“Now just a minute!” you say. “Second-favorite sandwich? So what’s in first place?” At the risk of being accused of unduly influencing you to stray from any of your New Year resolutions, I hesitate to tell you. But, seeing that most resolutions never see the light of March, much less make it to Lent, here goes: My all-time favorite sandwich is also a BLT. However, to reach top status, it must be made with white bread, regular bacon, iceberg lettuce, and home-grown Better Boy® tomatoes. Oh, and both pieces of bread have to be slathered with Duke’s real mayonnaise. Classic!

And there you have it. I’m not proud of it, but you did twist my arm. And, since I’m writing this just before lunch and my stomach is starting to growl, I should let you go.

Oh wait. I remember why sandwiches are on my brain! Someone at church last week commented that I now had a “sandwich family.” A little slow on the uptake, I asked, “What’s that?” It was, I learned, a family where a middle-aged couple’s elderly parents and their grown children live with them. (I know—who are they calling “middle aged”?) All I can say is that being a sandwich family is pretty cool—I get to play with my grandkids every day.

So, if you really pressed me, I’d have to confess that the rankings of my favorite sandwiches have been rearranged. First is still the classic BLT, but giving it a run for its money is my delightful new sandwich family. I’m afraid the healthy BLT is now a very, very distant third.

Okay, lunchtime!

Well, let me tell you how hard it was: VERY! First off, the characters didn’t cooperate. They’d run off down any number of rabbit trails, and retrieving them and making them behave was beyond me. Then the plot veered off course, meaning that although it was fiction, what I was making up was supposed to make sense! Imagine that.

I never did get as far as the twist. What I did was give up. Seems that old itch cleared up really fast once I found out that serious writing required heaps and heaps of time and effort.

Back to Chuck’s suggestion. He didn’t know for sure, but I think that he had a pretty good idea that I was in a funk. What’s funny, though, is that I didn’t even realize I was in one. But, the minute after I had hung up the phone after our conversation, it was as though the sun suddenly shone after weeks of overcast and drizzle.

I pulled out the old manuscript (I just had a paper copy) and read it over. My, my, I thought, things have really changed in 20 years! What—no cell phones! This will never do. I busily began rewriting, adding, moving, deleting. Before I knew what was happening, I was totally immersed in the story. My creative juices were pumping, I was reenergized and, truthfully, I itched all over!

The Bible says that “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11). Chuck didn’t know it, but he gave me a very valuable gift. Not that anything will come of my novel—that’s not the point. Chuck’s simple gift untied and set free the “me” that God intended me to be. That’s what a little encouragement can do. It doesn’t cost anything, but it can mean everything.

It’s been standard fare for generations of barbershop quartets, and most fans of turn-of-the-20th-century popular music will smile as they remember it—at least the ending echo as the song half-steps down the scale: “Sweet–Ad–e–line.” 

That bit of trivia is just the right size hook on which to hang my thoughts about people who have influenced me—in a positive way—as I’ve pursued my editing craft. And we’ll get to how the song is connected, I promise.

First, there was Mom. She was the first to help me distinguish between the adjective good and the adverb well. She had a penchant for proper grammar, although I vaguely remember those occasions when her cultured, low-country Carolina charm would retreat a little as we children frazzled her delicate nerves: “I suwanee, if y’all churrin don’t stop, I’m gonna snatcha bal’-headed and wale the tar out of you!”

Kudos also go to my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Herbert, who bent the rules and taught the class how to diagram sentences, a privilege reserved for fifth graders. And credit goes to Mrs. Ogle, my seventh grade English teacher, whose sing-song cadence to remember helping verbs is forever stuck in my brain: “is am are was were, be being been, have has had, do does did, shall will should would, may might must can could.”

And I dare not forget Mrs. Humphries. Now here was a lady who challenged her eighth graders to work on a collegiate level—and like it! I’m not kidding—the next year she took a job as an English professor at the University of Georgia.

Of course, other teachers and professors built on that foundation, but the die was cast. I was in love with words—their simplicity, their structure, their power.

And then (I told you I would get to the connection eventually), there was Adeline Griffith. The same Adeline as in, “Has that been run by Adeline yet?” or more simply, “Make sure that copy’s been Adelined before it goes out!” Talk about an influence! With the title of Creative Services Manager, I was her supervisor for several years . . . on paper. But, I knew—and I think she did too—Adeline was my mentor.

So, I remember . . . and smile . . . and am grateful. 

. . . Or was it? If, like me, you say you believe in the providence of God, then, well . . . um, yes, well . . . of course, it was inevitable . . . um . . . I think.

Belief is like that—ethereal, comfortable, often untried—until something happens that thrusts you into a “yea or nay” opportunity: either it is or it isn’t, up or down, white or black. Do you believe or don’t you?

“Do you trust God, or do you just say that you trust God?” 
 – Larry Burkett

Well, I had worked for the man—Larry Burkett—from 1989 until his death in 2003, and then for his successors until March of this year. Surely that was enough time to glean a bit of perspective—24 years all told. Twenty-four years of stretching, learning, honing, growing; yet they were also years of secure, comfortable . . . sitting.

So yes, I believe it was inevitable—inevitable to be turned out of my squeaky, cushy black office chair onto the not-so-cushy streets of Unemploymentville. And, fortunately—I guess I should say “providentially”—it wasn’t a long bus ride over to the next town, Self-employmentville.

So here I am—UpWrite Publishing—and I’m wondering . . . what’s next?