The next part of my adventure took me into an unknown land: web world. To say that I am not technical in orientation is a gross understatement. Yet, even I understood that a website was the next step in my journey.
The problem was, I couldn't pay someone to create one. I really wrestled over this one. I remembered something I had heard a few months prior in my quiet time. "What do you have in your hands?" That gave me some hope that somehow I had access to the ability to develop a primitive website. I began the search to see which of the programs on my computer had the capability to do that, with a lot of help from my technical-brained husband.
I was more than just a little excited when I discovered Publisher had website templates that could be adapted to form a very basic- maybe I should use the word 'elementary'- site by someone like me. That became my next big project.
For those of you that viewed the site during that time, my apologies. Even I could look at what I had done and tell it was kind of pitiful, but it was a beginning. And, you have to start from where you are, and that is what I did.
Next, came the search for a name for our website address. For some reason that I still don't completely comprehend, the words 'pure joy' will lead you to websites where what you see is the very opposite of 'pure'. So, I knew we couldn't use those words in the website address, because if someone googled pure joy to find our site, they could stumble into some really ugly stuff.
That same night, we were watching a program on TBN with a few prophetically gifted men discussing the times we are living in. As I listened, I was trying to come up with another name for our site that would fit what I was trying to accomplish.
I have this favorite picture of my son when he was small. We were in one of those photo booths where you could sit and have 4 or 5 pictures taken and get them developed while you wait. In one of those pictures, he was sitting in my lap- totally unaware of the flash of light that was about to come from the camera in the booth. Just after the blinding flash, the expression captured on his little face in the next picture has always personified the word 'wonder' to me.
I had a brainstorm! Restore wonder. Those words were the perfect description of what I wanted to accomplish- not only with the website- but with the digital images I had been taking.
I didn't think there was a snowball's chance that those words were still available for a website address, but I did the search, and sure enough, they were. We hurriedly went through the process of securing that name.
About 30 minutes later, on the show we were still watching on TBN, one of the men said something very interesting. He had been asked by the moderator what he thought God was doing right now. His answer shocked me. He said, 'What I think God is about in these days is the restoration of wonder'. Wowsers! I knew I was headed in the right direction.
Check back soon for Part 4 of Purejoy's Big Adventure...