...Epilogue...

This scrap of plastic was put up on Feb 8, 2005 just as I was finishing up the last of the prep work for shipping the boat up to Seattle. At this moment, I was a harried ball of nerves doing everything I could to get her ready before I had to go back to Seattle. Somehow, these words came to me as I stood in the main salon exhausted, alone and afraid that I would forget something crucial. I know a lot about boats. I've been around them for years. But I know nothing about rebuilding them. To look below decks on this boat (or above for that matter)was completely overwhelming. "Where do I begin" was all I could think. So to have hope in the "not seen" in this boat was a gut wrenching act of faith for me. I suppose that's where my heart was heading when I scribbled on that scrap of plastic and taped it up to the dirty, mildewy bulkhead. Indeed, she will be beautiful....I hope.

So now, almost a year to the day after that story began, I am living in an epilogue of sorts to how that story nearly ended up. I have had many such gut wrenching acts of faith in things not seen since, and I dare say a little more dire than the fate of an old boat. On some level, I think we all of us are living epilogues to some story from the past, or even present. Either the larger story being written, or our own small and only seemingly insignificant stories lived out every day. God knows to have faith in the story being written today is gut wrenchingly difficult. There is so much unseen, and so many all too familiar reasons to abandon hope. So the epilogue is the real story, the unending story. The story we are all living today and the story we all must have hope that will be beautiful again.

And so that is why, in my own muddled little mind, this boat will be named,..."Epilogue"...