Sarah Price's Blog, page 31

I’m excited to share A Simple Prayer, the final book in my Hearts of the Lancaster Grand Hotel series, with you. It was bittersweet for me to write this book. This series has been an emotional journey for me as I grew to know and love the characters. It seems as if it was only yesterday when I was writing book #1, A Hopeful Heart.

Here is a blurb for A Simple Prayer:

Linda is no stranger to hardship. Now she dares to hope for a chance at love and a new beginning. As the sole survivor of a buggy accident that left her orphaned at age four, Linda Zook was reluctantly raised by her Uncle Reuben. She longs to be worthy of someone, but the lasting trauma of her injuries and embittered upbringing have destroyed her self-worth. When Hannah Peterson asks her to work at the Heart of Paradise Bed & Breakfast, she’s finally able to realize some confidence.

Aaron Ebersol left the Amish community seventeen years ago when he could no longer bear the restrictions or the constant tension with his father. Despite years of unanswered letters to his parents and the roots he’s put down in Missouri, Aaron rushes back to the Amish community of Paradise, Pennsylvania, after receiving word of his mother’s stroke. Hesitant to get too close to the family he was once a part of, he decides to stay at the Heart of Paradise Bed & Breakfast. Talking with Linda allows him to explore his feelings about his family and his position in the Amish community.

As Linda and Aaron open up to each other, their feelings for one another turn into more than friendship, and Aaron must make a decision about his future as an Amish man.

Can Linda and Aaron forgive the family members who have deceived and forsaken them? And will Aaron be able to convince Linda that she is worthy of his love?

Since A Simple Prayer is the last book, the story will answer some questions and solve a couple of mysteries that I created throughout the series. You will also see loose ends from other books tied up during the course of this story.

For those of you who are sad to read the last book in my Hearts of the Lancaster Grand Hotel series, don’t fret! I’m working on a new series, and I’m excited to share more with you soon.

Your book sounds wonderful, Amy. Thanks so much for stopping by today!  Amy is graciously offering a copy of A Simple Prayer to one lucky winner.

To enter leave a comment.  For an EXTRA chance share this post and leave a comment if you do.

Giveaway starts today, Wednesday, June 3rd and ends on Wednesday, June 10th.

*Giveaway is only open to US residents*

Amy Clipston has been writing for as long as she can remember. Her fiction writing “career” began in elementary school when she and a close friend wrote and shared silly stories. She has a degree in communications from Virginia Wesleyan College and is a member of the Authors Guild, American Christian Fiction Writers, and Romance Writers of America. She is the author of the bestselling Kauffman Amish Bakery series with Zondervan, which is part of HarperCollins Christian Publishing. An advocate for organ and blood donation, Amy donated a kidney in 2011 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Through her donation, her husband received a second kidney transplant. Amy and her husband matched another couple and swapped kidneys with them. Amy’s memoir, A Gift of Love, will be available in early 2014. She hopes her story inspires others to become organ and blood donors. Amy lives in North Carolina with her husband, two sons, mother, and four spoiled rotten cats.

Connect with Amy! AmyClipston.com|Facebook|

Food is boring.

At least, as the main meal provider for the family, I find food boring. With the exception of spaghetti with meat sauce (I make a killer meat sauce!), no matter what I make, someone has something to say about it.

Let’s face it. As the wife and mother of the house, it’s a lot of pressure on our shoulders to provide all of the nourishment for our families. After a while, I start to just remake the same old reliable meals: spaghetti, meat loaf, chicken on the bone (that’s what Cat always called it), and chicken caesar salad.

If I make ham, Cat and I get emotional because of our piggy. If I make steak, Alex doesn’t like the texture. If I make fish, they all act like I’m trying to poison them. Cat basically grew up on chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, and green beans. Alex? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, and green beans. Yes, my son had a more explorative palate than my daughter as a child.

This one likes baked potatoes. That one likes applesauces. No one likes pickled beets except me.

