Voni Harris – Real Life Romance – Part 1 of 1

Shannon here: Voni Harris shares her husband’s grand gesture on Valentine’s Day. Comment or answer the question at the end of the post for a chance to win a copy of my latest title, A Holiday Texas Reunion. Deadline: October 28th, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Voni:

THE GRAND GESTURE

You have not lived until you’ve been in a room of thirty Christian women, each one of them rolling with laughter, or gasping as they held arms around bellies sore with laughter, or wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.

But then, you’re not married to my hubby.

It was all his fault.

We were holding the usual women’s Tuesday morning group, preparing for Thursday’s Bible study. To be specific, it was Tuesday, February 14.

So you see where this is going.

No.

Nearly impossible to see what was coming, though it was February 14th.

See, my hubby saw an ad for the Louisville Thoroughbreds, a men’s chorus that has won the International Barbershop Harmony Society seven times. But he didn’t tell me that. He just made a point of asking me where my meeting was that day.

I was expecting flowers when I spied the men standing outside the meeting room, looking around, shuffling around in a little confusion … for they weren’t nervous. They were performers. But imagine things from their perspective. They were hired to sing for one woman, and here they were standing outside a room of thirty women.

I sensed they were there for me, though, wondered vaguely why it took four men in bow ties to deliver Valentine’s flowers, and got up to slip out of the meeting.

But our leader, Bev, was seated where she, too, saw them. “Come on in,” she called. Thanks, Bev!

The men stepped into the room, stood in barbershop formation, and sang to me. Whereupon, all thirty of us began swooning, laughing raucously, and just enjoying the moment.

Truly enjoying the moment.

Yep. My hubby is great at The Grand Gesture.

I’m sure those performers extraordinaire didn’t expect a normal day when they decided to do Valentine’s Day singing telegrams, but I like to think the men enjoyed this moment as much as we did, as much as I did, perhaps went home and told their wives.

I know for sure the women in our group went home and told their hubbies. At the year-end banquet a few weeks later, several of their husbands stepped up to Rich and teased him for making them look bad on Valentine’s Day.

And it’s Rich—the noun, not the adjective—for the Valentine’s Day win!!!!

Yep. My hubby is great at The Grand Gesture.

Thing is, he’s also great at the solid, steady, consistent, day-in-day-out stuff that makes love real. That, not The Grand Gesture, is why I fell in love with him. I knew I would never have to doubt his love because he is a man of deep loyalty, deep commitment, deep passion for family, and deep living for God.

And even when life has thrown curve balls at us, he has been that same kind of man.

With the occasional Grand Gesture thrown in to make our love interesting.

Voni Harris writes Christian suspense from her family’s home on the beautiful Alaskan island of Kodiak. She has a husband, a golden retriever and a wheaten terrier to keep her from sitting at the computer too long at a time, and a daughter and toddler grandson to keep life energetic. Voni has been published in two-short story collections, Heart-Stirring Stories of Romance, (Linda Shepherd, editor) and Spiritual Citizens, at http://drawneartochrist.com (Kim Bond, editor). Nothing Hidden won the 2013 ACFW First Impressions contest, and RWA’s 2015 Daphne DuMaurier contest.

Question for Readers: What Grand Gestures do you or someone you love do to keep life interesting, and what do you do daily, consistently to keep your life steady?