Shannon here: Caryl McAdoo shares insight into her real life romance, plus a chance to win an e-book copy of her first mystery in the Cross Timbers Mystery series, DUPLICITY at the Lowell House. Comment or answer the question in this post to enter the drawing. Deadline: July 31st, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Caryl:
Mature Love: the Deepest, the Sweetest
First, thank you so much, Shannon for the opportunity to visit the Inkslinger today! When I thought about what message I’d write today, Holy Spirit quickly led me to bring an encouraging word about love. I’m qualified for that as I’ve been married to my husband for fifty-three years and can testify that my heart has never loved him more than it does today.
Ron and I met when we were sixteen, the summer before our junior year in high school. From our first date that June 24th, we spent time together every single day until his mother put a stop to it in November, but the dye was cast! We’d already decided on the name of our first son, Matthew Ebeling McAdoo!
It was true love and God’s divine plan. He came from a Church of Christ background (like David in my CHIEF OF SINNERS and JOHN DAVID’S CALLING). His precious, sweet grandmother warned him not to marry that Baptist girl unless she converted. I went to his church, no problem for me! I figured we loved the same God! I missed the instruments, but also enjoyed acapella!
Little did I know he wasn’t saved when we married in June after graduating in May at age eighteen. Looking back, we were such babies! Matthew arrived the following June and Greg in September the next year. In our fifth year, I filed for divorce. The devil convinced me the boys and I would be better off without him. I didn’t want it to go on until I hated him.
Just because a man and woman have been together doesn’t mean all fifty-three years were peaches and cream. A long marriage means the partners have been committed to the vows they made before God. It means both spouses have made compromises and worked hard at staying together through sickness, poverty, the worst—the bad times.
We remarried on our sixth wedding anniversary and in three months, I was pregnant again with the daughter I’d prayed for. Complications arose, and my doctor put me on bed rest. During that time, my mother received Holy Spirit’s baptism by praying, “If it’s real, Father, I want it.” Of course, she wanted that fullness of God for her firstborn, so she brought me books to read!
I had all day, laying in bed with all the time in the world to read. I did and prayed a prayer much like hers and received that glorious fire of God into my Spirit. I passed every book along to Ron. One was Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. At its end he said a prayer of his own. “God if You’re real, I want You, but if You’re not, Leave me alone!”
He reported salvation was instantaneous, that he’d never felt so clean in all his life. No wonder those first five years were so hard! He drove Mama and I to our first “Charismatic” church service in 1975, me in my last month of pregnancy. We prayed the instruments—drums, harps, guitars, trumpets, flutes, piano, organ, and more—wouldn’t offend him so bad that he got up and left the service!
I’ll never forget walking across that parking lot and him telling us he’d never sat through a two-hour
service before, much less one he went all the way through without wanting a cigarette! Yay! I’m not certain when he received Holy Spirit, but he did. So, after that, walking in the fullness of God, in so much love, do you think everything went fine with us?
No way. We were still people, and people aren’t perfect. They make bad decisions based on poor information or past hurts. In the years that followed, he hurt me and I hurt him. In the mid ’80s, it even got to where we literally divided the house right down the middle. He and the boys lived on one side, I lived on the other with my daughter and the new baby.
Yes, we had read that verse: “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” Mark 3:25. It still seemed like a solution at the time. That’s when I started going to early morning prayer, but that’s a whole other story. Suffice it to say that God moved in our lives and things got better—so much better.
All this to say, no matter what has happened, God is able. Trust Him. Fight the good fight, often on your knees, but obey Scripture, the Lord’s command: “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband.” 1 Corinthians 7:10 Our Father in Heaven is completely trustworthy, don’t leave your husband. Pray instead.
Giveaway
Together—with God—Ron and I have been to hell and back several times. The Lord saw us through “the worst” of our lives every time. To Him be the glory that I can now say. “We’ve been married fifty-three years.” The love Ron and I experience daily now is a hundred times deeper and more meaningful than on the day we got married—either time!