Sometimes I just give up and order in.

The problem is that I actually like to cook. And, while I know that they like to eat, they just don’t like to eat what I cook.

OK, full disclosure. I do tend to forget that I’m cooking. It happens a lot. A few of my readers might remember the time that I blew up a chicken in the oven. Just the other day, I was making my good ole spaghetti rescue dish. While browning the meat, I wandered outside and completely forgot about the food because Marc bought me flowers to plant (which, frankly, is a lot more fun than browning meat).

Alex opened the sliding door and yelled out, “Uh…hey Mom. You cooking something?”

I pretended that I hadn’t forgotten and nonchalantly finished planting the marigolds, wiped my hands on my pants, and slowly walked back to the house.

Too late.

It was smoke filled and Marc had just walked in the door. I was stone-cold busted and the meat was red-hot burnt.

Take two was more successful.

Anyway, I made a decision on Sunday that I’m going to try that “Cooking with Julia Childs” trick from the movie. Only I’m not going to use Julia Childs’ cookbook. If you saw the movie and bought the cookbook to try cooing every recipe in the book, chances are that if you are like me, you read through the recipes and realized defeat before you even started. I don’t think I’ve made one recipe in that book. It’s like doing Calculus…so many ingredients, measurements, steps. With my attention span, forget it.

So I am choosing Ina Garten as my Julia Childs. Her recipes are simple, easy, and usually not chock full of ingredients that any normal food store carries (with the exception of morels which are super delicious and I can only find at Kings supermarket on occasion). I have a few of her cookbooks so I picked one book out and started.

The first dinner recipe is Panko crusted chicken and the first vegetable recipe is sauteed green beans with pine nuts. VOILA! Dinner is served!

They can complain (although I think I will have a winner on my hands) but at least I don’t have to think about what to cook. I’m going to let Ina Garten walk me through spicing up my food life.

Follow me on Instagram. I’ll post nightly photos of the first week’s recipes. See how you like my experiment.

Hopefully I don’t burn too many dishes.

And hopefully Ina saves my dinner table from the same old bland boring food dishes to some new culinary cuisines that open their eyes to the wonderful world of fine cuisine. Or, at least, fun cuisine.

My husband complains that I love change too much.

Ladies, does this really come as any surprise? I’m not sure why he seems so taken aback by my desire to change things up a bit: redecorating the living room, rearranging the bedroom, adding more pretty plants to the garden, reversing a decision about something that I previously opposed.

Change is inevitable. Otherwise, we’d all still be living off the land, traveling by horse-drawn wagons, suffering in the summer heat, and shivering in the winter cold.

And who hasn’t heard that a woman is prone to change her mind. That’s our prerogative. Right, ladies?

One thing that I have noticed is the change in my writing style. It’s amazing how much it has changed over the years, hopefully in a good way. I find that developing characters is easier since I can usually put myself into their heads when I write. Describing settings is another increasingly easy part of the writing job since I see where the characters are and simply transcribe what I’m envisioning.

But, as in life, my stories are not always happy-go-lucky everything-is-wonderful type of books.

Apparently my latest manuscript is one of them.

As always, my dear husband, Marc, is the first to read my drafts. He is one of the smartest men that I know…maybe the smartest men that I know…except, apparently, in matters of dealing with a writer-wife-who-is-prone-to-change.

“Did you get through the first ten chapters?” I asked.

“Two.”

“What?! Only two?” I’m stunned.

That was the wrong answer. I wanted to throw something at him, mainly his laptop so that he’ll get with the program and read the other eight. However, I’m biting my tongue and sitting on my hands (plus his laptop is no where in sight).

“Well,” I finally say, trying to sound calm. “It’s due in just a few weeks. Might I ask what you thought about those first two chapters?”

And then he did the unthinkable: He told me!

