Day 2 With Janet Lee Barton

As I walked the streets of Guthrie the idea of I'd Sooner Have Love quickly came to life. It's the story of Faith Anderson and Gabe Logan - two lonely people who believe they'll never have a family of their own.

A year after Faith's husband passes away; she's given up on having a good relationship with his parents. They never liked her because she was unable to give them a grandchild and they have made it clear that the only way she'll ever inherit her husband's share of their wealth is to let them control her life. She feels totally smothered by them and their unending lists of what is acceptable and what is not for an Anderson. She doesn't care about their money...nor does she really need it. Her husband must have known how his parents would treat her, for he'd made sure to provide her with enough to make a new start somewhere else.

Resigned to the fact that she can't have children and will never marry again, she takes her widowed brother, Ben Thompson, up on his offer to go to Oklahoma Territory with him and his two children. She takes the next train to Arkansas City where her brother and his children have been living for the last six months, waiting for land to open up. When Ben decides to go to the front of the line, Faith and her nephew and niece make the run alone to meet him in the town that begins with a sea of tents on the prairie.

Gabe Logan has been waiting for the government to open up land in Oklahoma for several years. The economic collapse in Kansas had taken a toll on his business as a builder in Wichita, and the death of his fiancee in a bank robbery had taken the joy out of his life. All that had mattered from that point on was finding the man. For a year, Gabe had hunted him down. When Gabe caught up with him, he wanted to take him in, but the man shot at him and Gabe shot back, wounding the man but not killing him. However, he'd spent several months in jail until a trial proved that the man was his fiance's assassin. Now, Gabe is more than ready to leave Kansas, start a new life and try to get over the pain of the past.

Gabe is certain no woman would want to marry a man who'd spent time in jail and Faith is just as sure that no man would want to marry a woman who couldn't give him a child. But the Lord might have plans of His own.

Have there been times in your life when the Lord has shown you He had a plan much different that your own - one that was so much better than anything you'd planned that you had no doubt that it came form Him?