The fall time change that gives us a twenty-five hour day has been one of my favorite days, but one can have too much of even a good thing. Since we left Chile on February 4th, just ten days ago, we have set the clock back an hour six of the ten days. Sandy and I were both awake at three this morning, feeling like it was seven and hearing people walking around in the rooms above us. Still this beats setting it forward six of ten days. I suspect that these cruises always travel west to avoid that, but I will have to research that!

My cold is better today but I still have a productive cough, so I am sitting in a deck chair on the lower promenade deck letting the ocean breeze carry my germs out to sea. I don’t love the cold, but I do love this. The sound of the ocean is like God-given background music. I have loved that sound since I first heard it at seventeen years of age. The temperature feels about seventy-five degrees.

It is my firmest belief that God can and does redeem every bad thing that we do, that happens to us, and that happens to those we love. We don’t always recognize it, but we will see it some day. I have been on this ship twenty-three days, and this is the first time I have taken the time to just sit here and enjoy the warmth and the sound of the ocean. I might never have done it in the busyness were it not for the cold. This view from my deck chair will be the same all day.