“Well, to be honest,” he started without any hesitation whatsoever—I honestly have no idea what he was thinking—“I don’t know if it’s your mood or the writing, but those two chapters were very gloomy.”

Gloomy?

GLOOMY?

It took me a moment to register the fact that my dear, sweet, loving husband just called my adaptation of Sense & Sensibility ‘gloomy’…even if he had only read the first two chapters.

“Seriously? You didn’t just say ‘gloomy’, did you? Come on, Marc. Their father dies on page two! Are they supposed to be laughing it up and partying? Hee heeing and haw hawing? Their futures have completely changed and not for the better! Of course it’s gloomy!”

That’s when he shrugged.

He’s lucky that laptop was no where in sight because then I really might have chucked it at him.

Look, let’s face it. Writers are creative people. We also have a little crazy in us. We have to because our job is to observe, think, and write (and edit…oh boy, do we edit!). It’s a solitary career, one that requires us to miss out on girls’ lunches, say no to candle parties, and neglect to make dinner if we are on a roll. People like to offer us their ideas for what would be a great story or ending or character, but if we don’t own the idea, we certainly cannot write about it. So not only do we live inside of our own heads, we work there, too. Brainstorming buddies are great to have. In the long run, however, the ultimate decision to make or break a character is ours and ours alone.

Our greatest moment of glory is not in publishing the book nor in the sale of the book but in what people think about the book.

Calling a story ‘gloomy’ or shrugging shoulders is akin to telling someone that their newborn baby is funny looking! Or, even worse, ugly!

When you read a book that you simply loved, leaving a review is truly the only paycheck a real writer wants. Real writers write because they have stories in them…not for royalties or advances or rankings (although those would be nice to have, too). Writers who love the craft of storytelling do it so that someone—and hopefully a lot of someones—read the story and say, “Wow! That was a great book!”

Now, to return to the topic of change…

Back to the editing board I must go, re-reading the draft for the bazillionth time, to see if it is, indeed, gloomy. Too gloomy. And if it is, I guess my love of change might just be a good thing to have after all.

I’m writing this blog, sitting by my parents’ pool on a breezy, but sunny, Memorial Day. Little white petals flutter down from large sixty foot trees and blow across the patio. They look like snowflakes until they blow into the pool, the water pushing them into a cluster near the steps.

I’m in one of my moods. You know, the type of melancholy moods that writers…and people…are prone to have. It’s been a weekend of “There’s no food in the house” and “What can I eat for breakfast?”—even though it is 1pm. As a mother, the demands placed on me have really put me in a yucky place.

I know exactly what I need: to go away for a while.

Just like Anne in Persuasion.

Just like Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.

Did you ever wonder why all of these people, people who lived idyllic and privileged lives with large estates, servants, and little to really worry about other than the weather, took vacations to Bath or London?

I’m certain it was, in part, due to a feeling of “blah” regarding their lives and surrounding environment.

That’s how I feel. Blah.

On May 31st, it will be two years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a result, I have suffered emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Don’t most cancer patients? While I did not get sick from chemo or radiation (although I DID get sick OF chemo and radiation), it has been the “after” that has presented the most pain.

After a double mastectomy.

After implants.

After skin infections.

After chemo. (#HATED)

After surgery to remove the reconstructed boobies.

After life-threatening infections.

After blood transfusions.

After skin grafting.

After radiation. (YUCK)

After yet another after surgery.

After fat grafting (OW!!!)

Blah.

To continue reading “wander” over to Austenauthors.net 

Sometimes life is just absolutely overwhelming.

I know you understand because everyone–EVERYONE–has hardship. We are imperfect people in an imperfect world. So, we all deal with sickness, relationship issues, money issues, stress, death–they are all facts of life.

Have you ever found yourself in one of those times and you feel totally lost? The kind of lost where you don’t even have words to pray?

Or, maybe instead of praying, you talk to people around you even though you know there is nothing they can do? Toward the end of the conversation you say, “All I can do is pray, I guess.” (You may even end your statement with a heavy sigh.)

