Hard to believe it’s been six years since I wrote this. How my world has changed, but that’s another story for another time.

Feb. 22, 2010
So this a.m. in the midst of checking out the news online before getting started on the multitude of writing I have to do this week, my mouse quits working … splat! nada! no mouse trails when I move it back and forth or in circles, nothing! So being the techie cretan I am, I wake my son Darin up (and I feel bad about it too!), but he groans a couple of times and emerges from his man cave to help his panicked mother, who by this time has managed to push ctrl-alt-del and has that weird screen up but can’t shut down the computer and is further panicked.

Darin sits down to undo my failed attempts at making this contraption work but this time, can’t do it … it’s stuck and won’t go anywhere, but he does manage to get the computer to shut down and disappears back into the darkness where, hopefully, his mother won’t disturb him again.

I fix myself another cup of coffee and wait patiently in front of the computer while it comes back up but, of course, with me at the helm the mouse is still dead. I manage to push ‘mail’ on my keyboard, but Outlook, not Yahoo comes up, and naturally, I am stumped.

Then I hear his door open and listen as he rummages in the junk drawer in the kitchen before returning to his mother, who is telling him that it still won’t work and she is going to have to go to Staples (in this bad weather, I’m thinking) and get another mouse … as he picks up the mouse, opens the battery compartment, inserts a new battery and brings my mouse back from the grave.

As I continue apologizing to him for not thinking of the battery, Darin pats me on the head and says “That’s okay, mom — it took me awhile for my fuzzy brain to work too” and disappears once more to the other end of the house.

So you’re probably wondering why, with all the work I have to do, that I’m taking the time to write all this down to email to you. Here’s why… there are a couple of lessons for all of us in this. The most obvious lesson is never to overlook the obvious, which means you first have to identify the obvious.

How many times do we do this? Yes, I had asked God in the midst of my panic to help me, but it seemed that He hadn’t, because I had jumped to worrying about having to drive in this weather to Staples! It took God nudging Darin with the obvious when I was too busy worrying to even think of the obvious.

The second lesson is I need to be more like Darin. He was willing to wake up from a deep sleep to try to help, and he knew he didn’t have to either. He could have stayed in bed, and I would have just waited until 9 and driven up to Staples to explain my mouse problem to some young guy, who would have wisecracked, “Did you check the battery?”

But Darin responded to my apologetic plea, because, well, that’s just in his nature. And, even when he himself was stumped and returned to his room, he was still thinking about my problem.

So, I’m going to get back to my writing, and you’re going to get on with your day, and God probably is going to personalize all this to your life, if He hasn’t already done so.

He is faithful … wow, is He faithful! And He loves us with an everlasting love! Did you hear that? An everlasting love! It will not end! We are caught up in His arms at the moment we believe and He never lets go!

We may squirm to free ourselves from His grasp to do things our way. We may even forget He has a hold on us. We may get so wrapped up in ourselves and our own troubles that we don’t hear His voice. We may even think He doesn’t care … or worse, has failed us, but, Praise His Holy Name, He holds on to us, waiting for the moment we will realize with the clarity that only He can give, that we are there, safe and secure, in His arms!

Hallelujah, He is Lord! And He’s waiting.