by Ada Brownell
I grew up feeling loved, but worried I didn’t deserve it.
Well, except God’s love wrapped so tightly around me, I didn’t worry about His love at all. God loved and counted every red hair on my head and every freckle on my face, because He loves everyone whether red, yellow, black or white.
But I had elbowed my way into a family that had enough children.
Then God entered our home in all His power and glory shortly after I was born. Mama had been a Christian, but from what I heard from others in our family, difficulties of life such as the Great Depression and the Kansas Dust Bowl took a toll on her faith.
Then a new friend invited my oldest sister, who was in high school, to church. God sent friends from that church to my four oldest siblings and they all accepted Christ as Savior and their lives not only were changed, they were filled with joy.
Others among the ten of us soon understood the gospel, and I started singing “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children” almost as soon as I could talk. Furthermore, I knew what the words meant.
But you see, when I was born, the family hadn’t been converted. A church heard a big family moved to town and prayed for us. Marjorie, my oldest sister in her sinful selfish state, wouldn’t look at me for a week. She said Mama and Daddy had enough children and didn’t need the eighth one—me.
Virgil, my oldest brother later confessed he felt the same way. Truth was, if my parents hadn’t moved to Colorado where they had irrigation and a mammoth garden, chickens, cows and pigs, we wouldn’t have had anything to eat—and I was another mouth to feed. Daddy and Virgil worked for $1 a 12-hour day shoveling coal from railroad cars onto trucks.
I had no idea all babies are cute and people can’t help but love them, so I didn’t understand why they laughed when they told me about Marge not looking at me for a week.
I developed the habit of trying to deserve love by the work I did and tried not to cause trouble.
As I grew, however, I saw how God changed Marge’s character. She was the most loving and giving person in the whole family, and she as well as the others, showered love on me.
I knew love came from my Greatest Friend—Jesus. Without Him, our family would never have the love, the joy, the singing, and or been led into paths of righteousness and success in life, many of us in ministry.
One of the first Bible verses I learned in the primary class was, “God is love” (1 John 4:8 NIV).
MEET ADA BROWNELL
When Ada Brownell sat down to write Peach Blossom Rancher, the sequel to The Lady Fugitive and book two in The Peaches and Dreams series, she drew from her experiences growing up in Colorado’s Peach Country near Grand Junction, picking peaches and working in a packing shed.
In addition, she uses some of what she learned as a journalist on her beat covering a mental hospital for The Pueblo Chieftain.
In this Historical Romance, a handsome young man inherits a ranch in ruin and hopes to marry a beautiful young widow who is an attorney. But she takes up the case of a brilliant doctor committed to an asylum because of one seizure. Will the rancher marry the attorney and the asylum patient achieve his dreams?
Suspense, romance, humor, murder, insanity, hope, fun, wrapped in a Western you won’t forget.
Buy Peach Blossom Rancher here: http://ow.ly/4ETL302QdhW
Ellie Gustafson
/ February 7, 2017Hi, Ada. We’ve had interaction when you posted me back in 2014. Your blog on love caught my eye, as I am working on the same topic for my blog this week, dealing with the physical sensations of non-sex love. Not sure yet how it will come out, but it means much to me. Hope you get good response to your words!