Here’s what I imagine God does when He hears that–

He leans over, looks down, and takes a deep breath saying, “REALLY? ALL you can do is pray? All you can do is call out to your Heavenly Father…the Father Who created you? All you can do is release the power of Heaven into your situation. Really?”

Why is it that prayer is often a last resort? Why is that prayer seems insignificant somehow when, actually, it is the most power tool we have?

Ephesians 3:30 MSG says, “God can do things, you know-far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!”

Let’s start making prayer our first choice. Let’s start making prayer our hope, our answer, our delight.

I love this quote by John Lindell, “God is powerful enough to change your situation and personal enough to enter into the emotion of it.”

Lisa Bull sees her life as a journey along God’s divine plan. While considering herself an expert on nothing, she enjoys laughing and has made “choosing joy” her motto. Lisa has experienced God’s unfailing love and grace in her life and wants nothing more than for others to enjoy that same gift in their lives.

Lisa is the daughter and granddaughter of ministers. She has multiple relatives in ministry on both sides of her father’s family including several pastors, pastor’s wives, and missionaries. In fact, ministry in her maternal grandmother’s family can be traced back several generations. She loves being a wife and mother of two terrific young men.

Visit Lisa at mommalisaof2-LISA’S PERCEPTIONS

Last night, around 1am, I sat with Marc for a break in my writing and editing marathon. Without doubt, I had a “stressful” day…between books being in various stages of editing (#help) and new manuscripts due soon (#doublehelp), it was a late night for one writer (#me).

A thought suddenly crossed my mind. It was a flash, like lightning…one of those thoughts that strike me from time to time. Sometimes I think it is God talking to me. A little whisper in my ear…

“You know, Marc,” I said, my bottle of chilled cucumber water in hand. “We live an unusual life.”

He looked intrigued and, with his deep voice and thick French accent—the one he denies having!—he asked, “How is that?”

I wasn’t certain how to explain it to him.

Some of my more ardent followers may have heard me mention the period of my life when I travelled with a circus. As a student of anthropology, my professors applauded my travels, letting me miss classes if I flew back for my examinations. I even wrote my Senior Thesis at Drew University on this experience.

I loved traveling to different towns, seeing the reaction of the children’s faces when they saw elephants, tigers, and clowns. I loved the smell of the animals and popcorn, the noise of laughter mixed with music. And I loved the normalcy of standing with my friends, engaged in a normal conversation only to have an elephant reach out with her trunk, the tip of her nose poking around at my pocket for the pack of mints that she knew I kept there.

Doesn’t everyone have an elephant trying to steal mints from their pockets?

Circuses make people happy. I loved being there to see them leave their cares behind as they performed and, even if for two short hours, be happy.

Fast forward twenty-five years: not much has changed.

Yesterday, I stopped by the barn to see how Marc’s day was going.

After catching up with him, instead of immediately leaving, I jumped the fence into the pony paddock and said hello to the goats, donkeys, and two baby ponies, Cooper and Autumn (or, Amber, as I always call her for some strange reason). I sat down and let the little white donkey nibble at the back of my neck while Cooper came over to chew on my shirt.

In the paddock next to me, my daughter’s two-year-old mustang whinnied, probably wondering why Cat hadn’t arrived yet for their daily training session. Cars began to pull into the parking lot, mothers bringing their children for their scheduled riding lessons. In the closest ring to the barn, instructors worked with their riders, teaching them how to take a two-point position before jumping over the cross rails. And, in the distance, one of the workers led two Percheron horses to the back pasture where another fifteen horses already grazed.

Just a different type of normal?

Writing books is not a job; it’s a passion. I suspect that most writers need to be a little off their rocker in order to sit for days on end, hour after hour, staring at a blank screen and watching as it fills up with words, sentences, paragraphs. We live in our imaginations, working to bring the stories in our head to the rest of the world. We have heightened emotions in life so that we can transfer that to fiction. If we are successful, our readers will want more.

