A Message From G-mama

 Last weekend, a friend asked me if I had any travel sized shampoo.

“I’m pretty sure I do,” I said. “Let me check.”

That one simple question led to hours in the bathroom,

Cleaning out bathroom cabinets,

Throwing stuff away,

Preparing stuff to be given to a ministry that works with persons experiencing homelessness,

And finding a shoebox that contained a treasure that I otherwise would not have found before leaving for the Mediterranean on Tuesday:

A message from G-mama.

 

I don’t remember doing so,

But sometime after I traveled either to Scandinavia in 2016 or the Rhine River in 2018,

I put some traveling items in a plastic shoe box and put the box in my bathroom cabinet.

I guess I thought I’d use the items later.

Instead, the box sat in the cabinet untouched for years.

 

When I opened the box on Tuesday night,

A note was sitting on top of all the miscellaneous stuff.

I read:

 

“Dear Deanna,

Bon Voyage!

May you be safe, well, and happy as you enjoy your trip with June Gail—I look forward to seeing pictures and hearing about it. God bless you always,

Love you, G-mama.”

 

Enclosed was a crisp, new $100 bill.

 

I stood stunned as I read the note, imagined G-mama writing it, and knew that she’d have said the same thing if she were still alive now.

 

June Gail (my aunt) and I are scheduled to embark our Viking cruise ship in Athens, Greece, next Wednesday. There is much anxiety surrounding the trip with Covid, plane issues, luggage issues, heat waves, droughts, and more. I was particularly stressed about things on Tuesday night when I found G-mama’s note. But then I read:

 

“May you be safe, well, and happy as you enjoy your trip”

 

And somehow, at least for that moment, the stress melted away.

 

Dear God: Sometimes you move in mysterious ways. Thank you. And may we, indeed, be safe, well, and happy. Amen.