“…As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”

As I write this book, John and I have celebrated our 70th wedding anniversary, which was May 21, 2019. During our life together, we've had nine children: six boys and three girls. Marlin and Dan, our two oldest children, are deceased. We have 28 grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren. We feel the Lord has richly blessed us! I woke up early one morning, the last of December 2018, with a great desire to write a book. The deep desire to do this caught me off guard because I had not been thinking at all about writing a book. But I believe God must be leading me to do it, and I'm writing by faith that He will use these stories of our life experiences to bless my family and anyone who chooses to read it.

As I write this book, John and I have celebrated our 70th wedding anniversary, which was May 21, 2019. During our life together, we've had nine children: six boys and three girls. Marlin and Dan, our two oldest children, are deceased. We have 28 grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren. We feel the Lord has richly blessed us! I woke up early one morning, the last of December 2018, with a great desire to write a book. The deep desire to do this caught me off guard because I had not been thinking at all about writing a book. But I believe God must be leading me to do it, and I'm writing by faith that He will use these stories of our life experiences to bless my family and anyone who chooses to read it. Then, during one of our daily readings of Scripture, God showed me Proverbs 16:3, which says, "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established." It was His promise to me that if I took a step of faith and just started writing, God would give me the ability to say everything that I wanted to share with my family in this book. I was able to trust Him, because I had already experienced God's faithfulness to give me the strength to be a wife and mother of nine children even when the effects of polio made me weak and unable to walk on my own. During those years, Deuteronomy 33:25 was His promise that kept me going: "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." So this is what I have done. I have committed this book to the Lord so that I stand on that promise. And He has been faithful and helped me through this process. He has helped with every aspect of it, from sharing stories I remember with family, using technology to record memories verbally, and also using my iPad. I think my desire has come because when I was born, my grandparents were already dead. I never had the privilege of going to Grandma and Grandpa's house. I missed seeing them live their daily lives, hearing their childhood stories and knowing anything about their faith. And I didn't know how to be a grandparent. I'm writing about our lives and the things we have been through because I want our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and, as time goes on, other generations to know all about us. And especially how God has been our guide, our comforter. He has answered so many prayers for us and I want our family to seek Him as Lord and Savior of their lives. We pray you will enjoy this book and hope it will bring some laughter, maybe some tears, and most importantly, encouragement to you.

Marlene Linville and her husband John Linville, were farmers in central Indiana. He passed away in April 2020, in May of 2020 they would have been married seventy-one years. They were blessed with six sons, three daughters, twenty-eight grandchildren and thirty-three great-grandchildren. She writes about their experiences of a house fire, her having polio while pregnant with their third child, John surviving a tornado while it destroyed his parents home and their son serving in combat during the Vietnam war. Through all of these life experiences their faith in God did not waver or falter. Marlene gives God the glory of granting her strength for every day.