Zounds!  I was doing so well yesterday, working away in my new office, and suddenly the computer gulped down my revisions!  For a while there, it looked as though I’d actually lost EVERYTHING, though some of it was saved on other computers.  First impulse: have a nervous breakdown.  Second impulse: PRAY. 

Thank heaven I skipped impulse number one and had a word with the Big Guy instead.  A few strokes to the keyboard and the chapters returned as mysteriously as they’d disappeared.  But I still have to do the revisions over again–but, as Phyllis A Whitney used to say, “Good things aren’t written, they’re REwritten.”  In my experience, that is SO true.

So, in a few minutes, I’ll be going back to “Big Sky Secrets”.

The woodpecker may be nesting elsewhere–she did return a couple of times, but only for a few minutes, as if to say howdy.   

I’ve decided to give away two copies of “Writing Down Your Soul” instead of one; the book is that good.   For me, journaling seems to be a very necessary practice, my way of meditating.  I don’t write about my day so much as ask questions.  I’ve discovered that God ignores “why” questions most of the time, but He almost always replies to the “how” kind. 

Best get back to my story now.  As Dad would say, we’re burnin’ daylight!

OK, so you all know that Woodie (Woodena?) Woodpecker has been driving me crazy for days, right?  Lately, as my quick-witted mother would say, it’s been a short drive.  Woodena seemed determined to build her nest inside the metal chimney (whatever happened to making a nice little home of twigs and string in trees?), so you can imagine the racket.  (Think miniature jackhammer.)  The enterprise began promptly at sunrise and knocked off around five in the afternoon, a good, long work day.  I’d mutter, stomp outside, hit the side of the house with a broom handle or a book, in hopes of scaring away the bird–and off she’d fly.  (Although I think the banging around startled Bernice and the cats more than it did the woodpecker.)

For maybe fifteen minutes, there was blissful silence.  Then she was back, rat-at-tatting away, and we went through the whole bothersome scene again.  And again.

So yesterday, it occurs to me that I’m not exactly practicing what I preach.  Woodpeckers have a place in the scheme of things, too, after all, and just because I haven’t a clue what that place IS, well, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.  Plus, this little bird is a mama, looking for a place to hatch her babies, this being spring-time.  Anyway, I decided to say a little prayer for Woodena, asking that she be kept safe, that she and her babies would thrive, and if they had to live in my chimney, so be it.

This is where the synchronicity comes in.

This morning, I awoke to bright sunshine.  And no woodpecker.  Zip.  Not one little peckety-peck-peck.

I know, I know–it could be coincidence, maybe the nesting season suddenly ended or something.  Except that, in my devotional reading this fine a.m., I came across a reference to–you guessed it, woodpeckers.  Their message–every bird and animal has one or more, according to some theories–is, “The foundation has been laid.  It is now safe to follow your own rhythms.”

Mind-blower!!!  Without going into a lot of personal, not to mention boring, detail, I can tell you for a fact that this particular message was right on.

I love it when that happens.