Friday, March 6, 2015

I WISHED I HAD A DIFFERENT FATHER


By Novelist Christine Lindsay

One of my clearest memories of my dad was when I was seven, and I was in the hospital for pneumonia. It was his evening to visit me, as my mother was staying at home with my sister. I waited in my hospital bed, looking out the window to the street below.
Daddy never showed up. Ten minutes after visiting hours were over he sheepishly staggered in. A frowning nurse allowed him five minutes. I smelled the beer on his breath as he leaned over to kiss me. How rarely he kissed me, and in spite of the beer-stained breath, the kiss filled the cold emptiness that bunched up in my chest. When he left me minutes later, even as a kid of seven I knew my dad spent the time he should have been visiting me, down at the pub.
For years I wished I had a different father. Not all of us grow up with the loving dad who carves the Christmas turkey, takes us on vacations, and fixes broken toys. In fact, my dad broke my toys—accidentally of course—but he broke my stuff more frequently than he gave things to me.
His drinking robbed me of my childhood. From the time I was twelve I was protecting my mother, helping to financially support her, myself, and my younger brother and sister with my babysitting jobs.
Thank God the heavenly Father didn’t leave me in that despair. From the time I entered my teens I began to learn how much the Lord loved me, and He became my dad. It was also the loving savior giving my mother strength to stand up to her abusive husband. Sadly my dad remained an alcoholic to his dying day. I was able to forgive him, but what a sad, wasted life.
I could have carried that despair for all my days, and for many years I did. Even though I was a follower of Christ it took decades for the Lord to teach me what the love of a father was all about.
Things went well for me, but sadly not for my younger brother and sister. It seemed they inherited the same addiction as our dad. With despair I watched the drink destroy their lives.
It took years of prayer, but at long last I saw God change my brother and bring him out to a life of sobriety. I’m still praying for my sister.
It’s because I’ve seen the power of God changing my life and that of my family that I want to tell everyone that bitterness doesn’t have to be your middle name.
A dark childhood can be changed into a bright and beautiful life.
My entire series Twilight of the British Raj shows the healing of a family tainted by a father’s alcoholism. In book 1 Shadowed in Silk, my heroine Abby stands up to her abusive husband. In book 2 Captured by Moonlight Eshana stands up to her fanatical Hindu uncle who won’t allow her to live as a Christian. In book 3 Veiled at Midnight my character Cam (who was a boy in book 1 and is now a man) faces his alcoholism that he inherited from his father.  
All sounds dark and dismal.
But, because I’ve seen God working  in my life, I write not about drunkenness, but about the joy of a soul cleansed, that tingling feeling when God makes everything new.  


BOOK SUMMARY
ABOUT VEILED AT MIDNIGHT—Book 3 of the series Twilight of the British Raj
 As the British Empire comes to an end, millions flee to the roads. Caught up in the turbulent wake is Captain Cam Fraser, his sister Miriam, and the beautiful Indian Dassah.
Cam has never been able to put Dassah from his mind, ever since the days when he played with the orphans at the mission as a boy. But a British officer and the aide to the last viceroy cannot marry a poor Indian woman, can he?
As this becomes clear to Dassah, she has no option but to run. Cam may hold her heart—but she cannot let him break it again.
Miriam rails against the separation of the land of her birth, but is Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sunderland her soulmate or a distraction from what God has called her to do?
The 1947 Partition has separated the country these three love…but can they find their true homes before it separates them forever?

MEET THE AUTHOR

ABOUT CHRISTINE LINDSAY:
Christine Lindsay was born in Ireland, and is proud  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 Multi-award-winning, historical series Twilight of the British Raj. Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and the final installment to that series, Veiled at Midnight just released October 2014.
Londonderry Dreaming is Christine’s first romance which is set in Ireland.
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.
CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE:
Please drop by Christine Lindsay’s website  or follow her on Twitter and be her friend on Pinterest     Facebook  and   Goodreads
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