Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
Today I welcome friend and fellow author, Susan G Mathis, as she shares about her new release, Annie and the Mistaken Match, Book 1 of the Irish Rose Orphans of the Thousand Islands, set during the Gilded Age of the 1800s.
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“But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” James 4:6
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Society loves labels. Rich or poor. Important or insignificant. Successful or struggling. Worthy or unworthy. The Gilded Age was particularly skilled at them.
In the glittering social world of the 1880s, a person’s family, fortune, occupation, clothing, and connections could determine how others treated them. A wealthy woman in a silk gown entered through the front door. A servant carrying that same gown entered through the back. Society knew exactly where each belonged.
Grace sees things differently. Grace looks beyond the silk dress and the servant’s uniform. Beyond the family name and bank account. Beyond the mistakes we’ve made and the carefully polished image we present to others. Grace sees the person underneath.
That truth becomes especially powerful when someone believes she must become someone else to be worthy of love.
Imagine a lady’s maid who spends her life making other women beautiful while remaining nearly invisible herself. Then, unexpectedly, she slips into a borrowed gown and enters their world. Suddenly, people notice her. But what happens when someone truly sees her?
Not the gown. Not the social position he assumes she possesses. Her.
Her kindness. Her humor. Her courage. Her hopes. Even her flaws.
Eventually, however, the borrowed gown must come off. The truth must be told. And the woman who longed to belong must face the frightening possibility that once people know who she really is, they may reject her. That’s where grace becomes extraordinary.
Grace doesn’t say the deception doesn’t matter. It doesn’t erase consequences or make wrong choices right. Instead, grace says our failures are not the whole of who we are.
Society may measure worth by pedigree, possessions, reputation, or position. God measures differently.
He sees beyond our disguises to the heart beneath them. And perhaps one of life’s greatest freedoms comes when we finally understand: We don’t have to earn grace.
We only have to receive it.
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Grace sees what society misses. Share on XABOUT ANNIE AND THE MISTAKEN MATCH
Book 1 of the Irish Rose Orphans of the Thousand Islands
She’s a lady’s maid in borrowed silk. He mistakes her for the kind of woman he could marry. In New York’s glittering Gilded Age Thousand Islands, maid Annie Burns is swept into a reckless masquerade and introduced to society as a lady. When Martin White falls for the graceful “Miss Burns of Brooklyn,” Annie discovers the joy—and danger—of finally being seen. But when scandal threatens to expose her, she must choose between the borrowed life she longs for and the freedom only truth can bring. A tender tale of mistaken identity, redemption, faith, and a love only God could write.
ABOUT SUSAN:
Susan G Mathis is an international award-winning, multi-published author of stories set in the beautiful Thousand Islands in upstate NY. Susan has been published thirty-eight times (so far) in full-length novels, novellas, and non-fiction books. She has nineteen in her fiction line. Susan is also a published author of two premarital books, stories in a dozen compilations, and hundreds of published articles. Susan lives in Northern Virginia and enjoys traveling the world. Visit www.SusanGMathis.com/fiction for more.
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