The Man Behind the Curtain

You’re going to have to excuse me for being sappy today. I blame my husband. It was his birthday yesterday. This is what made me all sappy and schmoopy and thinking about what a great guy he is. Because he is.

I have a reputation of being a sort of prolific writer, and I get asked a lot: HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL? The simple answer is, I don’t. The other answer is: Look at the man behind the curtain. My husband has a job. He, in fact, has two jobs. And somehow he still manages to help do the household stuff, take care of the kids when I need him too and generally just look hot.

Haven and I got married seven years ago. Not that long, really. But I feel like we’ve been through several lifetimes. I will never forget, just two months after getting married, sitting in the camp trailer we were living in in my parents driveway (to save money to buy a house!) and snot crying with a pregnancy test and saying: I’M SORRY! I RUINED ALL OUR PLANS. And he was so calm. Better than calm, he was happy. I remember when, a month after that, we both lost our jobs and our temporary living situation started to look a lot more permanent. I remember when we had to just move into my parents’ house because I needed a working bathroom in the middle of the night.

I remember him spending his severance check from that job on a laptop so I could finally write that book I kept talking about.

I remember him showing up to my first ultrasound with roses.

And I remember when, after living in a room no bigger than some walk in closets, with us and a baby, all our clothes hanging in my parents’ hallway, we were able to finally buy a house. A single wide mobile home that looked like a piece of heaven. And I remember applying for food stamps, because, no matter how hard he worked, it was hard to keep our heads above water.

I remember telling him, after I read a few Harlequin Presents: Honey, this is what I want to write! And him telling me to do it.

And then he spent two years working two to three jobs, taking care of our two boys at night so that I could go sit in the coffee shop for a few hours and write.

I remember the day I sold to Harlequin, early in the morning. He had to go to work before my call came in, but I remember how happy he sounded over the phone. And then later that day we met up to get our second son started on autism evaluations. Three weeks later, our daughter was born.

From living with my parents, to special needs, to bestseller lists, we’ve been through a lot. Everything in life has changed around us. When we married, we worked at our church together. We had no kids, I had never read a romance novel. Everything looks different now. But the one thing that’s never changed is the way he looked at me. The way he smiles when I have another crazy idea. We’ve weathered a lot of storms, a lot of changing landscapes, and I know we’ll weather a whole lot more.

We moved at the end of August, got a house that’s actually big enough to fit all of us. And our landscape changed again. I also have a lot more work to do this year. A lot more books contracted, a lot more deadlines to hit. But whatever happens, I know one thing for sure: we’re in it together.

But he’s the man behind the curtain. He keeps me going. He keeps us going.

So that’s how I do it. With incredible support, a partner in cooking, in parenting. And he’s easy on the eyes too.

They say behind every great man is a woman. Well, beside me is the world’s greatest man.

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