Joining us today is author Donna Schlachter to share a message of true love. She has also graciously offered to give away a print copy of one of her books, so stick around to the end for your chance to enter!

When we hear the word love, we conjure up all different images in our minds: Valentine’s Day and boxes of chocolates; June weddings; honeymoon destinations; growing old together; family; home.

We all have a different idea of what love is. But what is true love?

The Greek word for true love is “agape”, and it refers to the love we feel when we want what’s best for another person. When we’re willing to lay down our lives for them if that’s what it takes. When we’re willing to do the hard thing even when it doesn’t feel good.

At the beginning of my book, Bouquet of Brides, Peter wants to take Daisy back to New York with him as his wife because he’s fallen in love with her romance stories and because he wants to move up the corporate ladder in the publishing company his uncle owns. He thinks he’s rescuing her from obscurity in the wilderness of the Arizona Territory and thinks he’ll be the talk of the town when he returns with her on his arm.

However, the Daisy Duncan he meets isn’t anything like he expected, and he soon figures out that removing Daisy from her surroundings will stifle the spirit right out of her. He must make a decision: continue with his plans, or do what’s best for her.

At the beginning of my story, Lily, who writes under the pen name Daisy, vows she will never leave the Arizona Territory, and especially not for any hotshot city slicker from the East. However, through a series of circumstances, she discovers she cares a great deal for Peter, and soon cannot bear the thought of him leaving. Yet to ask him to stay will starve him of the hustle and bustle of his beloved Big Apple.

Should she keep him or let him go?

In Mail Order Brides, Mary, an orphan about to “age out” of the orphanage, longs for the kind of marriage her parents had, but with her physical and psychological scars, doesn’t believe any man would choose her if he really knew her. So she answers an ad in the newspaper, desperate for a home and a family.

John, a widower with two small daughters, lingers through his pain over losing the love of his life. When the pastor suggest he needs a wife for himself and a mother for his children, he decides to accept whatever he can get—he doesn’t need to love her if she takes care of his daughters and their home. So he places the ad, desperate for a solution to his problem.

But on a train heading west, both meet, not knowing who the other truly is. Their relationship blossoms amidst the careful constraints of their betrothal to another, stirring feelings and questions they hadn’t known they had.

God has other plans for Mary and John than to exist in a loveless relationship out of duty. And He has other plans for us than to live out our lives in a world of darkness and pain. Only in Him can we truly find love.

True love is more than flowers and chocolates, or sweaty palms and breathless kisses. True love compels us to do for another what they cannot do for themselves—see their value through the eyes of another.


Meet seven American women who were named for various flowers but struggle to bloom where God planted them. Can love help them grow to their full potential?

 


Mail Order Brides follows 7 brides as they meet their grooms for the first time—after they answer an ad for a wife.

 

 

Donna lives in Denver with husband Patrick, her first-line editor and biggest fan. She is a hybrid author who writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Sisters In Crime; facilitates a local critique group, and teaches writing classes and courses. Donna is also a ghostwriter and editor of fiction and non-fiction, and judges in a number of writing contests. She loves history and research, and travels extensively for both. Donna is proud to be represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.

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**Connect with Cynthia Roemer on Facebook and Twitter. Read more of her writing at: Putting on the New Blog.

Read how God works in the lives of Cynthia’s characters in her debut novel, UNDER THIS SAME SKY, available in both e-book and print at Amazon.com

 

 

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