Shannon here: Contemporary Romance author, Elizabeth Maddrey shares a funny story from her real life romance plus a chance to win a copy of her latest release, A Dash of Daring. Comment or answer the question at the end of the post to enter the drawing. Deadline: Nov 21st, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Elizabeth:
When my husband and I got engaged, we’d been dating for a year and a half and friends for a little over a year prior to that. Being an old fashioned sort, my husband had called and talked to my parents before proposing and gotten their blessing.
After he proposed, when I called, full of excitement, to tell my parents about it, my parents expressed their joy (and let me in on the secret that he’d asked them first.)
The next weekend, as I was talking to my folks, my mom and I had an amusing conversation that went something like this.
“You know, honey, getting engaged in real life isn’t like in the romances you read.”
(Yes, I was an avid romance reader even then.) “I know, Mom.”
“It’s good that you’ve known each other for so long. So that’s a positive thing. But have you had the hard conversations with one another yet?”
Here my mind started to race. The hard conversations? We’d had a lot of conversations. Some fun, others not quite so much. “Like what?”
“Let’s see. How many kids you both want to have? Your thoughts on disciplining those kids? How you’re going to handle conflict, what it’s going to look like when your upbringings are in conflict or when your father and I think you should do things differently than his parents do? Or how you’re going to handle finances? Those kinds of hard questions.”
Some of those, yeah, we’d talked about. But not all of them. “Can’t we just figure some of this out as we go along?”
Mom chuckled. “Some of it, yeah. But real life works better when you have a plan.”
Now she was speaking my language. So I scribbled down a few notes of the kinds of conversations Mom and Dad thought we should have before. The next time Tim and went for a walk, I very suavely (I thought) slid one of them into conversation.
“So…how do you think we should handle the holidays?”
Tim looked at me confused. “Huh?”
“When we’re married. Where will we go for Christmas and Thanksgiving?”
He just looked at me.
After a while, we did start having a few of those conversations (I had to come clean about why, which made him laugh.)
Fast forward to our six week pre-marital counseling class when the pastor brought up so many of the same questions that we’d been chatting about over the last several months.
With all our answers already hashed out, the pastor shook his head and said, “I’m not sure exactly what you need me for. You’ve already done all the homework I was going to assign.”
About Elizabeth: Elizabeth Maddrey began writing stories as soon as she could form the letters properly and has never looked back. Though her practical nature and love of math and organization steered her into computer science for college and graduate school, she has always had one or more stories in progress to occupy her free time. When she isn’t writing, Elizabeth is a voracious consumer of books and has mastered the art of reading while undertaking just about any other activity. She loves to write about Christians who struggle through their lives, dealing with sin and receiving God’s grace.
Elizabeth lives in the suburbs of Washington D.C. with her husband and their two incredibly active little boys. She invites you to interact with her at her website www.ElizabethMaddrey.com or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ElizabethMaddrey
About the book – A Dash of Daring: God doesn’t always call us to do what’s easy.
Amy Harris is the after-school care coordinator and long-term sub at the same inner city high school she graduated from. She’s always avoided the complications of dating outside her multi-ethnic heritage. Until Zach got hired.
Zach Wilson took a teaching job in a D.C. public school as part of a student-loan forgiveness program. Nearing the end of his commitment, a possibility arises to move to a magnet school in the suburbs. But will leaving the city end things with Amy before they really have a chance to start?
As Zach and Amy work together on the school’s annual holiday program, they must each decide if they’ll dare to follow where God calls.
Question for readers: Have you had an experience as an adult where your mom or dad was proven right?
Come back Nov 11th for Terri Reed!
Yes, about my ex-husband not being right one for me and that a family member would betray me!
Hi Shelia – thanks for coming by – but eek! I’m sorry about both of your experiences.
Me too Shelia. I hope they were right about something good too 🙂
My parents have been right about so much, I can’t even come up with a single incident. Safe to say – all of it.
Yes, I have. I won’t go into detail but with their help and prayers my life turned out for the better.
Janet, thanks for sharing (and for stopping by!) I definitely think prayers avail much – and prayers of parents are so special.
Thanks for dropping by!
It would be harder for me to think of an instance when they were wrong.
I’m blessed to still have my parents, Dad is 81 and Mom is 77, they have been married 59 years. I don’t live near them and don’t see them nearly often enough. As to prove they were correct, I am sure at some time or another.
Funny: Recently my youngest daughter and I were at a yard sale and she found a beautiful Seiko ladies watch, mother of pearl dial, diamonds for the numbers, and said, “Mom, you need to get this.” Well I did, for $2. I took a snapshot with my phone and sent to my husband. He took it into a Seiko dealer and had a new battery put in it. We were talking one night and I said something about my Dad said I should pull the stem out when not wearing it to save the battery. Steve said, “No, don’t do that, with the date, it will be a pain to reset.” Me: It doesn’t have a date? Does it? No? Steve: Yes it does. Me: I can’t see it, it must be so small. Pulls out cell phone and enlarges the pic and guess what? Yep, it has a date. I told him, I guess you were right.
My grandmother raised me and she was full of advise. Some of it was specious — like of you bathe more than once a week your skin will dry up and fall off. Around the age of 10, I horrified her by insisting on bathing daily. After several months with no ill effects, she actually started bathing more frequently, too — but she never would try a shower. She declared it “unnatural.”
One bit of advice she gave me is always on my mind these days. She told me I needed to treat my body more gently because I would only be issued one. I used to bash up my knees on a weekly basis — and now they have worn out. My left knee has no meniscus and my right knee isn’t far behind. Luckily, she was as wrong about the “no replacements” as she was about bathing, but I still wish I would have listened and not worn out the set of knees God gave me.
Most of the time my parent’s advice was spot on. I remember the day as a teacher when I found myself turning into my mom. I couldn’t believe it when I told one of my students who had been whining all day for no reason, “Stop your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” This was 30 years ago. I could not believe I had said that because I always hated it when my mother said that to me. My parents instilled so much in us kids. Now even at the age of 86, they are still imparting wisdom and advice.
Michele – the older I get, the more I realize that’s the case for me, too! 🙂
Kathy – Parents are so special, I’m glad yours are still with you even if you’re separated by distance and don’t get to see them too often. And I chuckled at the watch story. 🙂
Charlene – Your grandmother sounds like she was a pistol 🙂
Wilani – Oh, I’ve used that with my boys and the first time I was horrified to hear my mom coming out of my mouth. But…it did get them to stop crying! 🙂
I have a winner! Wilani Wahl won the drawing. I appreciate Elizabeth for being my guest and everyone else for stopping by.