My guest today is Ellie Gustafson, Ellie is doing a giveaway of her novel The Stones. Leave a comment below, share this blog post on social media somewhere, and spell out your email address in the comment. Then your name will be entered in the hat. I'll draw the name on the Sunday following this post date.
And now my guest....Eleanor Gustafson
With my husband not yet out
of Wheaton College, we weren’t planning to start our family until his last year
of seminary. Roughly two months after our wedding, however, I was pregnant.
What does that say about our family-planning skills?
I remember sitting on our
bed, facing reality: you’re pregnant; now you have to have that baby—no way out.
I was due April 28; didn’t
deliver until May 12—a Saturday and 15 days late.
Labor started Monday night.
Called the doctor next morning. He said if I wasn’t hanging onto the doorposts,
nothing was really happening. Saw him a couple of times during the week, and he
was right.
Thursday night I sought
diversion in a speech recital at the college—a Joan of Arc monologue. My thighs
burned right along with Joan’s.
On Friday, a friend picked me
up just to drive around. I’ve never forgotten her kindness.
Saturday morning, tiring of
doorpost hanging, I went to see if the doctor could give me any hope of having
that baby before the end of the century. He checked me out, then leaned over
and kissed me on the mouth. “You’re going to have a baby!” I blessed him and
trucked off to the hospital.
Still a lot of labor before
Eric Jon was born at 6:30 PM, but I won’t go into those details. Suffice it to
say that our eldest child has been worth every bit of that long, hard week. He,
too, went to Wheaton, then on to a Masters and PhD and is now at the top of his
field in research biology, giving seminars around the world. More importantly,
he is a good husband and the father of our granddaughter, who currently teaches
school and lives with us.
Most important, though, he is a man of God, a worship
leader in his
church, and a model of the goodness and grace of God. We aredeeply grateful for God’s creative
introduction to parenthood.
This memory set off a connection in my mind between
the birth of a child and the birth of a book. My novel, The Stones: A Novel of the Life of King David, was 15 or more years
in gestation.
Tried and tried but couldn’t find a publisher.
Then one Sunday,
Tim Tennent—a former interim at our church and now president of Asbury
Theological Seminary—came as our guest speaker. He knew about my efforts and
had even written an endorsement. When he learned I had not yet found a
publisher, he whipped out a business card. His son had just taken a position at
Whitaker House, and maybe if I contacted him…
“You’re going to have
a book!”
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| Another of Eleanor Gustason's books |
ABOUT ELEANOR GUSTAFSON: A graduate of Wheaton
College, IL, I have been involved in church life as a minister’s wife, teacher,
musician, writer, and encourager. Additional experiences include gardening, house
construction, and tree farming. A major writing goal is making scriptural
principles understandable and relevant for today’s readers through the power of
story.
CONNECT WITH ELEANOR GUSTAFSON
Website: www.eleanorgustafson.com
Blog: www.eleanorgustafson.com
Where you can purchase Dynamo: http://www.amazon.com/
Where you can purchase The Stones: http://www.amazon.com/
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