MUSE MONGAY
I love this post by guest, Liz Flaherty, for Muse Monday. A long married life can be quite the inspiration for a book. And having one of those long marriages, I can relate. Maybe you will too...
We’ve been married for a long time. Make no mistake—I’m glad for that. I still love the guy who sits in the other recliner and can’t imagine a day without him in it. But there are days…oh, yes, there are days. I thought that after the kids were raised, things would be easier. And they were. And then I thought when we retired, life together would be such a piece of cake…so easy. We’d spend all our time together and cultivate mutual interests and we’d travel and…
What was I thinking?
No, it’s not particularly easy, but I love every day of our
lives together. We’ve been lucky…yes, and worked hard…so that we’ve never
separated from each other. While we’ve had both loud times and silent ones,
we’ve been in the same place. We held onto the idea that the next day would be
better. Sometimes it took more than one, and we were okay with that, too.
But not everyone makes it all the way through the loud and
silent times.
And maybe not enjoying anything at all. At least, Nash
isn’t.
Divorced and in search of herself, Early moves back to the
Ridge in rural Kentucky. She takes care of Nash’s father after he has heart
surgery, of her mother when she breaks her ankle, and…finally…of herself, too.
As she builds a quilt shop named A Soft Place to Fall, she also creates a life
for herself.
But then there’s Nash.
A Soft Place to Fall was first released in 2013.
Nine years later, with a few changes, it still feels relevant—even more so to
me now because I know just how hard it can be to rebuild from the ground up. I
hope you find grace and its path in the story, too.
Blurb: Early McGrath doesn't want freedom from her
thirty-year marriage to Nash, but when it's forced upon her, she does the only
thing she knows to do - she goes home to the Ridge to reinvent herself.
Only what is someone who's spent her life taking care of
other people supposed to do when no one needs her anymore? Even as the threads
of her life unravel, she finds new ones - reconnecting with the church of her
childhood, building the quilt shop that has been a long-time dream, and forging
a new friendship with her former husband.
The definition of freedom changes when it's combined with
faith, and through it all perhaps Early and Nash can find a Soft Place to Fall.
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/3yexr8jz
D2D: https://books2read.com/u/bW57yx
Excerpt—just a snippet!
He set down the remote control and
pushed himself to his feet. Early walked every day no matter where she was. She
used to ask him to go with her, but he’d usually found reasons not to. After
his angioplasty, she forced the issue and he went along, treading Canterbury
Crossing’s pseudo-cobblestones for the prescribed time. He’d responded to her
attempts at conversation in monosyllables until she gave up and they did their
three miles in a heavy silence that seemed to seep into and take over the rest
of their marriage. Sometimes he’d noticed her lips moving and knew she was
praying.
He wished he’d have prayed with her,
but he hadn’t. He wished he’d talked to her more, but he hadn’t.
He wished a lot of things.
She and Duane, her husband of at least forever, live in a
farmhouse in central Indiana, sharing grown children, spoiled cats, and their
grandkids, the Magnificent Seven. (Don’t get her started on them—you’ll be here
all day.) To find out more about her, stop by http://lizflaherty.net/
or any of the other places she hangs out by visiting linktr.ee/LizFlaherty.
