Proof The Bible Is True

The hospital room was unusually quiet. It was a relief to spend some time alone, just the three of us—my husband, me and our 10-year-old daughter, who was now resting comfortably after surgery. Hannah had undergone a pelvic osteotomy to stabilize her hip, which was prone to dislocating due to Down syndrome. She had a long recovery ahead—months in a body cast, maybe a brace after that—but Hannah was a trooper. She had complete trust in the doctors and nurses who kept a close eye on her, and I prayed that God was nearby too. Hannah looked up at me in [More]

The view from our canoes on the Buffalo River was stunning. No wonder this was one of the Ozarks’ premier destinations. Massive bluffs towered over the water on either side—nothing but the calming blue heavens above. But soon into our float trip, the rapids whipped up unexpectedly. My gnawing unease returned with a vengeance.   At 28, I was plenty adventurous and a strong swimmer. Still, I felt there was danger waiting on the river. I’d been dreading this outing almost from the moment my husband, Larry, had made reservations for us and his Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Edna—a two-day, 10.6-mile [More]

Memories swirled around her as she shopped in the housewares aisle. But who was the mysterious woman that unexpectedly appeared?   Candle holders, picture frames and other knick knacks surrounded me in the housewares department. While my husband and I waited for construction to be finished on our new house, I enjoyed browsing for decorating ideas. A figurine on one of the shelves grabbed my attention, and I picked it up. It was beautiful, made of cast bronze. A woman danced with a young girl, their faces caught in a moment of pure joy, their skirts in motion, the girl looking up [More]

I had breast cancer and needed an MRI. In the waiting room of the doctor’s office, I was filled with dread. I’d always struggled with claustrophobia, and the idea of being in a tiny space with no room to move, bombarded with the loud noise of the MRI machine, sent me into a panic. When the nurse called my name, I stood shakily. Dear Lord, please help me. I’m not sure I have the strength to get through this.   The MRI technician helped me onto the stretcher that went into the machine, all the while explaining what was going to happen. “I’ll [More]

My wife, Arbutis, and I graduated high school in May 1960 and wed that June. We couldn’t wait to start our married life! We set up house in Knoxville, Tennessee, enjoyed a newlyweds’ summer and watched the fall leaves change together. But that winter, on our first Christmas Eve as husband and wife, I was finishing up a job three hours away.   Money was tight, and I’d picked up work in Nashville for a few days, installing a marble floor in a bank. The construction company had set me up in a motel room and lent me a truck for the [More]

On January 6, 2020, as always, I carefully lifted the Nativity angel from the nail at the peak of the wooden stable and held her in my hands. Just as my parents and grandparents had done before me, I waited for this day to take down the crèche. Today was the feast of the Three Kings, or Epiphany, which commemorates the Magi’s visit to the newborn Jesus. They came bearing gifts, and while I wrapped and boxed each Nativity piece for the next year, I thought about the many gifts given throughout the Christmas story. The angel was first. As I took [More]

How would I get through Christmas when my sweet dog, my ever-present companion, Freddy Lee, wouldn’t be here with me? I reached over to where he was lying next to me in bed and ran my hand slowly down his back. This is our last night together, I thought, and in a few days Christmas will come without you.   I hadn’t panicked when I noticed him limping on our walks. How bad could it be, since he’d passed his recent checkup with a clean bill of health? I was shocked when I’d taken him back to the vet only to get [More]

Baseball is a tradition in my family. Some of my best memories growing up were the days my dad took my brother and me on the 90-minute drive to San Francisco to see the San Francisco Giants play at Candlestick Park. We saw a lot of baseball history being made, like when Willie Mays and the Giants won the National League pennant in 1962.   When I had my first child, Zach, Paw—as Zach called him—had another youngster to school in all things baseball. Unfortunately, by the time Zach was old enough to go to games Paw could no longer [More]

The call from the hospital came in the morning. Our son, Chad, had been in a terrible accident, his car totaled while he drove in the fog. He had stitches in his left temple and a fractured ankle, plus a bruise on his chest from the seat belt that saved his life. My husband, Randy, and I raced to his side.   “They’re just keeping him overnight to make sure he has no internal injuries,” Randy reminded me during the two-hour drive to the hospital. “He’s in no immediate danger, thank God.”   Yes, thank you. As we got closer to the hospital, [More]

