Rocky Mountain High.
Today I’m writing from Winter Park, Colorado. Early last week my parents mentioned they hadn’t canceled their timeshare reservation for their condo this week. Thus, either they had to use it or lose it (or pay a heft fee to recycle it, I think). They asked if I was interested in taking a jaunt out here, where we used to take family vacations every spring break and ski the slopes.
After factoring in that Kyler’s Tuesday/Thursday Mother’s Day Out program was going to be on Spring Break this week AND Kim’s parents wanted to see the li’l bugger, I figured I might as well make the trip. Sure, it’s a lot of driving, but it’s a rare opportunity to go to a remote location and have a few days all by yourself.
My twin brother Kolby also came out for the ride, and is staying with Kyler at the Lintons to help do some work around the house and just soak up mountain life. (And I’m glad he did, because it made the 10 hour drive out much, MUCH easier to handle.)
We arrived yesterday afternoon, spent the night and then I drove out here. And now I’m sitting in the bedroom on a comfy chair (this was always my parents’ room, so I never knew HOW comfy it was until now…) writing for my blog. I have a few books to read, some CDs and plenty of free time. There’s just one thing I DON’T have that I had planned on bringing: my MacBook.
Originally I was going to spend the next 4 days working hard on editing the novel my co-author, Patrick Aquilone, and I are writing together. To have so many days of uninterrupted productivity – it was going to be amazingly fantastic.
But as of this writing, it it NOT amazingly fantastic, and that’s for one reason and one reason only.
My MacBook died.
On Saturday night – mere hours before Kolby and I were to leave for the trip – my laptop died a horrible death. (Not as horrible as when my iMac went up in smoke, but horrible enough…) I was in the middle of backing up my hard drive when it seemingly got hung up. Frozen. Kaput.
So I did a hard reset and was aghast to see it reboot to the ominous Flashing Question Mark folder. Translation? It couldn’t find my system folder. The brain. The thing that makes it tick.
Restarting did nothing. Plunking in my TechTool DVD did nothing. Praying over it did nothing. It was gone…
On the plus side, however, I’m pleased to report that I DID back up as recently as Thursday, so all is not lost. It’s also still covered under my extended warranty, so I’ll either get a new hard drive or a new MacBook out of the deal. But on the downside – my MacBook is toast.
Also, my plans for productivity are shot. At least, when it comes to writing the novel. But my plans for reading and seeking God are now pushed to the forefront of my agenda.
So the question that I’m lingering on is this: who made my hard drive crash? Was it Satan somehow, knowing that the novel I’m working on is a Christian epic? (How he’d affect a hard drive, I have no idea.) Or was it God, wanting to remove my distractions and have me pursue this time with Him alone? Or do these things “just happen?”
Regardless of the cause, I believe it was God’s will for this to happen because it happened. Here I am, without a MacBook. But to argue that, wouldn’t I have to say that EVERYTHING that happens is God’s will? The Holocaust? 9/11? People being electrocuted by lightning? Is that a logical conclusion?
I don’t know the answer, people, I’m just putting the question out there. As it stands, I plan to spend a lot of time praying & reading the Bible, so maybe if I have any profound revelations I’ll share them here.
Kevin