Jeannette-Marie Mirich – Real Life Romance – Part 1 of 1

Shannon here: Jeannette Marie Mirich shares how she met her husband plus a chance to win a copy of  her Romantic Mystery, The Courtship of Harry’s Wife. Comment or answer the question in this post to enter the drawing. Deadline: July 15th, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Jeanette:

An Adventurous Life

Finals were upon us and all four floors of the library were crowded with students. It sounded like a beehive as I worked the information counter. Glancing at the wall mounted clock near the card files, I noted it was almost closing time. Working where students hunted for articles and grad students searched for the latest information in their field kept me busy most nights.

            A slip of paper was usually handed to me with a file number on it. I’d trot through the stacks to find a reference book after taking the narrow strip of paper. As the clock aimed toward 10:00 p.m., I took a slip from a blond, blue-eyed guy. Startled when reading it, I stepped back. The legible scrawl asked, “What’s your name?”

I was a townie, living at home, working, and going to college. My mother worked upstairs in government research. She’d told me to never give my name out. I never did until…out it came.

I broke my hard and fast rule. But he was cute with blue eyes alive with intelligence. He said, “Thank you,” and walked away. He looked like a freshman, with dimples that flashed when he smiled.

Rod’s version is slightly different. He had gone to the library to search for girls. Figuring that before finals he would find coeds studying in the stacks, he walked through all four floors of the building. Disappointed with his search, he was ready to leave when he spotted me. When Rod handed me the slip of paper, a voice in his head said, “You’re going to marry that girl.” When I said my name, he’d been so startled by the voice he forgot what I said. The next day he went back to the reception desk and asked my boss what my name was.

My boss took one look at him, smiled slightly (or so it was reported) and trotted upstairs to ask my mom if it was all right to give out my name. Mom shrugged. With pixie glee, Dorothy told Rod my name and when I worked next.

Two nights later he was there with twinkling eyes and inviting smile. Lingering by the counter, I took one look then went to shelve books. He followed. We talked a little. He said he was a pre-med major going to medical school in the fall. I raised my eyebrows. Everyone I knew who’d applied to med school wouldn’t hear until next term. I pegged him for a bragging freshman and kept shelving books.

He asked me out. I explained, “I work when I’m not in classes and no, we can’t go out. I’m booked for the next three weeks. I’ve finals, I’m dating two guys, and I haven’t the time.” My freshman year at OSU was crammed with classes, music, work, and guys.

Lifting his sculpted eyebrows, he said, “Okay,” and walked away. I worked three nights a week and on Saturdays. He was there every work shift to walk me home. And we talked. Or rather I talked, he listened. Rod is a reflective man and introvert. I had a vocabulary that cut its teeth on Dickens and Twain.

Finals.

He went to visit his sister in Utah.

I forgot about him as I worked all the week in the library.

Then, there he was again, at the information desk. Waiting.

His persistence was cute. Our conversations on the walk home, usually under an umbrella for this was spring in Oregon, and our taking a class in doubles tennis together made for interesting days.

P.S. My truthful husband really had been accepted in the fall of his senior year to the University of Oregon Medical school and given a full scholarship.

Giveaway

This is not the end of the story. God worked in wonderous ways as we came to faith during the Jesus movement in California.

To cut to the chase, Rod heard ‘The Voice’ again in 1974 while at the Survival School at Fairchild Air Force Base. By then, Rod was a flight surgeon, one of two doctors in charge of the medical care of the Air Force Survival Schools. He’d become a Christian months before. Praying at his desk that afternoon, he heard the same voice he’d heard in 1967.

“You’d better call that guy about his residency.” He knew which doctor and which residency as he recognized the voice that had drawn us together at the time we first met. 

His obedience led us to a life of adventure from Africa to Asia. And, of course there are stories.

Rod and I met in March of 1967 and were married in December of that year. We are one of the few couples from his freshman year in medical school that remain married to one another.

Question for Readers: Where have you traveled to? What was your favorite trip and why?

