Pure Grace: The Back Story

There's almost always a pretty good story behind the one you hear. If you’re are wondering what woman in her right mind would willingly downsize from a walk-in closet with room for lots and lots of shoes to a shipboard clothes locker the size of a shoe box, here's the back story.

In 2006 I hit a milestone birthday and celebrated with a girls weekend away in Santa Fe, NM. While I was taking in art museums, galleries and lots of shops, my romantic husband was busy planning something big...really big...like 47 feet x 14 feet of floating big.

My 50th birthday surprise was a 1985 Harbormaster houseboat that needed quite a bit of TLC, but we agreed to give house boating a try for a year or two. Bill wanted to name her the Katherine Ann. While I wasn’t keen about that idea I did like the double meaning of my name and what it represents. "Pure Grace" honors my husband's parents, whose Will generously provided the funds for this purchase. Their gift to us, like God's gift of eternal life through His Son, is pure grace.

1962 -- Bill gets navigating signals from the helm.

However, the real story behind the back story is my husband's. When he was in junior high school his father felt that Bill and his brother needed to learn all the trades ... electrical, plumbing, welding, carpentry … so together they built, from scratch, a houseboat. The "Barrels of Fun" launched in 1960 and cruised the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers for several years. From that time on Bill was hooked like a fish.

Stay tuned for more Adventures in Pure Grace!



For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.