Tonight I am grateful to be back on this site and for restoration of lost things. A few days ago I was unable to access my blog site. When I clicked on the link as I do each night to write this blog, I received an error message that it was unavailable. “HELP!” I emailed to my webmaster, and old friend of mine who has managed my site for many years now. She had set up the site and embedded the blog site in it, though the blog site was hosted elsewhere. She wrote me back the next day indicating that the problem was beyond her ability to solve and that she’d write to the website hosting company to see what they could do. So for a couple of days I was in limbo. In the midst of waiting I realized that nowhere had I ever backed up these writings, except for the first 200 posts. If the hosting company was unable to restore the site and my access to the files I would have lost nearly 800 days or two years of musings and ruminations, insights and revelations, random thoughts and deep introspection on all things gratitude. And while I pretended to be calm and casual about it, I can tell you for certain that I was anything but, earnestly praying that what seemed irretrievable was in fact still available “out there.” In these days of “cloud” technology, I remained hopeful that my little essays were among the quintillions (and quintillions) of bytes of information floating around in the cloud and that it would be restored to me. To my immense relief and gratitude, it has been. Thank God.
I have begun the arduous task of copying these posts into a word processing document. Once upon a time my son who knows a lot more about such things than I do suggested that I should write my blog in the word processing document and then upload (or cut and paste it) into the blogsite. And, while I believe this to be excellent advice, have very rarely taken it. Alas, even as I sit here I am writing directly into the blogsite trusting that everything is going to be just fine. God protects babes and fools, I remind myself, wondering how often I’ve been both. Nevertheless, I am exceedingly grateful to once again have access to my words. They represent in so many ways a chronicle of my journey through a very rough period in my life. These gratitude posts were a lifeline, a way of staying grounded in the reality that no matter how bad things felt or seemed, I remained surrounded by blessings too many to count. I can now reread and rediscover just how blessed I was and how much I learned during those challenging days. Some of that awareness is only visible in hindsight.
Every once in a while something that has been lost or long-misplaced suddenly pops back into existence. It is often such a wonderful surprise when something that had been missing reappears. Several weeks ago I mentioned in a blog post that I had lost two medals that I wear nearly every day. I had been out raking leaves and when I came inside to change my clothes I discovered the broken chain with the medals having come off of it. I thought perhaps they had fallen into the leaves never to be seen again, unless through some miracle the sun glinted off of them. The one, a tiny alpha and omega symbol, measured only about half inch by half inch. The likelihood of finding that in the leaves was slim at best. I approached this somewhat calmly, which was surprising. In the past when I’ve lost something of deep sentimental value (which these medals had) I would burst into tears. Even as I contemplated the possibility of never seeing these sentimental favorites again, I remained quiet if a little sad. A short time later, as I stripped down to take a shower, both medals fell to the floor of my bedroom. Again, a quiet reaction of pleased gratitude that what had been lost was now back safely in my possession.
“Nothing is lost in Spirit,” a friend of mine used to say whenever she lost something. As much as I’d liked to believe it, and often repeated it as I wandered my dwelling looking for some item I had misplaced, most of the time I didn’t find what I was looking for, not right away and in some cases not ever. Yet, I find the idea that nothing is lost in spirit oddly comforting. My medals were lost in my clothing or in folds of skin. My blog posts were lost in the cloud. Now I can only hope that my spare car key that has been missing for some months now manages to turn up.
I am grateful for the lost things that have been restored to me over the years, but particularly these blog posts. I shudder to consider the depth of loss I would have felt had they truly been lost forever. I could try to be philosophical about it, and would obviously keep on living and would continue writing, but the recovery would have been challenging. I am thankful to not have to go through that. As I approach my 1,000th posting I really would like to begin compiling them all and seeing what order I can make of them. If I can come up with a way of organizing them I am going to turn them into a book to help others “navigate life’s challenges with a grateful heart.” It’s why I’m here, at least in part: to help people learn to focus on their blessings, even when life is a struggle. May it continue to be so.
