The Other Sara Nolt

     In my late teens, I was the secretary for my dad’s mechanic garage and needed to call an elderly lady named Sarah to update her on her vehicle’s status.

     “Hello,” I said when she answered. “This is Sara from LaVerne’s Repair, and I’m. . .”

     “Who is this?” she interrupted.

     I slowed down, something I have to do almost consciously sometimes. “This is Sara. I’m calling from LaVerne’s Repair.”

     “Ohhh!” Her voice dripped with relief. “For a moment I thought I had called myself.”

     Now, fifteen years later, I know how she felt. I recently wrote an email to another Sara Nolt, a person I expected to hear of sooner or later, considering my common Mennonite name. Before her existence was verified to me, I held the vague hope that she wouldn’t be a writer, thinking it would avoid confusion if she had other interests, like gardening, for example. No one could possibly confuse us then. But. . . no such luck.

     “You got a check in the mail today,” my sister told me. “It is from CLP’s Companions for a story you wrote.”

     I viewed the picture she included in the text, and didn’t recognize the title on the check stub. I hadn’t written the story. A few hopeful ideas came to mind. Maybe CLP had extra cash to send to their contributors and fabricated a title to fill in the blank. Or maybe the secretary’s finger twitched as she scrolled through lists of contributors and gave a random check to me. Or perhaps (gasp!) the confusion I feared had begun. And indeed it did. There is another Sara Nolt who writes. She lives in Ohio, CLP told me when they apologized for the mix-up.

     A single publisher is not alone in his confusion. Several months after I learned I had a twin, I got an email from my cousin in Belize, thanking me for a Christmas letter I did not send. I was puzzled for a few days until her explanation came –a flurry of words by way of apology. She has a friend, you see, in Ohio named Sara Nolt and we had both written around the same time and being great with child (pregnancy brain, you know), she was confused over which Sara she was writing.

     I asked my cousin for an email address and made contact with my twin. She responded yet that day with an introduction of herself and family: She is married and lives (surprise!) in Ohio. She does some writing, and includes her middle initial in her byline: Sara J. Nolt.

     And then she said it: “I read the book you wrote. It is a good booklet but I admit I wish you would have done a little introduction to the author in it. I had quite a few people thinking that I wrote it.”

     I froze. It is one thing for my story on overcoming a chronic problem to be aired publicly; it is quite another thing to taint a perfect stranger with my besetting sin. Though they felt insufficient, I offered my apologies for causing the confusion. She was gracious and kind –a likeable person to have as my twin. I want to meet her someday.

     To attach myself to the booklet (and free her from it), here it is: Overcoming Inferiority, for sale at Christian Light Publications for $3.95. You can click HERE for a link to it on their website.