on a set of headphones that covered my ears and pressed the button to turn on the mp3 player. It came on! It started playing “Rest Oh My Child” by Darren Prater from the very beginning. Jesus had caused my mp3 player to stop working so that the battery would be saved up for that day. He caused it to start on that song just for me. I cried so deeply, I was so incredibly thankful. The only time I’d ever cried like that before was from great hurt caused by my earthly father. I slept through the commotion outside and didn’t wake up until the event was practically over. I hope I never forget what God did that day for the rest of my life.