The sun hefted itself in a glorious yellow blaze over my office windowsill today. “Watch for good things,” God seemed to whisper.

Indeed. My smile won’t straighten. Precisely 38 miles Southwest of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, 90 miles West of Huntsville, Alabama, 42 miles Northeast of Tupelo, Mississippi, 123 miles Northwest of Birmingham, Alabama, and 148 miles Southeast of Memphis, Tennessee, I’ve discovered a very good thing.

In newspapers surrounding the community of Red Bay, Alabama, close to where the Mississippi threads itself through farming communities fringing the hem of blue mountains, this column has a twin.

I discovered that Sunny Side Up on the internet. It seemed similar to mine, but far more sunny. (Must be the Alabama sunshine.)

The column just celebrated its twenty-fourth birthday, I read. Impressed, I called its writer, LaVale Kennedy Mills, to congratulate her. Finding her work had tickled me. I thought she too, might like to know about our “siblings.” Her delighted laughter confirmed it. “You’re from WHERE?” she squealed.

After we settled down, I asked LaVale how her Sunny Side Up began.

She’d had a job she enjoyed, but it took its toll on her. “The doctor told me my life was too stressful.” She chuckled. “That was the first time I’d ever heard that word! He said I needed a hobby.”

LaVale took up crocheting. “I crocheted the first five-cornered granny square,” she said. She tried knitting and cross-stitch, but both likewise failed. Not until she began writing little stories in a small notebook did LaVale find her niche.

She wrote stories about her life—memories, pets, fears. Than an acquaintance told her to get herself over to the newspaper office. “And bring your book,” he’d told her.

“Well, I walked into the editor’s office, and I came out a columnist,” she said. (Hmmm…me too!) The editor asked her to suggest a few names for her column. Said he’d choose the one he liked. (So did mine.) Sunny Side Up won. She chose it because of her father, who often told her to “Tell Mama I’ll have the eggs and the cook sunny side up!”

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t named it that?” I asked

“No, I need to stay positive,” she said. “I’m just miserable if I don’t.”

LaVale’s positive spirit has diffused throughout the entire county. Eventually she became the publisher of her paper, a frequent motivational speaker, and now she’s something of a legend in the area. She didn’t say all that, but the internet tells tales.

We have more in common than our columns. LaVale has two children, as do I. Best of all, we share a deep faith in God. “We couldn’t be much more a-laaaahk!” she said, and invited me South.

At the end of our lengthy conversation, she said  precisely what I was thinking (in reverse, and sprawled out long). “Ahm so glaaaad ya cowled!” Her charming drawl still lingers.

Perhaps I’ll meet LaVale one day. Right now, I’m simply grateful for today’s good thing.

More about Lavale!

On a raw winter day during calving season a year or so ago, the Preacher and I visited some rancher friends. “Come out and see the babies,” Diane said.

Inside the maternity barn, our breath wreathed around our mouths. We walked down the wide center aisle between stalls pungent with manure and fresh hay. Inside each was a mother and an offspring.

Diane pointed to the first stall inside the door. “That one was born just a few minutes ago.” The black calf, still sheathed in amniotic fluid, lay in a pool of afterbirth, eyes shut, barely moving. Its mother hovered, her hooves dangerously close to its head. She shoved its little body this way and that—rather rudely, I thought. And said so.

Diane laughed. “She’s trying to get it up,” she explained. “If a calf doesn’t stand within the first hour, it may not survive. It’ll likely be fine, but I’ll keep an eye on it.” Keeping an eye, at that ranch, includes technology. A closed circuit television camera monitors the maternity ward.

It seemed these tiny wide-eyed creatures should take forever to grow. But less than a year later, we paid another visit to Bar C Ranch. “Come out and see those babies,” Diane said.

Several dozen hefty cattle eyed the Preacher and me suspiciously and backed away as we entered their pen. They’d grown almost as big as their mothers now. Not as calm, though. Suddenly spooked, they charged forward into another pen.

Diane sighed. “They weren’t supposed to do that.” She looked around. “Bring ‘em back,” she ordered their two dogs.

Both dogs leapt into eager action. Responding to Diane’s every command, they dashed about collecting strays, finally clustering the entire herd in a clump. As one, they shuffled forward, trying to escape the dogs.

Just short of returning through the same gate, they stopped, and went into a bovine huddle. There they stood, glaring at us, clearly upset at the invasion of their space.

The dogs were dangerously near to heel-nipping now. Bottlenecked and crowded, the spooked cattle shoved each other and bawled. Finally one bold one squeezed to the front of the huddle.

I could almost hear his thoughts. “Well, boys, this was cozy while it lasted. But it t’aint fun no more. Don’t know what’s gonna happen out there, but it’s gotta be better ‘n this. I’m goin’ for it.”  

He charged through the gate and thundered past us, not even glancing our way, still bawling. “If ya don’t look, they won’t know you’re there,” I heard, quite clearly.

Sure enough, the rest followed. But rather than something to fear, they found precisely what they needed—space, ample bedding, and safety.

The dogs had done their job well.

Is something nipping at your heels? A thousand little incidents, all lining up, gradually steering you in a direction you haven’t chosen?

Next time you feel the nips, pray. Then move toward your fear. God may be leading you precisely where he wants you.

