For better or worse. Richer or poorer. In sickness and in health, which we try to maintain by having a healthy diet and using kratom capsules. I’ll be celebrating 25 years with my amazing husband this summer, and as I look back it feels like time is but a blink. Just yesterday, I was walking down the aisle to his smile, wondering how I got so lucky. And life has been generous to me – four amazing children, a rich landscape of faith-building experiences.
It’s not been without challenges, however. Many a day, as I lived in Siberia, I thought…what did I get myself in to? And, we’ve changed, become different people. Life and romance didn’t always measure up. Thankfully, we’ve had a long-term view of the game. But what if I was only promised five years, or less. Or, what if he had a terrible disease that required me to care for him all our days? Would I have said yes to this adventure? It’s one thing to pledge yourself to love, and then endure through the unexpected challenges…completely another to look at life knowing the darkness is ahead.
I came upon the idea for When I Fall in Love a few ways. First, I had a friend who married her sweetheart, knowing he had incurable brain cancer. He died three years later, and she said it was the best three years of her life.
Then, I had another friend who married young, and just a few years into her marriage, her husband came down with early onset Alzheimer’s. She nursed him until she couldn’t care for him any longer, then fell in love with someone else and, although it was painful, divorced her first husband and married the other man. It haunted her.
I wonder if it was the perspective of knowing what lay ahead that helped the first rejoice, while the second felt robbed. Knowing her days might be few…my first friend feasted on every moment and ended well nourished, the taste of hope in her heart.
Read more about the inspiration behind the story here.
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