Remember to Back Up!

Not too long ago, I wrote about how my computer crashed and refused to be resuscitated back to life.  What I didn't write about was how I had forgotten to back up my hard drive.  For a very long time.

Did I mention that I have been writing two books?

As it appears, my hard drive was messed up with whatever happened with the computer and all my data is now inaccessible with almost no hope of recovery.  Fortunately, I had most of the kids' pictures backed up on (thanks, Shutterfly!) but my books are gone.  One of them, a book on theology, I have been working on for several years.  The other one, a fictional story, was newer but represented hours and hours of work nonetheless.

It is easy to say that the immediate lesson from this is to always back up your data.  I can guarantee that I will not be making this mistake again, but I think my pain in this episode of my stupidity has a deeper root. 

Those books have been a labor of love for a very long time that I have been dreaming about completing.  It has been slow going because since my fibromyalgia has moved into my hands, writing has become increasingly difficult since some, if not most days, I can barely move my fingers.  I don't mean this as a sob story in the slightest since my fibro is what it is, really, and I know that God has a huge purpose behind it.  In fact, it changed my life in some amazing ways.  All I mean is that it just makes things harder and so the thought of recreating and retyping out about a hundred pages of very technical and complicated text is daunting, so daunting that it almost makes me want to hang up the towel with those ideas.  I've been feeling a bit lost with the loss of my work.  Therein lies my problem that I think is common to more people than just me.  I think it easy to see ourselves as what we do and place too much of our own personal value in that rather than in Christ.

I think there is a big part of me that really wanted to be a "real" writer rather than "just" a blogger with a smattering of other random by-lines.  Like somehow, actually publishing something makes me more worthwhile...  As I write that it is so clear how silly it is when the truth is that Christ died for us while we were still dead in our transgressions (Ephesians 2:5) and it is by grace that we have been saved.  Seriously, our identities have to be firmly based in Christ rather than on anything else otherwise we fall into the trap of trying to do things based on our own merits.  Everything we do is supposed to be done in worship for God rather than something that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Ironically, this is a big part of what one of the books was about.  Apparently, I have not learned that lesson well enough yet so God thinks I need to rewrite it!  I'm already working on those chapters again and hopefully this will remind others to find their value in Christ alone.  And back up their data ;-)

I'd also really appreciate any prayers too as I attempt to rewrite everything, especially for my fibro since that makes life a bit interesting!  Thanks so much and hope you can enjoy the grace of Christ!