Lakshmi* is a Christian Dalit woman I met in India years ago. Her gentle smile and deeply haunted eyes, caught in a photo, captivated me long before I made the trip.

Over there, despite the barriers between us—language, nationality, distance—we formed a connection I can’t explain.

During a Bible study in her Eastern Indian city recently, Lakshmi—lovely, wraith-thin, long-ill—sank to the floor, seized with convulsions.  An even closer friend, the study leader, snapped a photo and emailed it to me.

Lakshmi lies on the floor like a fallen sparrow. Her tangled saree, a puddle of azure blue, splashes over the cement. Its colours blur—she writhes. Brown hands hover over her skeletal frame, entreating the monstrous motion to stop. Praying for healing, for Christ’s presence, for her not to swallow her tongue.

Someone inserts a silver spoon in her gasping mouth. Stainless steel. The irony doesn’t escape me. The spouse of a no-gooder, a wife-beater, Lakshmi was born impoverished. Lakshmi is still impoverished.

The shot slices me. I loathe it.

I have sent Lakshmi aid, as we rich Westerners often do when confronted with mountainous need. Rupees for a few groceries, a little medicine, a trip to the doctor perhaps. But my friend needs much more than I can give.

Jesus said that human need will never end. I’ve come to accept that to be a child of Adam is to suffer, to experience want along some lines—conscious or unconscious. Somewhere, there will always be a pain in need of a balm, a stomach that needs refueling, a child who cries alone.

Yes, God shows up, often miraculously banishing need. But sometimes people of faith die in fear and pain, while people of no faith whatsoever accept their end quietly and peacefully.

I’m so glad I don’t have to figure all that out. Glad too, that I’m neither judge nor savior.

What I know is precious little, but what I know is precious: Creator God, for whom our cosmos is but a speck of lint on his breast pocket—had he one—chooses relationship with us earthlings. Pursues us with love. Rewards faith. Meets our deepest needs for validation and inner peace. Sends the sweet companionship of his Holy Spirit – wherever we fall.

Life is but a dandelion puff, and I’ve had my fill of leaning on spiderwebs. Simple certainty remains: God cares for us and our needy friends in ways we cannot now comprehend. He allows us the blessing of lifting each other up, and not one of us deserves that.

We especially don’t deserve to benefit from what Christians prepare to celebrate: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet his sacrifice, if we accept it, dissolves our sin, stamps us “forgiven,” and restores us to an eternity of opportunity.

Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

But oh, my God, hold tightly to my fellow fallen sparrow.

*not  her real name

 Who said, “Practice makes perfect,” anyway? I’ve been a practicing Christian for over four decades. Many days I feel I’ll never get it right. In spite of a lifetime of following Christ, I still haven’t sprouted angel wings or sprung a halo. (Just ask my family.)

 Sometimes I can’t even remember Bible verses I’ve practiced since childhood.

As the Preacher and I sped down the highway on our way to Regina for yet more medical tests, we remembered that we hadn’t taken time for our daily six-pack—our shared reading of five Psalms, and one chapter of Proverbs. We’ve done that for several years. Usually, somewhere among those treasures, God points out at least one verse especially appropriate for that day.

“Hey, let’s recite Psalm 23,” I said, remembering the date.

“Go for it,” said the Preacher.

Prairie surrounded us, white and flat as paper. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters….” I intoned, wishing for a little green right then. “…and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever!” I finished with a flourish, a few seconds later.

“Now say it right,” said the Preacher.

“What’d I miss?”

“The ‘He restores my soul’ part. The ‘paths of righteousness for his name’s sake’ part. The ‘valley of the shadow’ part. The ‘oil on my head’ part. ”

“I said the ‘restores my soul’ part. And the ‘valley of the shadow’ part!”

“Nope, ya didn’t.”

“Did too.”

“Nope.”

I almost asked him whose brain we were headed into Regina to get examined anyway. But I didn’t, because I likely did miss those parts of my favorite psalm. Even with the lingering effects of West Nile encephalitis, on a good day his brain always works better than mine.

Thankfully, God doesn’t judge his kids based on how many Bible verses they can recite. Not even on how often they go to church. He looks for the Son in their eyes, not wings on their back, or a halo sprouting from the hairline.

But the intentional practice of faith in Christ, like sunshine, does alter a body. It beams its way into every cranny of our lives—the commonplace, everyday things we don’t even associate with “religion”.

Thanks to the internet, Sunny Side Up goes around the world now, but nine years ago, when I began writing this faith and life column in the local paper, Yorkton This Week, (it’s still published there–my editor has been gracious!) that was the kind of faith I hoped to demonstrate to my readers. Faith without wings or halos. A faith that looks at life through Son-glasses, not rose-colored spectacles.

For years, loyal readers have pled with me to put past columns between in a book. I’m tickled to report that the first year of Sunny Side Up columns are now between covers, and will soon be available in major Christian bookstores and other places across Canada and North America and online.

We’ve called it Practice by Practice, The art of everyday faith–the first in a series of planned column compilations, titled “The Preacher and Me“.

From an author not even in the running for a halo.

Signed copies are available at (www.kathleengibson.ca/practicebypractice) or click on the right sidebar link.