I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I've been absent from bloggy land recently. Here's why.
First of all, I didn't really advertise it, but my daughter and I spent five weeks in Tucson this summer so she could attend the Summer On Stage Program with the Arizona Theatre Company. She had a blast doing her favorite thing--being on stage with other people who like to do the same thing--and I had a blast doing one of my favorite things--writing. We rented a cute little bungalow near the University of Arizona. It was darling, efficient, a little sticky and warm (because it was cooled with a "swamp cooler" which isn't very efficient during monsoon season, which it was...monsoon season., that is), and easy to keep clean.
Every day I would get up and walk about five miles, take Abby to her camp, come back to my cute little bungalow and have a rich quiet time, blog, and write, write, write. Pure bliss. I got so much done. I wrote devotionals, articles, a book proposal, 10 days of a devotional book for my Satisfied at Last Bible study, and speaking messages.
Then my computer crashed.
Actually, worse yet, my hard drive crashed.
And I hadn't backed up a single thing.
Go ahead and preach to me; I've preached it all to myself a dozen times over.
I was sick.
Fortunately, because I e-mail a lot of my documents to others for publication or for proofing, I managed to recover some things through blessed Gmail.
But I had lost the book proposal, most of the devotional book I'd started and a number of older documents I might occasionally need (like I needed one this morning when I led a training seminar for which I'd written the material a year ago...never to be seen again...)
So, while I was pretty faithful about blogging all summer in my cute little bungalow, my mood and my devotion changed a little when my hard drive crashed. I think I posted one or two posts on my daughter's computer, but that's all I could muster up.
Then I was out of town for a few days on a speaking engagement in Flagstaff, AZ. Lovely. At a cool 74 degrees, it felt like heaven!
And today, while I'm back at work and trying to move along with life, my daughter started her last year of school. That's right. We began the senior year, complete with pancakes and a prayer in her car before she motored off. So along with the sentimentality of beginning that last last year and inching ever so much closer to the empty nest, I'm trying to take it all in while working on MOPS stuff, church ministries, housecleaning, dinner preparation, and the rest. It's good to be back in the saddle.
I still don't have a new computer yet. That will probably come some time later this week or next. But until I get it, I may be a little sporadic in my blogging. It's just not the same tapping away on someone else's keys. Sort of like cooking in someone else's kitchen. I'm still reading through the Bible, mind you, and I hope you are reading the Good Book too, but it may take a few days before I get back into the routine of blogging about my reading on a daily basis.
Meanwhile I can tell you this: God is at work. He has shown up in some mighty big ways in just recent days. I wish I could sit and tell you all about it, but I've got to go do the "mom of a senior" thing and meet my girl at the community college to register her for English 101. I'm getting set for a wingding of a year! It seemed like the senior year thing was hard enough with my son - scholarship applications, college applications, college visits, school events, etc. - but my daughter tends to do everything with a dramatic flair, both literally and figuratively. She'll keep me hopping, no doubt. And I plan to wring every drop of sweet, syrupy satisfaction out of it. This stay-at-home-mom has thoroughly enjoyed tending to my two little chicks over the last 20 something years. And while God is already opening other doors for ministry and writing and such, I'm determined to make this last year of being a Mommy count for all its worth!
You wouldn't waste a prayer on me if you felt like saying a little "getting-ready-for-senior-year-and-all-its-drama" blessing over me right now. And while you're at it, you could pray for a little undeserved recall ability as I try to piece together all that stuff I wrote in my cute little bungalow and promptly lost! Thank you sweet friends.Labels: nothing much