Creativity isn’t something that can purchased, outsourced, or even scheduled. It simply happens when it happens, although I have found that the more I write, the more I want to write and that leads to the need to write. Some days, I might write only 1,500 words and others might find 7,500 new words on the screen. There are nights when I stay up until 2am writing because the words are just there…inside my head waiting to come out. And then, a few hours later, I get up to see the children off to school before starting to write again.

But it’s not all about writing.

Yesterday I was in discussion with a Los Angeles record label regarding music and merchandise for an upcoming series, scheduling a photoshoot with my publisher in Manhattan, trying to organize the logistics of a San Diego book signing, planning a social media campaign #secondchances, and researching flight information for the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual Convention in October. I’m practicing for a dancing competition in a few weeks and organizing transportation for Cat’s two out-of-state mustang competitions.

Because isn’t that all in a day’s work?

So last night, when the realization struck me that our type of normal is, perhaps, a bit abnormal, it came as quite a surprise.

Both Marc and I have a passion for what we do. Our goal is to make people happy: Marc through his riding programs and I, through my writing. Success only comes on the heels of working seven days a week, sometimes with 14-16 hour days. We have to find time to squeeze in “normal”: family dinners, movie nights, and catch-up times. I steal ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there so that I have that one-on-one time with both of my children. It’s quality time, after all, not quantity time that counts.

This word has many different meanings to different people, doesn’t it? Some people love it…Silence is golden.

Some people dislike it…Silence is deafening.

But to me, silence has many facets. There are times where I treasure the quietness, the silence in my home. It gives me time to relax, time to think, time to look inward and focus on my “self” so to speak. And time to collect myself and my thoughts, decompress from all noise of the day. Even enjoy a good book or listen to the sounds of silence…the sounds you miss when things are too noisy around you. Including the sounds of your heart.

But then there are times that silence plays a toll on you, the times when it is deafening. The roar in your ears of what could have been, or what can be. The times when what if’s become too noisy to handle.

While we have so much noise around us…our television sets, our radios, our telephones…most Amish (but not all) do not have those things in their everyday lives. The silence is much more comfortable for them. But not always. There’s the scary silence that comes from a frightened heart that we all have to deal with.

That seems to be where my life is right now. Silence gives me too much time to think. The what ifs and what will bes circling around in my head and scaring my heart. These are the times I try to remember the things I’ve learned to cherish about the Amish culture. The focus on the now, the focus on family, and the focus on caring for each other. But most of all, regardless the culture, focusing on God. Because HE is what will bring me through the silence.

Sue Laitinen is a book worm at heart. When she is not between the pages of a good book she loves spending time with her grandchildren. Sue resides in the great state of Pennsylvania where she likes her sandwichs loaded with fries plus a little cole slaw and her shelves stocked with books.

Jealousy. That’s right. A capital J for Jealousy. It starts in childhood and continues into adulthood. And it’s getting on my last nerve. If you follow me on Facebook, you may know that my daughter, Cat, is training for the Youth Mustang Challenge. Just over a month ago, we picked up her assigned baby mustang and she has been working with the horse every day since then.

And yet, the ugly green eyed monster has reared its head. Again. Last week, she was attacked on social media by someone. When her friends jumped in and began defending her, they, too, were attacked. Later that evening, one of the mother’s contacted me and began berating me about Cat. “Of course your daughter was attacked. Everything is about Cat, Cat, Cat.”

Say wha’? Who, exactly, is telling the mother that? Could it be her own daughter? “I don’t know who your daughter has in her back pocket to get all of this media attention…” the mother continued.

Me, that’s who.

