A Resolution...

I've been neglecting the blog.  Last night, I had a bit of a computer scare and I felt impressed to make sure my pictures were all backed up.  I plugged in my external hard drive and backed up the pictures that I had neglected for a few months.  Allie was standing over my shoulder and saw all the neatly organized files and asked if she could look at the pictures some time.  I told her she could and then clicked on 2006 so I could show her how to navigate to her birth pictures.  I got a big red x and a message that the files were unavailable.  I quickly clicked on all the other years, only to find that the same message popped up.  Pretty soon, the only messages that I could get were that the drive was empty.  I couldn't even get the computer to recognize that a hard drive was plugged in.  Allie was in tears, but I was strangely calm.  The drive was malfunctioning.  It was bed time and I didn't want to face the problem right then, so I walked away from it.  I told Allie that there were other places that I stored my pictures (even though it was mostly a lie) and sent her to bed.  I knew I could scrounge up a few years worth of things from old computers that I had kicking around, but the only place that stored all the pictures, was on that drive.  I was scared to really think too hard about it.  I did go to bed knowing that I, at least, had lots of pictures here on the blog from as far back as 2008.  I tried not to think about all the things I had photographed, but not blogged about.  I also tried not to think about the poor quality of pictures I'd get from copying them from the blog. 
Still, I was pretty calm.  I was calm because I had faith.  I knew that the pictures were on the drive, but that it was just malfunctioning.  I knew that if I had faith, I could ask Heavenly Father to allow the drive to work long enough to transfer the files.  I knew that it was a worthy request.  I knew that my Heavenly Father cared about it because I cared about it and He loves me. I went to bed knowing that I would pray about it and then act on it in the morning.
I woke up to the news of President Monson's death.  I felt sad for our church, but knew that he was at peace and that the church would continue to run smoothly even without our beloved prophet.
As we prayed before the kids left for school, I asked Allie to add her faith to mine that we could recover the pictures.  We said a prayer and I kissed them as they went out the door.
Then, I tried to have the courage to act in faith.  I knew that if I asked in faith, my desires could be granted.  Yet, it is sometimes hard to actually test that faith. 
I put the hard drive in the freezer first (sounds random, but when my ipod was breaking, if I stuck it in the freezer, it would work for a few hours), then I took it out and plugged it in.  The files were there and I could open them.  I immediately began to transfer them onto a new drive.  It was a miraculous answer to my prayer and I was so grateful. 
So, the point of the post (other than to write of a faith promoting experience), is to talk of my resolution.  I have become complacent with my camera.  I don't have little, little kids anymore who dump out bags of flour, or play with sharpies and prompt a photo shoot.  I don't have monthly milestones to photograph, or as many "first" experiences to document.  However, I don't want to quit documenting things in their lives.  I also don't want to quit blogging.  So, I'm going to resolve to take a picture a day.  I did this a few years ago and blogged about it every day.  It was so fun because it made me really think each day of something new to photograph.  It also made for more unique blog posts. 
So, that's that.  I'd add today's picture (of the scary hard drive of the story), but things seem to be malfunctioning a lot lately and my card reader is broken, so I can't get the pictures from my camera to my computer.  I've ordered a new one, and soon I'll have no excuse. 
I resolve to take more pictures.  Back up my photos often, and continue to ask of things in faith.  I am so grateful that my prayer was answered in the way I wanted it to be answered and that I still have all the pictures that are evidence of lives happily lived.  God is good.