Linda Leigh Hargrove – Real Life Romance – Part 1 of 1

Shannon here: Contemporary Fiction author, Linda Leigh Hargrove shares a sweet gesture from her husband that got her through a tough time. Share this post on Facebook or Twitter and comment where you shared it to enter the drawing for a copy of The Making of Isaac Hunt. Deadline: August 9th, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Linda:

An Unforgettable Valentine’s Day Gift by Linda Leigh Hargrove
Psalms 34:17, 18 The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
My husband and I have been married 23 years. We met briefly as college freshmen. It was not love at first sight but I have to admit I did think he was cute. Over time, our paths crossed more and more, then we got to know each other more.
Things soon started getting serious. When we got married we were both in graduate school, but as poor starving grad students we had class (no pun intended). A cheap date involved eating our meager dinner over candle light and listening to Sinatra and Nat King Cole on the radio. Our favorite song became ‘Unforgettable’ by Nat King Cole. We even bought the cassette tape of his greatest hits.
My husband is an electrical engineer and well, normally not the most imaginative when it comes to romance. My sense of romance is a little on the quirky side. Sometimes, I think he wishes my romantic notions were normal, like the ones you find in a romance novel or Hallmark movie. He used to buy me flowers and candy then take me out to dinner and a movie. I finally told him that I would rather have stayed in, made homemade cookies together, and watched an obscure John Wayne movie on AMC. I do like being treated like a lady though. When he gently places his hand in the small of my back as we walk through a crowd, I just melt.
In the late 1990s we discovered that I would have difficulty conceiving. This was a trying time for me. I cried myself to sleep a lot. I cried privately as I got ready for almost every single day in 1997. It was a dark spiritually dry time in my life. My husband tried his best to be supportive but he wasn’t the “problem”. I was. We had been married six years and did not have children. Most of our married friends at church had little bundles of joy. My customary prayer to God was “Why not me?”. I spent my days at work looking up “cures” on the web and hanging out in infertility chat room because it did not seem that my prayers were being heard.
I felt so alone, especially during the countless doctor visits. On one occasion my husband went with me to the drugstore. My doctor had recommended that I start using a digital basal thermometer. As I waited in the checkout line, one thought ran through my mind: Every morning as I use this stupid thermometer to record my dysfunction I will be reminded of my brokenness. I took a nose dive and the tears welled up. Before I knew it, I was crying in public. I had become like those miserable women I had read about online. They did nothing but obsess about having a child.
Many of those women had gone into major debt. Some had lost jobs or friends. A few had lost husbands. I was determined not to go that route. Dabbing my eyes, I glanced around. Where was my husband. Moments before, he’d been standing quietly behind me watching me cry (again). I guess I’d finally run him away. He’d had enough of my emotional outbursts, my endless questions to God, my pain. I covered my face as silent tears fell again.
Then I heard his voice. “Love,” he said, using my pet name. I felt his strong arm encircle me. My heart leapt and I kicked myself for being so irrational and melodramatic. Smiling, he handed me a small box of candy hearts. “I love you, Linda.” I was not alone. In that moment, I realized that I had never been alone. Just as sure as my husband stood by my side, the Lover of my heart held me every single day. I cried tears of joy.
Fast forward 17 years and one miscarriage later, we have three boys (three separate adoptions) and several unforgettable gifts of real love from God. My change of heart all started with that little box of sweets from my Sweetie. 
About Linda: Linda Leigh Hargrove blends suspense, humor, and faith into compelling stories about race and class in America. Her writings include two novels: The Making of Isaac Hunt (June 2007) and Loving Cee Cee Johnson (September 2008). She is an environmental engineer and currently resides in North Carolina with her husband and three sons. She blogs at http://17seeds.org.
About the book – Saving Tate Michaels:
Former FBI agent Tate Michaels’s past and present threaten to pull him further from his relationship with God and family when he needs them most. To save his family from a kidnapper bent on revenge, Tate Michaels must first lose himself. Read more at: http://llhargrove.com/saving-tate-michaels. (This third and last installment of the Isaac Hunt series is due out September 1, 2014 as an Amazon eBook.)
About the book – The Making of Isaac Hunt
At his grandfather’s deathbed, Isaac Hunt, a black man with blue eyes and skin so fair he looks white, learns his parents aren’t really his parents. Armed with only his birth mother’s name and the city where she last lived and reeling from betrayal, he goes in search of her and in search of the truth about his past. His odyssey takes him deep into the south, where the Klan still rules the small town of his birth, and where more than one person does not want Isaac to uncover the truth about who he his. Along the way, he must deal with issues of faith and forgiveness in this coming-of-age novel about race, identity, courage, and truth.
Come back August 4th for Rose Ross Zediker!