A Ship In The Night
I have a clipper ship fetish. Well, it may be a fetish, or just an odd admiration for their graceful lines and their angelic beauty.
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"She told me I had too many flat tires." ~I've just gotten an (early) edit returned.
"What? How's that." (My daughter)
"At the beginning of my novel, my MC (main character) on his way to his assignment develops a low tire and has someone clue him in. In the middle of chapter twenty-one someone has tampered with Jack O'Brien's tires and he has a flat—Well, his spare is down too, so it's one incident but two tires. Ten chapters later someone is mentioned as being rescued from a flat tire several years before," I tell her.
"She doesn't live on a gravel road, does she?"
This is funny, because several other people have had that same response. Especially Young Fuzzy, who about that time was experiencing at least one flat tire DAILY. Gravel roads are a nemesis for those of us who live and drive on them.
So much for that edit.
***
"People don't just stop and help people. I've lived all over this country, and..."
"What? That's not true..." my daughter again. ~A different edit and a different year.
"I know it. We've helped folks, and others have stopped and helped us. Especially in the time before cell phones, but that is what this editor told me." ~I'm fed up with all the help some of these editors have given me.
"Just yesterday I was on my way to an appointment and I had a flat tire. I was in the middle of nowhere. I had no way to fix it and there I was. Some guy pulled up behind me, got out, pulled out his tools, fixed the tire, and drove off. I don't know who he was, but..." my daughter says.
Stories, I've got lots of true stories that apparently editors don't like. One from a book written by Betty Choate (First Steps in Faith) about landing, in Pakistan. They've just landed. Her, the baby, and J.C. late at night, not knowing the language, money, young naive American missionaries. A stranger walked into their lives, took care of the money, language, and got them sent on their way. They didn't know the man and as far as I know, they never saw him again. http://worldevangelismmedia.com/choatebettyburton.aspx
Or this rather funny personal story. One day when we lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, I'm on a mission to drop our two oldest boys at a friend's house so I can go to a doctor's appointment.
For some reason my passenger side rear tire dropped off the shoulderless pavement and I was stuck. This was before cell phones.
There I was. A twenty-three year old pregnant mother of two, stranded and no way to phone anyone. A woman pulls alongside of me and stops. Well, she says her husband operates a tow service over on such and such road, she'll go tell him and he'll give me a hand. Don't go anywhere, she laughs as she drives off.
Obviously, I'm not going anywhere with my tire in the ditch. I'm sitting there waiting. A twenty something year old, bushy haired guy in a small car similar to mine, a Maverick, or a Mustang? Something small like mine, pulls up behind me. He gets out as he's finishing eating some kind of a cream filled pastry. He looks over my situation, pops the rest of his pastry in his mouth.
"I've done this myself," he says to me as he wipes his mouth. "I tell ya what, I'll just hold up that side of the car, and you drive on out."
Which he did, and I did. We both drove on our ways. I don't know what the tow truck guy thought when he came along, but I had places to go and things to do. What a God-send my rescuer was.
We speak of ships in the night. People passing, in these cases, through our lives quietly.
So, to all the editors who don't know that flat tires do happen (and quite often out here), who don't know that angels do walk amongst us, and that God is faithful, I say to them 'Bah! Humbug!
Psalms 8:1 "...O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth, Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens! 2) Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established strength, Because of thine adversaries, That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3) When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4) What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5) For thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honor. 6) Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet:
7) All sheep and oxen, Yea, and the beasts of the field, 8) The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. 9) O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth!
