if it ain't one thing, it's a lot of things

well. yesterday afternoon i started feeling ill and was totally exhausted, so i left work about an hour early to go home and crash, watch some dvds or something. so i flipped on the computer, which promptly lost its mind. basically it looks like my hard drive has crashed. happily just before i left for belarus i backed up my documents and email to dvd, which i always do before a trip of any significance. there are some things (a lot of prophetic music recordings, for instance) that are not backed up, however... and a handful of my backup email files were apparently corrupt. my computer is 2 years old. to be honest i was looking at getting something else in the next month or so anyway. so i don't want to invest much in this -- probably i will just have the recovery people burn any recoverable files to dvd and not replace the hard drive. but wow, what a headache. last night when i had barely the strength to function i was trying to deal with this. somehow reading narnia books made it all feel better -- something about the nearness of G-d, even when everything seems to fall apart. and if it ain't one thing, it's a lot of things.... there are a lot of wrenches just like this one being thrown into the lives of people i love. i don't think it's coincidental. i think it's an all-out attack by a very confused spiritual enemy who doesn't like seeing good things happen, but doesn't know how to fight them either. so he pulls stuff like this. it actually makes me laugh a bit. so much of my life is wrapped up in my various digital files. emails and journals that defined phases of my life, recordings of song ideas and full-out songs, itunes and most of my music collection ripped from cd. i forget where i read this quote: "inside us is nothing lost." (maybe i wrote it myself? i really don't know. can anyone help me out?) i thought until last night that i couldn't possibly continue to be myself, with my vision and purpose and personality, without the digital archive of all that i do. as it turns out, that's not true. i would probably feel differently, though, if i hadn't backed up exactly what i backed up exactly when i backed it up. can we say "hahaha in your FACE enemy devil creature!"? documents (journals &c.): backed up 7/21/05. emails: backed up 7/22/05. i lost 2 weeks of email and a few corrupted files, but nothing earthshatteringly important. music ripped from cds (many cds i have lost): everything had already been copied to my work machine for work listening. music purchased from itunes: managed to get it all on my flash drive this morning before the computer died again. my own song ideas: the good ones never really left my head. the others can go their merry way (ouch, but...). prophetic music files: the best clips from each of our recorded sessions have gone online and therefore various people have copies. the complete sessions may or may not be recoverable. if they're not, they're not. again, sometimes you have to let go... all i can say is, G-d is faithful, and i trust Him for the grace to lose and to gain.