I remember a Saturday Night Live skit where the Church Lady saw Satan in everything. Growing up I was taught that this was silly or paranoid. Now that I am a Christian, I see more clearly. I can tell you from experience that Satan does attack what he feels is threatening to his agenda. I have been in business for alomst 5 years. In the last year or so my focus for teaching communication skills to the Christian community has focused on mostly defending the faith. Ever since this narrowing of focus, we have had all manner of weirdities and technical glitches that can only be described as hellish!

The past few weeks have been a nightmare punctuated with blessings from the Lord.

We were introducing a new product a few weeks ago. I had all the preparation done for our new Defending the Faith Calendar. What should have been a 2-3 hour project turned into a 10 day ordeal due to inexplicable problems with our PDF converter. As mysteriously as they appeared, that's how mysteriously they disappeared! Thank you Jesus!

On Monday evening my merchant account decided to upgrade its software. This rendered my shopping cart null and void. Yes this meant that the big promotion we sent out to our entire mailing list was not accessable to any one of our customers. Frustrated customers abounded as we found out on Tuesday morning. I was on the phone with our merchant account, our web designer and was passing email notes to my shopping cart company. Nobody knew exactly what the problem was but all had an idea that it was due to the "other guy". On Wedesday morning all was restored (Blessings from the Lord) but not until we had about two days of frustrated customers.

I teach an internet class (online) on Tuesdays. The Say What You Mean: Defending the Faith class. Running back to my office after taking my children to VBS, I found that I wasn't able to launch my class on the internet. TalkShoe.com had updated their software the night before and caused my computer to take the ENTIRE class time to update. The minute the class was over, and I do mean the very minute, the update was complete and I was able to launch the class. I was able to teach my class blind (meaning without being able to see online who was there and what they were typing in) and I was about 15 minutes late. The class did wait for me and we had a good final class where we discussed how to present Creation vs Evolution. Thank you again Jesus!

We had some reprocussions from the shopping cart snafoo. Our sale had MUCH less activity than we usually have from our sales. AND about 40-50 unsubscribed from our mailing list that we took 5 years to build up. We usually have about 3-4 unsub at each mailing but never this many! I am sure these were new subscribers who wondered what type of reputable company would have a shopping cart that worked this badly. I don't blame them. However, after an apology emailed to the entire mailing list, we did get many emails of support! Praise God!

Then this morning I woke up with blurry vision in my left eye. I see sort of a halo effect where the street markings (especially the bright yellow ones) seem to lift off the pavement and shift right. I was unable to clearly read my podcast copy to do my show this morning and driving is a big challege. My podcast, Grace Talk Soup, is about communication and defending the faith. I am much better now, but my eye is still blurry.

It seems that the Evil One is a bit threatened by a generation of bold and articulate Christains who can share and defend their faith in grace. Well, I have news for him. I am not giving up! So go annoy someone else. You'll find no satisfaction in this child of God!

From JoJo's Purple Crayon...



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