Kathryn J. Bain Bestselling Author

The following is from my guest Christine Lindsay who teaches us how God can use a heartache to create something wonderful.

STORY BEHIND THE COVERS

Nothing could have amazed me more than the way the Lord arranged the front cover of Shadowed in Silk.

I have to go back 32 years–two years before I met my wonderful husband–to when I gave birth to a little girl. Not married at the time, I felt God urge me to relinquish her to a Christian couple unable to have children.

Giving up baby Sarah crushed me, but it was best for her at the time, as I wanted her to have a loving dad as well as a loving mom. And I believed that God would answer my prayers that one day He would bring us together again, and knit our hearts in a special birth-mom and birth-daughter relationship.

God was so good to me in the years following the relinquishment of Sarah. A year after giving up Sarah, the Lord sent me my sweet husband David and gave us our three children.

Now skip ahead . . . twenty years later my birth-daughter, Sarah, and I were reunited. That was wonderful and yet terrible at the same time.

Adoption reunions are not easy for anyone in the adoption triad. After the reunion I began to relive my original loss of Sarah. It just hurt so much. She was my child and yet she was not my child. And it didn’t appear that the long desired special relationship would develop.

I was so hurt, so angry with God for disappointing me.

A few months after meeting Sarah, my husband caught me crying on our living room couch one day. He slipped out and returned a while later with a brand new pen and journal. He placed these items into my hands and said, “Here honey, write it.”

That was the start. My journaling eventually turned into books as the years passed. But always beneath anything that I write, is the understanding of loss and loneliness, heartbreak, and the healing and joy that only God can bring. A few years later I felt the Lord encourage me to put the emotional and spiritual healing that He had given me into fictional stories to help others.

The day came that my debut novel about the British Raj in India was about to be released—a story that has nothing to do with adoption.

My publisher, WhiteFire, sent me some photos of prospective models for the front cover of my book. I noticed that the model they suggested resembled my birthdaughter. On a whim I suggested Sarah for the model, and the publisher agreed. Sarah was shy at first, but she pitched in on this step of faith with me, and I was grateful at the time for this budding in our friendship.

I could go on and on about the details that just seemed to come together, but it wasn’t until later that I realized—that without my ever planning or imagining it—The Lord had not only inspired me to write because of my sadness over losing my first child to adoption, but He then placed the face of my beautiful muse on the front cover of my book.

But the Lord wasn’t finished blessing me yet.

A few months after Shadowed in Silk was released, my birthdaughter Sarah and her husband Mark came to visit. They want to tell us that they felt called to go into fulltime missionary work with Global Aid Network. And that they would be working with several organizations all around the world that specifially helps widows and orphans.

One of the missions in their sphere of interest would be the Ramabai Mukti Mission in India.

When I heard this I nearly fell off my chair in amazement.

I had never told Sarah, but the true-life Ramabai who started the Mukti mission in India was the inspiration behind my novel.

Many years ago, I had prayed for the Lord to give Sarah and I a special relationship. It took a while, but He knit our hearts together in the respective work He gave each of us to do.

When it came time to release Captured by Moonlight Book 2 of the Twilight of the British Raj I had to have my daughter Lana—the daughter God gave me to keep—as the model on the front cover.
Here is a photo of that wonderful, happy day. And my joy at seeing my two daughters as bookends of joy in my life. Thanks to our Awesome tender-hearted Heavenly Father.

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 Christine Lindsay is an Irish-born writer, proud of the fact that she was once patted on the head by Prince Philip when she was a baby. Her great grandfather, and her grandfather—yes father and son—were both riveters on the building of the Titanic. Tongue in cheek, Christine states that as a family they accept no responsibility for the sinking of that great ship.

It was stories of her ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in Colonial India that inspired her historical series Twilight of the British Raj of which Book 1 Shadowed in Silk has won several awards, and Book 2 Captured by Moonlight. Christine is currently writing the final installment of that series called Veiled at Midnight to be released August 2014.

Also coming out February 2014 is Londonderry Dreaming, a romance novella set in Londonderry Northern Ireland, not far from Christine’s birthplace.

Her newest release a short Christmas story, Heavenly Haven, has just been released as an Ebook

Christine makes her home in British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada with her husband and their grown up family. Her cat Scottie is chief editor on all Christine’s books.

Please drop by Christine’s website http://www.christinelindsay.com or her blog http://www.christinelindsay.org.

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