Everything I Need

My Grandma Krake spent the few weeks of her life with a six-foot long strip of paper taped to her nursing home wall. It had "The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need," printed on it in bright blue ink. I made that for her because she told me about a vision of seeing those very words from Psalm 23 floating in front of her. She described the color of blue in great detail. She was quite taken with the color blue that year, the year of being passed from one Medicare-covered nursing facility to the next. Many of her dreams were in blue, or of blue things. She talked it over with a visiting chaplain who asserted that blue was a heavenly color. That pleased her. It pleased me for her sake because if I had to lie in a bed with tubes stuck down my throat and nose for a number of months with one visitor a day I'd be needing to see heavenly visions to want to keep living.

During the last few months of Grandma's life, the tubes were out and the State found a place in Santa Cruz for her to move to. The place was cheerless. I don't remember a single pleasant nurse, possibly because it would be difficult to work there and remain pleasant. Regardless, Grandma believed she had everything she needed. And she really did. A day or two before she before she died, Grandma told a visitor her life story. It was full of gratitude to God for his kindnesses to her. After the visitor left, I asked Grandma what it felt like to be so close to seeing God after all these years. Her tired eyes closed and she shook her head gently back and forth on her pillow. "Peace, peace, peace," she said with a wide smile. She was brim full of the last thing she would ever need in this life - peace with God.

I used some Tapatio hot sauce and was reminded of my Grandma's verse today. We ran out of Tapatio sauce some time in 2009. With Mexico 6000 miles, Nomad was not bound to have any of this tasty condiment gracing his shelves any time soon. Or so we thought. A couple of months ago, in Tonga, a person on a charter boat dinghied over to see if we wanted their leftover food because their charter trip was over. That's where our bottle of Tapatio came from. We also acquired a roll of plastic wrap in this manner. I don't use the stuff so I wasn't sure whether to keep it. But we needed that plastic wrap last week. The 10 used 20-liter vegetable oil containers Marine Reach was given for transporting the outboard fuel from Lautoka to Ono Island didn't have gaskets. Brian discovered this when filling them the evening before we headed out. Without gaskets in the lids, the fuel would either slosh out under way, or get sea water inside. Plastic wrap was the simple solution.

So, a bottle of hot sauce and a roll of plastic are good reminders to me this week that with God as my shepherd, I have everything I need, and more!

A few days later….Eloise got pink-eye! I was trying to think what I might have in my medical kit when Brian reminded me of the drops he used when he rammed his open eye into the end of the dinghy anchor in New Zealand. He had quite a flap on the eye and Annette used her many connections to have some antibiotic eyedrops delivered directly to the boat (Thanks Bill and Noelene!). The dropper bottle specifically says, "for the treatment of bacterial conjunctivitis." One more example of having what we need when we need it. Thanks Brian! Thanks Annette! Thanks God!

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