Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
- Exodus 14:21-22
For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may stay for the night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.
- Psalm 30:5
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!
- Isaiah 30:18
For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it will certainly come
and will not delay.
- Habakkuk 2:3
The Scriptures speak of God’s timing. We might panic a bit. We may get stressed. But relying on God gets it done on time, His time. And sometimes, that can seem like a miracle just happened.
Yesterday morning, three posts ago, you will find a short story, The New Sue McAdoo Visits – A Pauline Niblick Misadventure. I am not going to brag that it was my best story ever. In fact, it is normal for me.
How is it normal? The Six Degrees of Separation theory was first postulated by a Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy, in a 1929 short story, Chains. Then, in 1967 Stanley Milgrim, Harvard social psychologist, started his experiment, Small World Experiment. The concept is that among the associations that you have, each person has associations with other people. Then those people have associations with others. And by the time you get to the sixth person in this chain, you have gotten back to you. Sometimes, it is even closer.
In my stories, it is usually less than a six-person chain to complete the loop, but I think that is the way my brain works.
But honestly, the sharp turn in the story about the New Sue McAdoo was totally unplanned.
What I try to do is to stay 3-4 weeks ahead of schedule in my writing in case I get sick or I go on a trip. But for the fictional stories that can get more involved, I like staying a couple of weeks further ahead of schedule.
But somehow, I had marked the Sue McAdoo story as finished and awaiting uploading to WordPress. When it is the right time to do so, I read through it carefully one last time and then do the upload. But I got to the middle of the story, where Pink Lady Apple Yeggs explains that Rev. Gil Whitefield was presenting the Vespers service. Pink actually praised him as he understood the lady employees at Lily the Pink.
Sue McAdoo is the wife of the head of a fictional spy organization (usually referred to as an alphabet organization with headquarters just outside Washington, DC). She is also an employee of the organization. She was there to determine who among the people there knew that Jacob and Dinah Levy, Mashie Niblick and his wife Pauline, Millennium Yeggs, and Elroy Jetson all worked for this organization or retired from the organization. She wanted to find and stop any leaks. This was not a social call.
So, the first half of the short story was hardly a short story. It was mostly Pink explaining what she knew and did not know. And Pauline telling Sue McAdoo that she trusted Pink.
But when I was ready to schedule this story, or half story, I was sick with a sinus infection, just back from a trip to see my grandson graduate from high school, and the five weeks ahead of schedule was down to three weeks ahead. And my pace was not back to normal due to the illness.
As I read about Gil Whitefield, my heart almost stopped. I had four or five pages of “blank” before getting to the “Credits” and that only a heading.
Instead of writing something, my mind was a blank. How could I have mislabeled the story? It was a story, but not much of one. In my view, it was nowhere near finished. So, I could not write anything with my mind blank like that.
I went to bed, and I prayed. The reason that I stayed ahead of schedule more on these stories is the chance to proofread better, but also a buffer in time if I have writer’s block. At this point, it was not writer’s block. This was total brain shutdown. I would have to have an idea of where the story might possibly go for it to be writer’s block. I had nothing.
As I prayed, I asked God for some fantastic five-minute sermonette. Again, nothing.
Then, I felt a question come from my subconscious. It might have been God’s voice. It might have been my brain finally getting two cogs to mesh together. “Who is Gil Whitefield? How did he become a pastor in the pastor rotation at Lily the Pink?”
Hmmm. Gil Whitefield is married to Wilhelmina “Willie” Dykstra Whitefield. He is the father of preschool Jayke and his little sister Janella. Willie is the daughter of Harold Dykstra who recently married Babs. The Babs and Harold Conversations have been my regular story each Friday morning since late September 2023. I do not often succeed with the conversation sounding natural, but I strive for a conversation that somehow becomes a Bible Study.
Barbara “Babs” Bounty Dykstra is hiding from her past. Her past includes adult films: starring in them, directing, producing, running her own production company, etc. She simply disappeared, and later accepted Jesus. Some people who recognized her suggested that she give her testimony. She was afraid that the adult film industry would demand some breach of contract and want her back, but sick people that meet adult film stars have been known to proposition the film star on the street corner, in front of witnesses. She wanted her anonymity. That life was gone, and the memories starting to fade – slowly, too slowly for Babs.
Gil Whitefield had officiated the wedding of Harold and Babs, which was held at Lily the Pink in the Crystal Mountain, a giant greenhouse with hydroponic gardens above what seemed to be a jungle, and a popular wedding venue. Rev. Gil found out about the vespers services. He was on the rotation, because he begged to be on it.
So, that answered those two questions that I heard in my head. Then, drawing a blank when it came to a show stopping sermonette from Gil Whitefield, it dawned on me that Babs could give her testimony, trusting that God could help her with the side effects.
But the story was about the new Sue McAdoo, not the vespers service, and I just wrote Babs into the story for “filler.”
So, what happens when an early-fifties Babs meets a mid-thirties Sue? Babs gasps and asks if that is really Sweet Suzy Q, her “daughter” in several of the last films Babs ever produced. It just … happened. I was typing, but I seemed to not have any control over the story.
Another arc in the Tracy universe was Pink’s GrandPa by marriage who rescued people from the sex trade when he detected that they wanted out. So, now the less than six degrees of separation loops back to Babs. GrandPa was a retired super spy of sorts, specializing in what Yeggs were good at, cracking safes. He worked for Hugh McAdoo, whose wife was Sue. When the head of the organization was appointed, the couple changed their names to Hugh and Sue McAdoo, but Sue was already named Sue. She would not have to buy knew monogrammed towels.
But as Sue tries to deny the questions Babs was asking, GrandPa enters and suggests that Suzy Q comes clean. GrandPa had rescued her right off the movie set, right under the nose of the director/producer Babs. GrandPa gave Suzy Q a new name and money enough to go to college where she thought she accidentally met Hugh and married him. Now, the organization where some of the rescue money originated had hired her to work for them. An investment that paid off handsomely. But some of that will be revealed tomorrow morning, when Babs and Harold meet Sue and Hugh McAdoo.
With several story arcs interweaving, the story yesterday morning wrote itself. Maybe the crusty curmudgeon of a critic will say it reads that way, but when I had finished the story, I praised God.
Even if the story has some holes in it, I went from not having anything in my brain to the entire thing falling into my lap.
I have had something close to that before, many times. But not as profound as this. And I was suffering from a sinus infection. My brain was hardly working at all for about 3-4 days. Then, the cough cut down on productivity for another week. But that afternoon, my fingers were flying over the keys.
Whether it was a suggestion from “upstairs,” I want to use that friendship between Sue and Babs to at least have one Bible study. But then, if they really are like mother and daughter, they’ll see each other again.
And I hope tomorrow morning’s conversation will be done for the glory of God.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
Leave a comment