God has knocked off the rough edges on both of us, and we now enjoy every day together. As we’ve grown older and wiser together, there are hardly ever any more bad times, far, far from the worst ones we’ve been through. It’s a sweet love we share, a trinity love—Ron, me, and Holy Spirit.
With Him, in Him, we are perfect . . . or getting so close to it that soon, we’ll be looking just like the Son as Father completes that ‘good work’ He started in us back when we asked Him into our hearts! I am available to speak with and pray for anyone.
I forgot to talk about my new release SKULLDUGGERY in the Sulphur River Bottoms at all! It’s my second mystery! There are two couples in there who in different ways resemble Ron and me a lot! Henry and May Buckmeyer and Morgan and Charity Lowell! I’m sure you’re going to enjoy them.
About Caryl: Award-winning, Christian author Caryl McAdoo prays her story gives God glory. With twenty-one grandsugars, she loves writing for mid-grade and young adult readers as much as her historical Christian romances and mysteries! The far majority of reviewers give her stories five-stars and praise Caryl’s characters, counting them family or close friends by the end of a book. The prolific writer loves singing the new songs God gives her almost as much—hear a few at YouTube! She lives with her husband Ron on The Peaceable in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door. Learn more & connect:
Caryl’s Bookbub Caryl’s Website Caryl’s Newsletter
Caryl’s YouTube Caryl’s Facebook Caryl’s Facebook Readers Group
About the book – Duplicity at the Lowell House:
A friend loveth at all times, but a brother is for adversity.
There’s a human skull with a hatchet still in it in a crumbling shack in the river bottoms. Four friends set out to discover who it belonged to and who left the hatchet behind, and they’re going to write a book about it! Morgan and Charity Lowell are back, and she’s arranged for her handsome husband to solve the mystery and write another book about it–this time with the famous dime novelist May Meriwether. It’s hard not to get in the big middle of the investigation though!
Can’t wait for the drawing? Worried you won’t win?
Interested in Caryl’s other titles? Get your copies now!
Duplicity – Amazon Skullduggery – Amazon Caryl’s Books – Amazon
Question for Readers? When did you meet your soulmate? Or if you haven’t, when did you meet someone dear in your life? How old were you? Where were you? Did you know right away?
I met my husband on a blind date in June. By December I knew we were supposed to be married eventually. Our spiritual counsel suggested we wait and let God deal with some things in our lives before we got married. We were married 2 1/2 years after we met.
Just shows to go you! 🙂 Blind dates CAN be productive! Isn’t it fun that God can use all things to have us come into contact with that special someone He created just for us? Praise Him! I remember Ron and me talking with his Church of Christ pastor who married us, Paul Faulkner, but don’t remember him saying we should wait. My ears may have been closed to that idea??? 🙂 tee hee hee
Thank you for being here today Caryl. Thank you for being willing to be vulnerable and honest with us. My parents were married 53 years when mom died. That still hurts. But I do know she is singing with Jesus and no longer in pain. This is all good. I will see her again. I met Phil when we both went up to our church’s camp up in Michigan. We stayed for a week working. We got it ready for the summer kids coming up. Paint etc. A mutual friend got us together. It didnt work at first. But Gina was persistant. LOL This Sept. 10 we will be married for 38 years. Has it always been roses and ice cream? Nope. But we learn from the valleys and rapids. Funny it seems that the kids no longer live at home, we have more to discuss with each other about many things. This is a good thing. Communication has been the foundation of our marriage (Christ being first). And neither of us have really found it easy to do. Sigh. We continue to work at it.
The marriage counselor we went to while divorced (Ron’s mother begged us to go and offered to pay for it) said something like, “Well, there’s one thing you two have going for you that a lot of couples don’t, and that’s how remarkably well you communicate.” I didn’t know that, I guess it was something that came naturally for us . . . maybe because I asked Ron, “What are you thinking?” all the time. I still do! 🙂 tee hee hee
I have a winner! Lori Smanski won the drawing. I appreciate Caryl for being my guest and everyone else for stopping by.