The entire program was intended to demonstrate how working with horses builds confidence in young children while rescuing animals that are, otherwise, headed to the slaughterhouse. This program was a pilot to be duplicated in future years with other riders. I will not apologize for my professional background and extensive education in marketing. Maybe someone else has an expertise in psychology or finance. If they use that to benefit their own child, I doubt anyone would grumble. But turn on that spotlight and suddenly the green eyes glow in the surrounding darkness.“…and sponsors!” the mother added with a huff.

Hmmm. That’s ironic to mention because that’s exactly what the social media bully said. And, to answer both of them: Cat is not making money from this. That’s a ridiculous claim. As for the sponsors, they happen to be part of the community and they are supporting a little girl’s dream…not financially but emotionally!

What is it with people?

As a child becomes successful in following her dreams—which, for Cat, is to be a horse trainer—she gets put down? By an adult?

Oh, it’s not the first time Cat has been on the receiving end of green-eyed monsters. Nor is it the first time she has experienced heartache from little girls and their parents. I’m only thankful that

she has a healthy environment to follow her dreams. She drinks bottled water (not booze), chases horses (not boys), and wears riding clothes (not crop tops and super short mini-skirts). Oh, and let’s not forget that she has good friends at the barn that support her for who she is and not for what they can get out of her.

She’s not perfect. Frankly, she’s a bit of a messy creature at home and eats too much ice cream. She can be loud and unruly. But she’s not “cruel” or self-absorbed, although she does like to take selfies. She’s a thirteen-year-old that has a passion for horses, sticks up for bullied kids at school, and loves her little group of friends with a fierce loyalty. Having been abandoned by “friends” in the past and left on her own during the initial part of my cancer treatment, she knows pain. And she also know that comes with the territory of walking to the beat of her own drum.

She sacrifices a lot in order to follow that tune, a melody that is full of rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns on most days. She’s happy to share her world with others, but she also feels the pain of people who want only for their own child and don’t think about how selfish they are in leaving a trail of heart-broken children in their path.

People make choices in life and those choices often impact the outcome of what we consider to be happiness. Maybe a child is an Honor student or exceptional soccer player. Maybe the family skis in Colorado or take trips abroad. Or maybe they spend the summers at the beach or a foreign country. Perhaps they shouldn’t because not all of us can?

Please.

Here’s the bottom line. I’m not going to begrudge Cat this experience. Nor am I going to deny it for other deserving riders. We are learning as we go along and that knowledge will be applied to next year’s participants. If they, too, are willing to work every day, study horse training every night, and maintain good (if not great!) grades at school, excellent! But they better have a thick skin because someone somewhere will have something awful to say about it, perhaps because they cannot make such a commitment or don’t like other girls getting attention for their hard-work and success.

And believe me…they will get attention for such a commitment. Besides writing, that’s what I do: market.

That is something that I will not apologize for.

If you are lucky enough to have decent healthcare, you definitely pay a hefty price. If you have insurance through your workplace, you still have to pay enough money that it financially hurts.

Really hurts.

But let’s try a different scenario.

Imagine that you are diagnosed with cancer and, despite offering to work online or offsite, your employer terminates you.

Now, you have:

A. no income,

B. no ability to get a new job (who wants to hire you when you have surgeries galore?), and

C. Cobra payments, which are almost $2000 a month for two people (you and your husband).

No wonder they call it “Cobra”: that’s a lot of shekels to shell out, considering you have to earn 30% more in order to have the $2000 to pay…but can you afford it? After all, you were just terminated from your job because you have cancer.

Where is the logic in this system?

Let’s continue the story. The insurance company sees that your cancer treatment is a-typical, full of extra surgeries, infections, multiple reconstructions, blood transfusions, hospital stays, and endless other medical bill. What do they do? They raise the premium. Whenever they want.

When you pay the old rate, not knowing that they have changed the premium for the second time in four months, they cancel your health insurance.

No letters. No warnings. Just cancel it.

