Crisis Averted.

Saturday night I came back upstairs after Indian chicken for dinner and a partially-watched 90's movie called Sliding Doors, to find a horrible-looking blue screen on my laptop. Some have referred to this as the blue screen of death. Well, it was.

This blue screen was staring at me saying in that weird, programmer font that if this is the first time I am receiving this screen, that I should just restart, and life will be ok. It doesn't actually tell you that life will be ok, but I do feel as though that is virtually implied. I mean, it was my first time getting the screen. I would totally understand if this is like the third time I got the blue screen and re-booting didn't work. Nevertheless, my rebooting didn't work. In fact, I feel like this only made it worse. The blue screen at least gave me some information [that I should have read more carefully, and perhaps even written down before attempting the restart]. This new, imposing, black screen only showed me a handful of words. "Hard Drive 0 not recognized. F1 to retry boot." People, F1 did nothing but beep at me.

So, dead laptop. I grieved and mourned, I really did. If you ever saw that Making the Video of Britney Spears' Lucky - [I assume no one actually watched the video once you saw the making of] well, you have a mental image of what I looked like. I SOBBED. Over a laptop. I mean, one might have thought I was horribly depressed or something. I was.

This silly little piece of technology is kind of everything to me. It is communication to and from home, it is Facebook and blogs, it is online TV, it is my PDF books, it is even my Song of Songs study series. Travesty.

Sunday morning I woke up in denial. No way did that really happen. [It is one of the steps of grief, after all.] I quickly moved on to angry, and then to rushed because I needed to know the weather forecast in order to get dressed for the day. If I had had a working laptop, I would have known a light jacket was an inappropriate choice for such a chilly downtown day in Paris. [Bitter?]

Well, I had plans to check out another church. The American Church of Paris, right on the Seine. Carey had come with me, and after a great musical worship - I experienced something I haven't in a while. Some really awesome worship through prayer. I remember back in my youth ministry days at Trinity [home church], learning to understand how to worship in ways outside of Sunday-morning songs. I will also admit that I haven't done such a good job of my own worship through prayer, as mine tend to be "Help me, Help me, Help me" and not enough "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you." [Credit: Ann Lamott in Traveling Mercies.] But we opened up a pretty awesome floodgate: prayer for the church body, for each member's ministries, for hearts and open-minds, for Paris' working poor, for the orphaned children, and for true movement as the body of Christ. Really, truly cool stuff; and the sign of sincerity that I look for when being churched.

A great gospel lesson and sermon later, meeting some new friends in coffee fellowship was the icing. I love how many study groups, discussion events, and 'niche market' followings this church offers. I am looking forward to that fellowship for sure. Carey and I are pumped for our new Sunday plans, and participating in the all-church retreat to Normandy that is coming up in November. We had a picnic in Champ de Mars, went to St. Germain-en-Laye for a movie, and ended a fabulous day of revelling in what the Lord has done for me. We're talking direct results of prayer - fellowship, a church family and true spirits to befriend. Praise Him for that. [And thank you to any and all of you who may have been praying with me!]

So I get home and my laptop is still dead. I pray about it and realize that I am fortunate enough that this home has another computer I can use, and that really instead of curling up in bed with my laptop for some online TV or Facebook, that I should be directing my time in more productive ways. I pray for and receive peace about the whole deal. It's just a thing.

Luis [boss-man] agrees to take it to IT at his office the next day, where they push the button and it turns on. IT TURNS ON. No blue screen, no black screen, no robot font. All is well.

Thank you, Jesus, for realigning my priorities. And for giving me my laptop back. I get it now.