Why I Wrote Promises Made in Pencil
Some stories you go looking for. Others quietly find you. Promises Made in Pencil found me in hospital rooms and living rooms, sitting beside people who had been married longer than I had been alive.
Where it began
For years I have served in home care and medical transport, and my heart has always been with the elderly. I have sat beside husbands and wives who loved each other for fifty and sixty years. I watched them hold hands in hospital rooms, finish each other’s stories, and keep promises long after keeping them became hard.
What I saw taught me something I could not stop thinking about: lasting love is rarely perfect, and it is often tested. But when it is kept, it is one of the most beautiful things on earth.
Why pencil?
We usually think of wedding vows as something written in ink: said once, signed, finished. But the marriages I admired most did not stay the same. Year after year, those couples had to keep choosing each other in new ways, through children, illness, disappointment and loss.
A promise written in pencil can be smudged. It can fade. But it can also be rewritten, again and again, by two people who decide it is worth keeping. That picture became the heart of the book.
Meet Elliot and Nora
Twelve years ago, Elliot Hale wrote his wedding vows in pencil and promised to rewrite one line every year. Then he stopped writing. By the time the story begins, the house above the harbor has gone quiet, and divorce papers are waiting in Nora’s bag.
On the eve of their anniversary, Nora finds the old vow sheet and makes Elliot one last offer: one year, one promise rewritten every month, lived and not just written. I won’t tell you how it ends. I will tell you that one promise on the page is still waiting: I will tell you the truth.
And Miriam
Every story needs someone who has already walked the road. In Promises Made in Pencil, that is Miriam, whose fifty-eight-year marriage becomes the story’s guiding light. She carries a little of every couple I have been privileged to care for.
Who I wrote it for
I wrote this book for every couple who has ever wondered whether their love can survive what life has handed them. I believe it can, with patience, forgiveness and the grace of God.
It is a clean, heartfelt story of grief, faith, forgiveness and second chances, set in a small harbor town on the coast of Maine. You can read it with your book club, your spouse, or on your own with a cup of tea.
Read it today
Promises Made in Pencil is available now as a Kindle eBook on Amazon for $2.99, and the paperback and hardcover are coming soon.
Have you ever had to “rewrite” a promise in your own marriage? I would love to hear your story.
With love,
Peace