Climbing Into God's Lap

You know what I love to do? Pray.

Oh, I talk to God all the time, and when He puts someone into my mind out of the blue, I know they need a prayer right then and there, so I talk to God about them no matter what else I was doing. And I ask His opinion on things, and as I go through tasks He continually gets His hands right in there with mine to make things go smoothly. His presence is always apparent to me in a very real way.

There are also times when I fall prostrate - spiritually if not physically - and let my broken heart bleed all over his nail-scarred hands. Always, He listens, lets me rant or sob or just cry out to Him for mercy or grace or healing. And I know that He answers, because either He provides what I asked for, or a calm acceptance when He provides what I didn't know I needed. Either way, His hands heal my brokenness.

But there are also special times, when I just want to be His. Those are times when I climb into his lap, which is plenty big enough to hold even me, and lean on Him, and just talk about things. I talk about people who have needs or have asked for prayer or who I just think need talking about. I chatter about the things that would cause anybody's eyes to glaze over with boredom, and I share the secrets that He already knows but that I need to talk about anyway. This is also where I repent and seek mercy, and where I allow myself to feel awestruck by His love for me.

The God Who created everything that was made, Who wove together my parts in my mother's womb, Who sought me out when I refused to acknowledge His existence, and Who keeps the planets on course...the God of Scripture...this is the God who cares so deeply about me that his arms are always open to me, no matter what...and I always will have a place there.

And so can we all. We have the great opportunity to read the greatest Love Story ever written, and through it to know its Author in a more intimate way than we have a right to. But His love for us shines through, and He offers each one of us adoption into His family to become joint heirs with Christ...and to secure a spot on His lap forever and always...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Computers...Part II

First of all, Pete has his laptop back - YAY!

Second, I'm full-time on the desktop now. And I can see where, for the last few years, I've lost some things on the laptop. For example, the colors are brighter and the graphics are sharper. And, of course, the sound is much better even though I'm using dinky little speakers. Still, it is a more satisfying experience when it comes to graphics and music.

Third, I'm excited that Pete has resolved my "hunching over the end table" issue! When we lived in Lansing (MI) and used our dining room as an office, I had my desktop set up on a 5' conference table. Good height, plenty of space for my printer, speakers, and whatever else I needed. But I had forgotten all about those tables. He remembered, and when Casey is here to help we will move my desktop back onto a conference table. The birds will like is also, as I'll be able to set up a play area right next to me again...although they really spend more time ON me, actually... And I'll be able to sit in a more comfortable chair rather than this stool!

So that's all good.

Fourth, I ended up deleting Thunderbird. It was definitely promising, but I couldn't figure out how to get my passwords for all of my owly.net email accounts entered, and after spending half the night trying to find the answer in their docs and elsewhere online, I gave up. So I'm back to using OE again. It has its problems and I still hate it, but at least it's familiar. I used to use Eudora, 15+ years ago...maybe I'll try that again...

It's been 3½ years since I got a laptop and stopped using a desktop on a regular basis, and already I'm finding that there are a lot of good things about it! I may just get a netbook when the time is right, and stick with this one for home use.

(BTW, this is an eMachine that I bought 2nd-hand from one of Casey's friends; apparently she'd used it for her homeschooling mostly. The model is T3985 if you're interested, but it has lots of USB ports which are a blessing, and I love that I can plug in my headphones/mic/whatever into the front of the CPU! Very nice for my purposes! Plus, since I don't move it around, I can keep my WD external HD plugged in for easy backups and file storage/access!)

So all is well, there's a happy ending, and I'm really feeling blessed!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Computers! Can't live with 'em...

We are admittedly rather geeky in our family. Personally, I have - or did have - the laptop that has been my Main Machine for 3½ years (Pete & I have had identical ones), plus the desktop that I use mainly with my Yamaha PSR-9000Pro keyboard, and of course "N8" (Nate), my Nokia N810 Internet Tablet and constant companion.

So when the display on my laptop failed a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't overly worried since I still had 2 other computers. Still, after Pete messed around with the laptop and announced that it was fixed, I was elated! Most of my online time was spent, after all, during my down times in my recliner: while having my morning coffee/tea, while waiting for pain pills to take effect or during lunch or whatever during the day, or in the evenings.

My joy was short-lived, however, when Pete told me a few days later that he hadn't been able to fix my laptop, so he had simply replaced his own hard drive with mine in his machine! It didn't seem right to me that I still had my desktop or N8 to use but he only had his own N810. So I spent Saturday copying all of my files to my WD external HD that I use for backups, and exporting my browser and email files. By Sunday afternoon I had everything onto the WD and could start copying essential files onto my desktop. Music and videos and photos I could leave, since the WD stays plugged into to desktop all the time, used as a secondary drive for file storage anyway...

By late Sunday/early today I was done and almost ready to let Pete take his laptop back and put own HD back into it. All of my browser files and settings were nicely imported, and ditto for my Outlook Express settings and email folders...EXCEPT for the Inbox and Sent Items folders. For some reason these 2 kept showing up empty!

To make a long story short here, I'll just say that I downloaded, installed, tried, and uninstalled more OE utilities than you can imagine, and consulted numerous techie websites. Google got a real workout! I imported and copied over these 2 files a dozen times at least, deleting the folders.dbx file each time before restarting OE, and nothing! All of my other folders were fine, so it made no sense to me...and it still doesn't.

But finally, after 7 hours hunched over the keyboard (since it isn't used very much, the desktop is on a low end table), I got those last 2 files into OE by copying them from my HD in Pete's laptop onto a memory stick, moving the stick to the desktop, deleting the originally-copied-from-the-WD-drive files from the identity folder where the OE stores are kept plus the folders.dbx file of course, and starting OE again. And it worked! I can't imagine why 76 folders imported properly and 2 didn't, or why the same identical files worked from the stick but not from the WD drive...but it did and I guess that's all that matters.

I've had a love-hate relationship with OE for a decade or more. So the last thing I did was install the Mozilla Thunderbird email client (I use the Flock browser, based upon the Mozilla Firefox browser) and import my mailboxes and address book into that. My OE days are done.

So now I'll be using N8 (as I am right now), or hunched over my desktop toget online...but I'm thankful I have thm, and that Pete can now have his own computer back to get online again! Come to think of it, it does seem a little obscenely greedy to have 3 computers...

:)