My guest today is Jeff Gerke, author, editor, publisher, and man who loves his wife. Here’s Jeff:

“My wife has been my biggest support through all the crazy things I’ve done during our marriage. She worked full-time as a teacher so I could go to seminary full-time and graduate more quickly. Then when I announced I thought God was leading me not into ministry but to write fiction, she was my first fan.

When I moved her hither and yon across the country–we’ve now lived in all four time zones in the Continental U.S.–she was there beside me. She was there when I lost the occasional job and when my novels failed to achieve sales success.

And when I launched my own small Christian publishing company, she was not only cheering me on but helping me do it. She took more of the load of raising our children when I was writing my fiction craft book for Writers Digest.

At every step of our journey, she has been my strongest supporter. And all of this is without mentioning the 26 hours of labor she went through to deliver our first child. Or the grief we went through when we suffered a miscarriage. Or the shock we endured upon learning that our son was autistic.

She has suffered physically, as well. She endured a painful injection in her knee so she could walk the Great Wall of China–and the steps of Zhengzhou–to adopt our little girl in 2009. She’s got near-herniated discs in her neck and cysts on her thyroid. She’s lost both her parents to cancer and has had to move away from all her family and old friends.

And yet she still gets up every morning and fights the good fight. She cares for our toddler and does homework with our son and attends our oldest daughter’s marching band competitions in the cold and rain. She cooks, cleans, shops–loves, cares, and perseveres.

She’s a strong woman, a heroine in her own right, and I don’t know where I’d be without her.”–Jeff Gerke

Jeff has also just had his first book by Writers Digest published