losing a spreadsheet

My hard drive crashed the other day. Since I've gone lax on my "back up every day" rule, I lost almost a months worth of...trying to be in control and on top of things. One of those things was a spreadsheet on which I keep a log of all of my monthly income and spending. I found an old version of it, but because it is now not up to date, I feel behind. I do not like feeling behind or out of control. K. was praying with me yesterday regarding this and I just sat there, clenched, in my chair, flipping through my mental file box of other things that were probably lost. Half listening at best.

Then later on in the evening, I picked up the book I'm reading on prayer, and read this:

I live in daily hope of getting my life under control. At home I left a desk covered with to-do lists: study the manual for my balky printer, unclog pine needles in the gutter, unstick the toilet, change snow tires, check on my sick neighbor. Maybe if I take a day off, I'll have time...On the mountain one bolt of lightening, splitting a rock on a nearby peak and exploding against my eardrums, exposes any illusion that I am ever in control. I can count on the moment before me, nothing more.

"Let me know how fleeting is my life," prayed one psalmist. A mountain storm thunderously answers that prayer. The priorities of my life crack apart and slide into a new place. (Phillip Yancey)

between words

i was once frustrated by words. which was really a frustration about not having a way to adequately and accurately express my experience of the world. And while I love being able to communicate precisely thoughts that are captive and unfinished in my mind, I also find another service of words.  They often lead to a varied kind of communication.

These words - all these audible attempts at communicating - sometimes lead to silences that are filled with mutual knowing - the indisputable and lucid kind - where intimate exchanges unspeakably stun the spirit. Time, charged with significance and meaning, halts its insistent and frantic whirlwind, leaving us breathless, fully present and full of eternity. Where no thing can be uttered; simultaneously no thing is confused.

No thing is confused. Or confusing. In these moments, I find myself with an urge to wink.