About: Jeanette: At heart I’m a small-town girl who has lived in cities from L.A. to San Antonio, Texas. A wanderlust has afflicted me since I was eighteen months old and took off to the grocery store. The gift of curiosity has led me to sign up for a trip around the U.S. when I was a junior in high school and to pack up my toddler and head to South East Asia during the Vietnam War so our family could be together. 

While my husband practiced obstetrics and gynecology in Michigan, I counseled at a Crisis Pregnancy Center, performed in Muskegon Civic Theater and worked on my masters in theater until the Lord spoke clearly to me to focus on my family. Obedience was a wise decision. We spent months at a time serving at mission hospitals with our kids in tow. In Kenya, later Ethiopia, and Mali I learned to adapt to the needs around me from teaching bible stories in local schools, creating theater costumes for a mission boarding school, weighing babies at ped’s clinics to serving trafficked women in Nicaragua. 

For twenty-five years my husband and I were part of the Marriage Commission for the Christian Medical/Dental Associations. We taught conferences in the U.S., Thailand, Kenya, and Greece to medical professionals. I credit God and the conferences for our years of joy. Passion for marriages built on a covenant relationship with God is an underlying message in my writing.

I also have mentored young woman with one-on-one discipleship, which is a delight and life transforming enterprise for both of us.

I received my B.S. in Education from Portland State University and taught in the Milwaukie, Oregon, public schools as well as in Pattaya Beach, Thailand. A background in theater led to my writing two-act plays which were produced in Oregon and Michigan for small audiences.

While our three children were young, I wrote for a West Michigan monthly magazine and worked on a novel. For several years my poems and short stories have been published in Groundwaters, a quarterly magazine based in Loraine, Oregon and in the poetry anthology, Ripples in the Water. Groundwaters is now producing an anthology each year. I am a contributor in poetry as well as short story. The privilege of having five suspense/romance novels published still has me flabbergasted.

I am a mother of three and Grammy to thirteen exceptional grandchildren. I travel from my Kentucky home to visit them in Kenya and Kansas. Quilting has also captured my heart since I began making them for preemie’s while my husband was in medical school. Currently, I am inflicting my love of colors and pattern on granddaughters and young friend. Learn more & connect:

Jeanette’s Blog            Jeanette’s Facebook              Jeanette’s Goodreads

Jeanette’s Bookbub            Jeanette’s Pinterest               Jeanette’s Newseltter Signup

About the books – The D.B. Burns mystery series: The series begins with the Delilah Morgan’s walk down a small town’s street on a quiet summer morning. What could go wrong? Read The Courtship of Harry’s Wife and find out.

Delilah Morgan, a woman of honor, is unable to ignore her promise to her husband, Harry, which leads to trouble with a capital T. The beautiful, unassuming Delilah plans to mourn in private after Harry passed, but he had other ideas, specifically having his wife protect3ed from the elite of their small Kentucky town. However, he neglected to tell his wife of his plans. For Harry had selected his friend, local judge Lyle Henderson, the town’s heart-throb, to court his widow. The judge acquiesces to Harry’s wishes until the discovery of two bodies in Henderson’s absent ex-wife’s car.

Delilah Burns Morgan is up to her neck in danger in The Last Roses. Confronting child traffickers has her on their hit list.

On a trip home from North Carolina, Delilah Burns Morgan is stopped in her tracks by a deer she whacks into oblivion. Recovering at Lyle Henderson’s, family’s estate, Delilah finds a mystery of death, trafficked children amid Lyle’s unsavory childhood friends. When Delilah’s best friend’s daughter disappears, Lyle Henderson and Delilah set of to find the traffickers and rescue Savannah and other girls from the drug infested world of child exploitation.

You Promised Me Paris is the last book in the Burns mystery series. Discovering a young man with a knife in his chest wasn’t not exactly what Delilah Morgan Henderson planned for her honeymoon.

Delilah didn’t not have a dream wedding. In fact, after their vows, she and Lyle race for a court appearance which reveals decades of secrets in their small Kentucky town. As the unwrap the wonders of their newfound love, they find working as a team to solve a murder challenging.

Can’t wait for the drawing? Worried you won’t win? Interested in Jeanette’s other titles?

Get your copy/copies now!    Jeanette-Marie Mirich Books

Come back July 7th for Jennifer Slattery!