The chill of the brisk morning air awakened my slumber this morning. Yes, I know what central heat is designed for, but I love the feeling of sleeping with my face cold and my body warm. I guess it’s a throwback from days of my childhood when it was my turn to sleep with Mamaw on her wonderful cold sleeping porch. The bed was piled so high with beautiful handmade quilts that I could barely move, but I fell asleep with the sound of my grandma’s sweet, singsong voice telling story after story.

As I snuggled under the covers on this December morning warmth pervaded both my body and my heart. I had decided to turn on my electric blanket the evening before and was quite satisfied with the results. The warmth in my heart lingered from a wonderful church service Sunday morning that resulted in over twenty people professing faith in Christ.

What better reason to wake up happy? My first thoughts were thankfulness for a lovely morning and mentally running down my to-do list.

“Well, let me see. My column is due today. I need to do a little last minute Christmas shopping. Thank goodness Ryan finally let me know what he wants. I would never have thought of a drone! Maybe Joy wants to go to Best Buy with me after I finish my column.”

After morning coffee I called Joy.

“Hey girl. Are you up for a little shopping and lunch?”

“You are. Great! I’ll get my column in and pick you up as soon as I finish.”

I plugged in my computer to charge, but nothing happened. No lights. No noise. No nothing.

“Well, this sure doesn’t look good. Lord, it’s Christmas, and I certainly don’t want to have to purchase a new computer. Please let it take a charge.”

My prayer went unanswered as I tried every trick I knew to get my computer up and running. I held the power button down for several seconds to no avail. In fact, I did this several times both with the computer plugged in and when it wasn’t.

I picked Joy up, and we headed to Slidell laughing and visiting as we went. Joy and I were next-door neighbors when our children were small so we have a lot of history. We never tire of spending time together and never run out of things to talk about.

We rolled into Slidell and I headed straight for the “Geek Squad” counter. They were really busy so I had to make an appointment. Meanwhile, I found Ryan’s drone and made the purchase. After that we headed for the Apple products and I looked at a new MacBook Pro just in case. Wow! Sticker shock! I had forgotten they cost so much. They were well over $2,000.

I prayed silently again, but a little more in earnest this time. “God, I may lose all my work since I didn’t back it up on the cloud. I really need to learn how to do that. I know you are in charge of everything, even computers. Please let this be an easy fix.”

Ricky met me at the counter at the appointed time and sat down next to me. We began to chat as he asked about my issues with the computer. Turns out he lives in my town. Turns out he moved from California close to where my son, Ryan, now lives. Ricky listened attentively as I told him how exciting our church service had been on Sunday.

“I will be out of town this Sunday, but I’ll come and visit next Sunday. Look for me,” Ricky said with a big grin.

During our conversation Ricky plugged in my computer and pushed the button to turn it on. “No problem with your computer, Ma’am. You just have to hold it down for a few seconds if it doesn’t come on right away.”

Yes. God is even in charge of computers!

Jan Penton Miller can be reached at lilsisjan@yahoo.com.