Yesterday I shared half of a tribute Nelson’s cousin Andrew sent to Nelson through his wife Kim’s writing abilities. Here’s the rest:

Ann Sophie laughed and agreed that her husband was pretty special. Somehow, though, it was a pretty quick jump to things we didn’t think they could do. I was imitating Andrew looking for the hamper as our husbands were coming closer with the rest of the firewood.

Our voices dropped to a whisper as I leaned closer to Ann Sophie. “Do you think Nelson could hem a curtain?”

Hearing his name, Nelson’s head popped up, and he looked over at us. Ann Sophie just scrunched her nose a little, shook her head slightly, and softly said, “Details.” We both laughed.

When we first heard of Nelson’s diagnosis, Andrew’s immediate reaction was that he wanted to go to Minnesota to see him. Then he considered that although that’s what he wanted, it might not be what Nelson wanted. It’s difficult to have company when you are tired and sick, especially from people who admire you and can’t imagine you weak or caving to pain.

My dad once told me he imagines we all have this invisible jar of marbles that we get when we are born. Every person has their own number of marbles, and only God knows how many each person gets. When you do something with risk and reward, you take a marble out.

Get on a plane, take out a marble. Go for a swim, take out a marble.  Red meat three nights in a row, lick your fingers and take that marble out. We imagined a fishbowl of marbles dwindling down, the older a person gets, or the more daring a life they lived. He said one day you’d wake up and only have one marble left.

I think about my own jar of marbles and the decisions about where I put them and those of the people that I love. I imagine Nelson’s—a faithful servant to the Lord who has not wavered in faith when the doctors said, “Hey, we think your jar is looking a little low.”

He knows that we serve the Master of details, the giver of marbles and that the end is not the bottom of the jar, because there is abundance on the other side.

We are praying for Nelson to get a refill of marbles so that he can one day learn to hem a curtain and show his dear cousin Andrew what a hamper looks like. But we say this prayer with the same courage and faith that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had when they were thrown into the fire and said, “The God we serve can save us, and even if he does not save us, we will still worship him.”

“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.” (Isaiah 12:2)