Christine Lindsay – Real Life Romance – Part 1 of 1

Shannon here: Historical romance author, Christine Lindsay shares her daughter’s real life romance plus a chance to win an e-book copy of her latest release, Captured by Moonlight. Comment on any post dated Feb 18 – 22 to get your name in the drawing. Deadline: March 2nd, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Christine:

MY DAUGHTER’S ROMANCE By Christine Lindsay
Often as the mom of grown children, the romances that sweep us off our feet are those of our kids. My husband and I have a truly beautiful daughter, Lana. From the time she was a baby, she’s been sweet on the inside as well as on the outside. And from the time she was a baby I prayed that Lana would walk with God, get a decent education and career, and one day find the right man to be her husband.
I’m a big believer in romance,  and I believe that God is very much involved in the bringing together of two hearts. After all, He did that for my husband and me.
Lana walked with God. Oh sure she had her times when as a teenager she rebelled a bit. But on the whole, she loved the Lord and wanted God’s will in her life. She also wanted a husband who loved the Lord as much as she did, a man who would walk by her side through life, in a God-honoring way.
But the years passed.
Lana worked hard to earn her degree at university, majoring in history and English. She was reasonably happy in her job. But we celebrated her birthdays year after year. Twenty-four passed, twenty-five, and soon she was twenty-nine, and like a lot of women, not liking the idea of turning thirty and not married.
There were many times in my personal prayer time that I wept for my daughter. I knew she was lonely. As the years passed, I began to cry out to God to please send a nice Christian guy her way. I also knew that Lana prayed and wept too.
Lana helped out at church with the young people’s group, and attended a bible study for adults. One evening she came home from bible study with this perturbed set to her mouth, and told me about this guy at study. Man did he annoy her. The two of them for some odd reason kept having these theological arguments.
My ears perked up. Perturbed over theological arguments? My instincts said there was something else happening here. My instincts were right.
Several months later, Lana and James—that guy from the study—started dating. Nothing stupendous, just two nice young Christian people starting to go out together. But from the first moment I met James, I had a feeling—he’s the one.

Both Lana and James had been hurt before in previous relationships. And both of them wanted the same thing—a godly partner in life. At last they’d found each other.
Within six months we all knew this couple had been brought together by God. James came to our house one evening around Canadian Thanksgiving in October. He wanted to ask my husband and I—not for our permission to marry Lana—but for our blessing.
We were delighted. And while my husband simply teased James about a dowry in the form of a canoe, I gave James a three-point sermon on how to love a wife, and mostly how to love my precious daughter.
James took my husband’s teasing and my sermon in stride, but never actually said when he would pop the question to Lana.
The weeks passed.
I began to panic. After all that, no proposal? And I couldn’t exactly ask James what was the hold-up.
On a moonlit night in November James took Lana for a walk along the river, and kneeled down to give her a diamond ring—a ring I might add that the family affectionately calls the skating rink, it’s so big and  beautiful.
The next morning Lana showed it to me, and my heart swelled with joy and awe to God. He had heard our prayers for a godly romance in Lana’s life, and gave her the sweetness man.

The wedding was a blast. Friends and family, including our photographer, said Lana and James’s wedding was the happiest they’d ever attended.
Two years after the wedding, James and Lana are still holding hands. James still affectionately plays with Lana’s ponytail. I love watching them be in love.

When my publisher and I were looking for models for the front cover of Captured by Moonlight, my Book 2 in the series Twilight of the British Raj, I wanted Lana. My birth-daughter, Sarah, had been the model for the front cover of Shadowed in Silk. Lana isn’t the character of Laine in the book, but she is as beautiful as Laine.
So we dressed Lana in the gorgeous dress designed for this book, and the same makeup and hair artist that made up Lana for her wedding, did the 1922 style for the cover.
I especially love the photo of my daughter dressed up in her WW1 nurse’s uniform and being kissed by her real-life husband. Now that’s ROMANCE.
About Christine: Christine Lindsay writes historical inspirational novels with strong love stories, and she takes pride in her Irish roots. Her great grandfather and grandfather worked as riveters in the Belfast shipyard, one of those ships her ancestors helped build was the Titanic. On her mother’s side it was stories of ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in India that seeded Christine’s long-time fascination with the British Raj and became the stimulus for her Twilight of the British Raj series.   
The Pacific coast of Canada, about 200 miles north of Seattle, is Christine’s home where she lives with her husband, David, and they enjoy the visits from their adult children and grandchildren. Like a lot of authors, Christine’s chief editor is her cat.
About the book – Captured by Moonlight: Prisoners to their own broken dreams… 
After a daring rescue goes awry, the parched north of India grows too hot for nurse Laine Harkness and her friend Eshana. The women flee to the tropical south…and run headlong into their respective pasts. 
Laine takes a new nursing position at a plantation in the jungle, only to discover that her former fiancé is the owner…and that Adam has no more to say to her now than he did when he crushed her years ago. Why, then, is she still drawn to him, and to the tiger cub he is raising?
Eshana, captured by her traditional uncle and forced once more into the harsh Hindu customs of mourning, doubts whether freedom will ever again be in her future, much less the forbidden love that had begun to whisper to her. Is faith enough to live on? Or is her Savior calling her home? 
Amid cyclones and epidemics, clashing faiths and consequences of the war, will the love of the True Master give hope to these searching hearts?
Purchase: Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/Captured-Moonlight-Christine-Lindsay/dp/1939023009/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360076220&sr=1-1&keywords=captured+by+moonlight+by+christine+lindsay or at this time WhiteFire Publishing
Captured by Moonlight is being released in 2 stages—Ebook release Feb. 15, 2013, and paper back edition May 15, 2013. Check out:  Book Trailer for Captured by Moonlight
Come back Feb 25th for Lena Nelson Dooley!