explaining my recent absence

Hi Friends,

Its been a rough week. Thanks to those of you who told me that the Lord has been putting me on your hearts. I was mightily encouraged.

On Tuesday of this week, my computer - which I've been having trouble with, as you know, I think - inexplicably erased the BACKED-UP files as I was transfering them to my hard drive (which had been reformatted and thus had no data). Yes, you read that correctly... the only copies of files like music and pictures were erased. (please understand that I had a backup... it was this backup which was erased)

I was mightily discouraged but trying to trust the Lord that there might be a way (because I called the IT office and they said they might be able to recover some of it). The next morning as I was reading scripture I felt like Matthew 6:8 was especially appropriate for me. "for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." That was good, because I was so discouraged. I decided to just be optimistic in my trust for the data recovery, and deeper, to trust that God knew what I needed more than me -and maybe that data had become an idol for me.

Yesterday, the IT desk called and said that they had recovered the data. My phone was dead and I didn't get the message until after my night class, so I don't know the details yet, but I'm guardedly hopeful at this point.

Between this computer issue and a take-home mid-term that caused me to cancel a planned trip to San Antonio, not to mention my need for extra time to get stuff together to apply for doctoral programs, and time to continue to seek God about that course of action, I have felt alternately discouraged, disappointed,crushed, overwhelmed and angry. In the meantime, I still see God being faithful to me through all this, which humbles me and brings me deep joy.

Be blessed today!