We’ve been doing a lot of work on our 1978 Tartan sailboat recently. We have owned it for 20 years with many great partners over the course of that time. A friend of Tim’s from the Minnetonka Police Department where they both were police officers salvaged her originally. Mark brought her back from North Carolina where she had been dry docked. He carefully redid all the teak and the entire inside while she was stored at Matt’s Auto Repair in Minnetonka. Mark was going to put her on the Saint Croix River but ultimately decided she needed to be on Lake Superior. It was then he asked us to be boat partners.
The boat is ours alone now and she certainly had some needed maintenance. We had a new hatch put in and Tim is in the process of re-bedding the leaky toe rails. We also began checking our safety gear. Yikes! Turns out all the life jackets CO-2 cartridges had expired years ago. The tabs that are supposed to dissolve in water and set off the cartridges crumbled in our hands. We were lucky that we never actually needed the life jackets even though we wore them faithfully each time we left the dock.
Before replacing the CO-2 cartridges we needed to make sure the life jackets could still hold air. We had laid them out on the kitchen counter when some friends came over Thursday night for a bonfire. They volunteered to help us manually blow them up and check for leaks. The lifejackets held and so too had our friendship for well over 20 years.
Whenever I talk about life jackets, I can’t help but remember Andrew and the words of his mother Deb. Andrew died in his early twenties in a tragic car accident. Andrew loved life, cooking salsa and spaghettis sauces with his mom; fishing and hunting with his dad and waterskiing with his two brothers and many friends.
At his memorial service his mom said this, “Someone used the metaphor of God being our life jacket. I really didn’t feel like God had put a life jacket on me. I felt betrayed by God. But later in the week, I noticed that God had been laying life jackets at our feet, all over the ground, thousands of them. And one by one people began to pick them up for us, put them around our necks, tie them tight, buckle them up, and fasten them securely. Andrew often wore a life jacket that we all thought was too small. But now I realize that it was not too small at all; it was just tied so tight with the love of all his family and friends that he overflowed with the greatness of God.”
Yep, we need one another to check the wear on our life jackets to makes sure they still keep us afloat. And we may need help tying them on tight when the water and weather gets rough. I give thanks for all those people that I have worn life jackets with over the years. Lifejackets on when canoeing in the BWCA with youth groups, when fishing for walleyes, when sailing or just when swimming through life. I am so grateful for the friendships that have kept me afloat in high winds.
And I remember those who no longer need a lifejacket in this life but wore them so well– Andrew and our own boat captains Mark and Denise. See you some day on that distant shore.
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