“Where are you going to buy organic meat?” Mary stopped in the middle of reading recipes out loud to me as I drove her to work last week. She was reading out of one of the cookbooks I bought for my Whole30 diet plan. Organic meat, grass fed, no antibiotics, with no GMO food.

“Well, I bought organic chicken thighs, drumsticks, and ground beef at Costco this week.” I said. “But I don’t know where to buy organic meat anywhere else. Let’s look it up on the internet when we get home.”

That evening, we found a local meat market that sells “meat raised without the use of growth hormones, preservatives, dyes and antibiotics and raised in a humane way.” The prices were comparable to our local stores, even Costco. But then we noticed they shipped their products all over the United States.

“I wonder what the cost would be to ship meat to my apartment when I get one,” wondered Mary.

“Let’s look it up,” I said.

So we put in the zip code of her likely apartment location when she gets one next year. She could get about 20 pounds of frozen food shipped to her apartment for about $20. But then, she would have to be there to get it. She works full time during the week. It is shipped frozen, so it couldn’t just wait at the apartment complex office (well, it could for a little while).

Mary and I have been discussing issues surrounding her move to an apartment next spring. How she will get food, get to the doctor, the dentist, laundry, prescriptions, etc. Some of her answers have been to depend on us for a while for trips to the grocery store or the doctor, and that is reasonable. Who will take her to the doctor if she has bronchitis or the flu if we can’t? When Ralph was in the hospital last fall, I couldn’t provide transportation to her class. Our church family stepped in and helped us out. Maybe finding her own community of believers is part of the answer. The likelihood of us not being available to her in the future is certain.

Living without a car, being dependent on others for basic needs is going to be a fact of life for her. When I look up resources for living without a car on the Internet, the vast majority of articles are about people who have the option of driving but choose not to for some reason. I saw very few resources for people who have no option but to depend on public transportation, their own feet, and the kindness of others. Maybe she will use Uber for some of her needs, but oh my heart. My friend’s children use Uber without a second thought….but.

Much wisdom and prayer is going to go into her move toward independence. Sometimes serendipitous discoveries are one of God’s ways of leading. May we discovery the right apartment, near perhaps some of those business that will make her life easier and give us some peace of mind.