Today my guest is another Love Inspired author Linda Goodnight, a RITA award-winning author (I sat beside her last year when she won it and heard her scream.) Linda pays tribute to her mother in law. Here’s Linda:
“I’ve had so many strong women in my life-Women who influenced, encouraged and just plain blessed me. Since my current book is Mothers and Daughters I thought I’d talk about a mom. Not my own mom, but my mother-in-law, Lorene. By the world’s standards, Lorene was not a particularly successful woman. She was poorly educated, having gone only to about the 5th or 6th grade. Most of her life, she worked as an aide in nursing homes—and did it with great love and caring, I might add. She suffered many hardships from being abandoned by her father to living in a dirt-floor tent to losing a child. And yet this woman was a fortress of quiet, uncomplaining strength.

A gentle, Christ-like nature just flowed out of her. Material possessions meant little, but people meant everything. No matter their issues, their mistakes, their illness or how ‘unlovely’ they might be, Lorene accepted them, prayed for them and tried to help them. Even when someone wronged her, Lorene never reacted in anger. Never. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I loved her, and thank God that I was blessed to be her daughter-in-law. So it is not surprising that I dedicated my Mother’s Day anthology to Lorene.

Mothers and Daughters includes two novellas. One is by bestselling author, Deborah Bedford, a beautiful story, by the way. My contribution, “Unforgettable,” tells of two strong women, though the daughter does not recognize her own strength until the flamboyant, sometimes embarrassingly outrageous mother, Granny Frannie, is faced with an uncertain and frightening future. I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Mothers and Daughters and let me know what you think. It’s a perfect Mothers’ Day gift, too!