After reading Becky’s Wade’s fabulous book, My Stubborn Heart, I had to ask her to come and share something about this book with you.

First a little bit about Becky:   

Becky Wade makes her home in Dallas, Texas with her husband, three children, and one adoring (and adored) cavalier spaniel. Her first inspirational contemporary romance, My Stubborn Heart, was released by Bethany House in May.

During her childhood in California, Becky frequently produced homemade plays starring her sisters, friends, and cousins.  These plays almost always featured a heroine, a prince, and a love story with a happy ending.  She’s been a fan of all things romantic ever since.

Becky and her husband lived overseas in the Caribbean and Australia before settling in Dallas, Texas.  It was during her years abroad that Becky’s passion for reading turned into a passion for writing.  She published three historical romances for the general market, put her career on hold for several years to care for her kids, and eventually returned to writing sheerly for the love of it.  Her first contemporary Christian romance, My Stubborn Heart, has just been released by Bethany House.

These days Becky can be found failing but trying to keep up with her housework, sweating at the gym, carting her kids around town, playing tennis, hunched over her computer, eating chocolate, or collapsed on the sofa watching TV with her husband.

Readers can find Becky at the following websites:

www.beckywade.com

www.facebook.com/authorbeckywade

 

My Stubborn Heart

 

Kate Donovan is burned out on work, worn down by her dating relationships, and in need of an adventure. When her grandmother asks her to accompany her to Redbud, Pennsylvania, to restore the grand old house she grew up in, Kate jumps at the chance.

 

Upon her arrival in Redbud, Kate meets Matt Jarreau, the man hired to renovate the house. Kate can’t help being attracted to him, drawn by both his good looks and something else she can’t quite put her finger on. He’s clearly wounded–hiding from people, from God, and from his past. Yet Kate sets her stubborn heart on bringing him out of the dark and back into the light… whether he likes it or not.

When the stilted, uncomfortable interactions between Kate and Matt slowly shift into something more, is God finally answering the longing of her heart? Or will Kate be required to give up more than she ever dreamed?

 

Prologue

          There once was a girl who’d been praying for a husband since the fourth grade.  Over the years she’d prayed for his health, his happiness, his protection, and — okay — sometimes for his good looks.  She’d prayed that she would meet him when she was meant to.

Except that she hadn’t.

She’d been avidly expecting and watching for him all this time, from the fourth grade straight up to the age of thirty-one.  And though she tried hard to be positive,  the truth was that she’d grown tired of waiting.  Tired of dating.  Tired of breaking off just two bananas from the bunch at the grocery store.  Tired of the singles group at church.  Tired of living alone.

Worse, she was beginning to doubt that her nameless, faceless husband existed at all.  Maybe, late at night in her kid bed, her college bed, her adult single woman bed, she’d been praying for someone who wasn’t coming.  Ever.

Perhaps her husband had run in front of a bus as a child.  What did God do in that situation?  Swap in an understudy?  Or maybe she’d missed her husband during the bustle of her college years, never knowing that the shy guy from physics class was the one.  Or perhaps, right from the start, God had never intended for her to marry.

Or maybe, just maybe — and this was the hope she still clung to despite the evidence to the contrary — her husband was still on his way.

*****

          There once was a mother who’d been praying double hard for her son ever since he’d stopped praying for himself.

From earliest childhood, he’d been extraordinary – a perfect, miraculous blend of athletic ability and focused determination.  She and her husband had supported and loved him, but never expected of him what he’d made of himself.  How could it even have entered her mind to dream a dream that big?  She’d watched with a mixture of sentimental pride and stunned surprise as he’d climbed up every level of the sport of hockey.

By the age of eighteen he was playing professionally.  From there, at what she’d thought would be the pinnacle, his star had only continued to rise.  He’d been photographed for grocery store magazines.  He’d moved into a house surrounded by a wall of security.  He’d married a beautiful girl in a grand wedding ceremony filled with the flashes of cameras, wedding planners, and peach colored roses.

Her son had accomplished it all.  The height of success in his career.  National fame.  Wealth.  The best personal happiness with his wife.

And then it had all come apart, crashing and rolling out of reach like a handfull of spilled marbles.  His wife had been diagnosed with cancer and nothing — not the most money, not the best doctors — had been able to save her.  When she’d died, he’d walked away from his sport, from the big house with the wall, from the fame.

In the years since, he’d retreated inside himself to a place where none of his family or friends could reach him.  So his mother prayed.  She prayed that God wouldn’t forget about him, this son of hers, who’d gained and lost the world in just a third of his lifetime.  She prayed that God would send someone who could find him and save him from his prison of grief.  And she prayed that maybe, somehow, in time, his heart would soften and he’d find love again.

*****

          Funny thing about prayers.  God hears them.  But you just never know if, when, or how He’s going to answer them.

*****

In My Stubborn Heart, God asks the heroine

to wait for the husband she’s long been praying for.

What has God asked you to wait for in your life?

Becky will be giving away a copy of “My Stubborn Heart” to one lucky person who has commented on the post.  The drawing will be held Sunday night…so check back then!