Today at work, very close to going-home time, I was copying some photos from a memory card onto the hard drive of my computer, then deleting them from the memory card.  After creating three folders for the new pictures, and copying the photos to two of the folders, I went back to the list of files on the memory card. I saw that the four files that I’d just copied were highlighted, so I quickly pressed the delete key on my keyboard.  All the files in the list disappeared!!!

Gone were the 12 or 14 photos that still needed to be copied into the third folder – before and after photos of roof repairs that I need to send with our invoice in order to get paid for the work.  After a couple minutes of cold, sinking, panic — I immediately began a Google search for photo recovery tools. I found some promising downloads, but as of now that project is still in progress.

But, it made me think about how, sometimes, we’re real quick to hit the “Delete” button on other things in our lives, too. Like when that little voice in your heart says you should take the time to call a friend just to say “Hi.” The “Delete” key gets pressed real quick when we look around us and see a million chores waiting to be done. Or, if the minister announces that someone at church has had surgery and could use meals for a couple of weeks. We check our calendars and hit “Delete” on that one when we see our schedule’s already too full to spend any time cooking and delivering an extra meal. And, if someone offends us, we can’t wait to hit the “Delete” key on the friendship when they don’t come and apologize when we think they should.

We find all kinds of excuses to use our “Delete” keys for those things we don’t want to do.  It makes me think of a saying from an African Wisdom For Life Calendar I bought at the 10,000 Villages store in Archbold:

“The one who wants to do something finds a way; the one who doesn’t, finds an excuse.” ~ Sudanese Proverb.

I’m definitely not going to be so quick to hit the “Delete” button on my computer from now on.  I am definitely, though, going to work on deleting those excuses I’ve been making for not reaching out to others.  How about you?