Mark Millican: Thankful for leaders and readers

Published 8:00 am Thursday, November 23, 2023

“My view is there is an amount of predetermination in each of our lives, and an even greater amount of free will.” — Lu Laverde

His name was Donald Saxton, and he transferred into our National Guard unit in Dalton from Headquarters Company in Calhoun. Noticing we didn’t have a chapel service on the Sunday mornings of our weekend drills, he asked 1st Sgt. Jack McGill if that might be possible. Best I can remember, Jack told him to keep it to 15-20 minutes so non-participating soldiers wouldn’t be resentful.

One Sunday morning, Don was conducting the service himself (I do remember his pastor coming to address us once) and he was walking back and forth across the front of the armory classroom sharing his thoughts. I’m guessing loosely he was on the topic of purpose and finding meaning in life when he stopped and looked right at me and said, “And some people aren’t living up to their destiny.”

His blue eyes pierced me like a laser beam and I knew God had spoken to me through a messenger. Another man of influence in the Guard was the late Tom Swanner of Chatsworth. Once during our annual “summer camp” at Fort Stewart near the Georgia coast, Tom and I went to the enlisted men’s club for supper and right away I ordered a pitcher of beer. Only thing was, Tom wasn’t a drinker — so between conversation and bites of whatever we were eating I drained the pitcher myself.

As you might surmise, I was not in top form the next morning. While sitting on my rack (cot) trying to clear my head, Don came and sat down beside me. Quite possibly, Tom had relayed my overindulgence the evening before. Yet Don never said a word about that.

What he did do was start talking about convictions, and he used as an example something troops in the field are familiar with — a “shelter half,” which is actually half a pup tent you snap together with that of another soldier to make a full tent. However, Don was talking about the stakes, telling me our convictions are like tent stakes that we drive so deep into the ground that they’re hard to pull out.

Oh-K, got it. Well, maybe not right then, but I’ve never forgotten his words because they resonated as I thought about them later. (By the way, Tom’s daughter Andrea works at a church in Murray County and is the go-to person for creating and tweaking my PowerPoint on Vietnam veterans.)

With Thanksgiving on the horizon, I find myself thanking my Creator for putting people into my life at an “apropos” time. First and foremost would be my parents. Yet while my father was still struggling with his hardscrabble upbringing because of the loss of his dad at a young age, Mom was solid as a rock in her faith. Her prayers literally saved my life, especially one night when one more step in the wrong direction would have been fatal. God woke her in the middle of the night when I was far away from home and told her I was in great danger. She got down on the side of the bed and poured her heart out in prayer, and I backed away from taking that step — because even in the state I was in a voice warned me what would happen if I did.

Several years later after more prayer from Mom and grandmothers and church folk, I was working at a newspaper in Ellijay called the Times-Courier. Since I had always wanted to write for a paper, but had a primary door closed on me because I didn’t have a degree in journalism, this appeared to be a godsend directly related to the decision I made to walk away from substance abuse and toward the God of the Bible revealed through his son, Jesus Christ. (Later, I worked at the newspaper that had initially turned me down.)

In Ellijay, I met Charlie Waters, Bob Leftwich, Roger Starnes, Max Barlitt and others who were walking out their faith in their careers and retirement. Directors Roger Blankenship and Sid Webb at the Gilmer Christian Learning Center became mentors, even though both are younger than me. and also at the CLC was teacher Barbara Huff, whose grandmotherly demeanor and wisdom not only impacted me but hundreds of students. You just discerned she had the ability with her soft brown eyes to see inside your soul despite what your words were hiding. The need she saw in those of us who had many more questions than answers was taken to the Lord in prayer, I’m sure.

I’m thankful to be able to write for a handful of newspapers and magazines in semi-retirement. It’s a big part of my life, and I’m also grateful for all of you who read my words. and to my wife, Teresa, my first editor before my “copy” gets to other editors and publishers such as Victor Miller, Jimmy Espy and Andy Ashurst. I trust their judgment and rely on their experience in the world of publishing.

On a more personal level I’m thankful — but conversely, shudder at times — of being the patriarch in my family of brothers and our clans. Like many of you, our parents have passed and it’s up to us to share with our children and grandchildren what we perceive to be the secrets to success and getting along in life.

In this regard, I wish it could be said that I’ve always been a wonderful Christian example, but as many can attest, that’s simply not so. There have been times when impatience and irascibility (and more) have overruled my best intentions and motivations. As stated before, I’ve clung to 1st John 1:9 as a life buoy in the storm-tossed seas of life.

My Thanksgiving prayer is that each reader might find something, or many things, to be thankful for in this year — despite the doubts and fears most of us experience, and the outright evil we see in the world around us. I don’t know whether Lu Laverde (who describes himself as a “busybody at teaching English as a Foreign Language” at quora.com) is a deep theological thinker or just an astute observer of the human condition, but I think he’s onto something. God has a plan for each of our lives, in my opinion, yet he also gives us the freedom to make choices.

This year I’m thankful to be able to choose to write these words, and hope you can give thanks for living in a country where they’re allowed to be published. Amen.

Mark Millican is a former staff writer for the Dalton Daily Citizen.