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!