525,600 minutes

My computer hard drive died. I called the tech support for HP and a really nice man in India talked me through trying to revive the hard drive but alas, it flat lined. He told me that he will send me a new hard drive but the data of the old hard drive is gone, data irretrievable. I took the hard drive to geek squad and they concurred, they called the old hard drive a "brick".

The last time I backed up my data was exactly one year ago. It is as if one year of my life disappeared in the blink of an eye. One year of sermons, outlook calender appts, outlook contacts, downloaded songs, documents, check book entries etc.

I panicked, thinking of all that I had lost. I especially mourned the loss of the pictures. Music can be re-purchased, I can scan the hard copies of my sermons, but pictures cannot be replaced. There were the pictures of me and my kitty on the day I gave her over to God. There was a year of holidays, vacations and get togethers with friends, a year of gardening and most of all a year of transition.

Yesterday I asked a techie friend of mine where I could get data recovery services dirt cheap so I could get the pictures. He suggested I download a program called cardrecovery and see if I could retrieve my deleted pictures directly from my camera. It worked!! Over 400 pictures retrieved!

Then I was looking through my thumb drives I found that I had copied the "my documents" folder into one of my drives because I was going out of town and needed to refer back to some old sermons to write a sermon for a neutral pulpit.

Also on the thumb drive was a back up of my financial records that I did two months ago. Why did I do it on the thumb drive, don't know. But boy am I glad I did back it up.

My appointments and contacts were already on my PDA. Just a matter of syncing to make everything all right again.

Retrieving my data turned into a reflective process as I discerened what data I want to recover and what I am willing to let go of. There are pieces of data that I wanted to delete permanently but knew I needed to keep, such as my letter of resignation when my position was eliminated at my last church, or the sermon I wrote for the candidating sermon that went terribly wrong. These documents, pictures, appts, etc reflected the moments of great joy and devasting pain of the last year. I wanted to erase the painful things from my memory banks however I realized that these events have shaped me and made me realize that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was.

In this past year, my life has suffered a few crashes however I was able to find recovery from many different and unexpected sources. Throughout this year I was able to reconstruct pieces of myself into a new whole knowing that through it all, the love of my friends and family was solid. I felt the grace of God through those dearest to me and for that I am thankful.

I re-wrote the song seasons of love as part of my reflection. Enjoy.

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes...how do you measure a year in the life.
In sermons, in meetings, in friends with coffee.
In pictures, in music, in worship, in trips far away.

In 525,600 minutes...how do you measure a year in the life.
How about love? How about love? Measure in love? Seasons of love.

525,600 minutes!
525,000 journeys to plan.
525,600 minutes - how can you measure the life of a woman or man?

In truths that she learned,
or in times that we cried.
In bridges he burned,
or the way that he died.

It’s time now to sing out,
tho the story never ends
let's celebrate remember a year in the life of friends.
Remember the love!
Remember the love!
Remember the love!
Measure in love. Seasons of love! Seasons of love.