Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)

This afternoon I have been working on a fun little project for basic, and our basicmm.com website. April 2006 is the 10th Anniversary of our first CD, Another Road Trip. So, we’re putting together some fun promotional stuff.

Well, as I was writing the content for the special 10th Anniversary page (and I was nearly at the end, I might add…) my computer just shut off. Off! The power didn’t go. There were no other warning signs. It just shut off. This happened before. But we thought that might have been a bad hard drive or something.

Maybe not?

Whatever the cause, my heart just sank.

See, not only did I lose this afternoon’s work, due to busyness and no saving… I thought I might have lost EVERYTHING. That’s what happened last time. I lost my back-up hard drive. Argh. More than argh. I have NO BACK UP at the moment. Because, my nice new 500GB hard drive decided to give out on me a couple weeks ago. In fact, I was in the process of recovering those files when my computer shut off. (And there’s no guarantee I can do that.)

SO…

I might have lost ALL of my file. My files, my clients files, our iTunes library. All of it.

Needless to say, that was not a pleasant feeling thinking about that.

Well, it was about 82-85º in my office when my computer shut down… I thought maybe the heat had something to do with it. So I opened the windows, and tried to cool it off. Sure enough, I heard a little bleep, and my computer started up again. Like nothing happened at all!

Can you say, “WHEW!”???!??!

So everything fires up again, and all is well. I am a little miffed that I lost my entire afternoon’s work, but quite thankful that all my other files were spared.

As all the programs are opening, I noticed I had a new mail message, so I checked that before I went back and started recreating all that I had lost. It was a message from Jen. 🙂 Nice. (Now, before you think, “Why is his WIFE sending him EMAIL from downstairs??!” it was a forward from someone else that she wanted me to read. It’s not really that weird…) 🙂

Here’s what the e-mail said:

Begin forwarded message:

From: “David and Linda Mead”
Date: March 30, 2006 9:14:31 AM EST
To: “Dave & Linda Mead”
Subject: Pray for the Passmore Family

Hi all,

The Passmore family are in need of your prayers. Two sons, Ben (18) and Matt (16) went to be with the Lord yesterday suddenly in an automobile accident. They also have one older son and 3 younger children. Please pray. They are a homeschooling family that are in another chapter, but many may know from HIS Baseball or HIS Soccer.

In Him,
Linda

It was an email from one of the LEAH group leaders (a homeschool network here in town). A family had just lost their two teenage sons. I almost cried, thinking of our two sons, and how horrible it would be to lose our boys that way, at that young age.

And then I realized, almost shamefully, how much my heart was pained by the loss of all my data. Granted, it would cost me hours and hours and even weeks to recover all that I had lost – not recover, recreate. And granted, I already knew that in the grand scheme, it was meaningless. But still… what a strangely timed eye-opener.

I am praying for the Passmores as I type right now. I hope they can know God’s peace and comfort right now. I hope they know He will get them through. I can’t imagine the pain they feel from this loss.

I am also quite humbled and almost embarrassed by my petty anguishing over lost data. Thank you God for the reminder of what is important. Thank you for also saving me hours of recreating this stuff, but thanks most of all for my precious family. I am so lucky for every moment of life I get to share with them.

May I never take that for granted.