And, after receiving a letter dated 5/3/15 that I was qualified to continue my insurance for another year, I contacted the number and spoke with the supervisor of billing (who is answering the main telephone number, btw): “It was canceled last Thursday. Sorry. You have no health insurance and we will not reinstate you.”

Thank you, Ms. Mary Lou Ext. 4965853 (that was all the information she would give to me). Your emotionless and shocking announcement showed exactly how compassionate Aetna is about their clients.

I wonder how it feels to work at a company that provides health care insurance? Raising premiums on sick people. Canceling policies without telling the policy holders. Underpaying medical bills, even though they agreed to pay a certain percentage.

Gee, I’d go home at night and really feel like a louse.

The problem with our healthcare system cannot be fixed with political programs and Obamacare. It needs to start with accountability by the insurance companies.

They can do what they want. They simply do not care.

Here’s a little tidbit for you. Did you know that if you sue a health care provider, chances are that the insurance company pays out of court just to get rid of you? Then they spread the cost of that payoff to the people paying insurance. They don’t even bother considering whether it is a frivolous lawsuit or the fact that the person signed a waiver stating their awareness of the risks.

The insurance companies just write a check.

And guess who pays for that check? YOU! ME! Everyone with healthcare.

That’s illogical.

So many people in our country need good healthcare. Americans are supposed to be the leading world power, but we have horrendous healthcare (among other things). Who, exactly, do we complain to about being mistreated? The insurance company leaves us with one, and only one, choice: lawyers. And, as mentioned above, the insurance companies know how to resolve litigious problems—which, ultimately, increases the price for everyone else.

I’m tired of dealing with what should have been a simple, routine breast surgery. The first plastic surgeon messed up and then left the country on vacation for ten days. Other doctors came along to try to fix his mistakes. TWO YEARS LATER, I’m still not finished. The physical stress and emotional strain has been so horrible that I’ve been diagnosed with cancer-related PTSD (but that is another post). Only now, I don’t have the healthcare to keep on trudging…with no warning, no explanation, no anything. Nice.

We call it healthcare, but tell me where, exactly, is the “care?”

He stood by the side of the buggy, the door already open as he waited for her. Without a word, he reached for her hand and helped her step into the buggy. When he followed, it jiggled under his weight, and she steadied herself as she sat on the small seat. “It’s getting cold,” he said and reached behind the seat for a blanket. With great tenderness, he covered her lap and smiled at her. “Better?” She nodded. “Now, tell me,” he said as he depressed the foot brake and gave the reins a slight slap upon the horse’s backside. The buggy lurched forward and headed down the road. “What has you looking so perplexed, my sweet Anna?” Words escaped her, and she remained mute at his side. Slowly, his expression changed. She wondered if he suspected what she was going to say. If he did, surely he knew how heavy her heart felt. “Anna?”

Taking a deep breath, she shut her eyes, saying a quick prayer to God for the strength to speak what weighed so heavily on her mind. There was no easy way to tell him, so she chose to be candid instead of softening her words. “Freman, I cannot marry you in November.”

She waited for his response. For a moment, he remained silent. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and blinked rapidly to stop them from falling. She couldn’t imagine his devastation at the news. After so many long buggy rides home from the youth singings on Sunday evenings, their compatibility more than apparent to both of them, it had been only natural that they would marry. She wanted to marry him. But when she informed Lydia and asked how best to tell her daed, she quickly learned that her admiration for Freman was not shared by others. How could she defy the advice of her mother’s best friend or the wishes of her own father?

He focused on the reins of the horse and seemed to contemplate her proclamation. “I see,” he finally said. “I know you think you must wait until you turn eighteen, Anna. So, if we must wait until spring . . . ” He let the sentence linger between them. “Freman, spring isn’t the answer.” “I know it’s unusual, but more young couples are doing that these days,” he responded. When he glanced at her, she looked away. “It’s not that I cannot marry you in the spring,” she whispered. “It’s that I cannot marry you ever.”

Want to read more? I hope so!!