It was late. It had been a hard day for my siblings and me—one we knew was coming. But the day hadn’t gone at all how we’d planned. I tossed and turned in bed, thinking about Mom’s last minutes here on earth, dying all alone in her hospice room. More than anything, we all had wanted someone to be with her when she took her last breath.   Our 89-year-old mother had been slipping away for the past two months. We knew she didn’t have much time left, so we’d come up with a schedule to make sure one of us [More]

”We got hit yesterday,” the convoy commander announced. I was still groggy from lack of sleep, standing in the heavy morning air that unforgettable February day in 2002. I glanced at the soldiers around me, standing at attention, backs ramrod straight. I could feel the nervous energy buzzing just under the surface. “We expect to get hit again today.”   I had flown into this remote location in the arid mountains of southern Afghanistan the night before, arriving at 3 A.M. on a Chinook helicopter. I’d slept a handful of restless hours in someone else’s cot before stumbling to this [More]

As a preteen city kid, I was a little nervous that first night of our Girl Scout campout in the Appalachian Mountains. I’d never set up a tent before, for one thing. “Looks good and sturdy,” one of the troop leaders said when she inspected our work. “It’s supposed to be windy tonight.”   We had dinner around the campfire and got ready for bed. The leaders headed off to their own tent nearby. As soon as we curled up in our sleeping bags, the wind started to howl. A huge gust hit the tent and a section collapsed. We [More]

We had a long list of things we wanted to do that summer, including going to the playground across the street by ourselves. My sister was 12, my twin and I were 9—old enough not to need the watchful eye of our mother, we decided. “Please, Mami?” we begged. “Can we go?”   Our parents were protective Puerto Ricans, determined to shelter us from big-city dangers as best they could. Mami was hesitant, but she looked at the picture of Jesus that hung on our dining room wall, closed her eyes and made the sign of the cross. “Okay,” she [More]

In 1954, when I was six years old, my family went on a road trip that has since become legend.   My parents, sister and I were driving from our house in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Mom’s hometown in Texas. As night fell, we found ourselves on a deserted dirt road in Oklahoma, nearly out of gas. We hadn’t seen a service station in hours. It was getting late. My parents tried to hide their growing panic as the gas gauge crept toward empty, as empty as the road ahead of us.   Then a gas station appeared on the horizon. [More]

Delivering boats is a regular job of mine as a professional yacht captain. I bring them from Florida and the Caribbean, up the Eastern Seaboard to New England in the spring. Come fall, the process is reversed.   The boat I was taking to St. Thomas that day was an old wooden sailing yacht. It was supposed to be a straightforward job: Sail the boat from Newport, Rhode Island, to the U.S. Virgin Islands. I would follow the coast, then jump off from Ft. Lauderdale or Miami for the offshore run to St. Thomas.   That was the plan, but [More]

Our big, scraggly mutt, Ralph, had joined the family when his original owner couldn’t keep him. In the few months he’d been with us, we had come to love him, and all signs were he loved us too. But he’d developed one habit in his former life that no amount of coaxing could break. We couldn’t get him to come into the house.   “Some dogs prefer to stay outside,” I explained to the kids when Ralph settled to sleep in our yard on summer nights. Now, looking at him out there this fall day, I worried what would happen [More]

Hours before dawn, I awoke to a magical sound: the crunching metallic clatter of rolling tires outfitted with snow chains. It’s snowing! I thought. I leaped out of bed and ran to the window. Beneath the glow of the streetlamp, our road and yard in Raleigh, North Carolina, were blanketed with pristine white snow. School would be closed today—no question—and I was going to make it the best day ever.   My friend Peggy called when it was daylight. “Bring your sled,” she ordered. “A bunch of us are meeting in the woods above Cedar Creek.”   The woods were [More]

Our temporary chapel was nothing fancy, just a plain room with a makeshift altar and candles, but kneeling in it late that Friday night, I felt myself in a very holy place.   I was at my church’s annual women’s retreat. This year, for the first time, I’d been assigned to the prayer team. In some ways the job was perfect for me. I’d been praying my whole life. When I was a little girl getting ready for bed, my mother and I always said the same prayer together:   Angel of God, my guardian dear,   to whom God’s [More]

The dinner tray sat beside my hospital bed untouched, the food getting colder by the minute. I’d been in this room at Methodist Hospital in Minneapolis for 10 days now, recovering from a broken pelvis and fractured ribs after an auto accident. The pain that permeated my body was constant and intense. At times I felt as if I couldn’t breathe, let alone eat. At 18, my life seemed over. Three months earlier, I’d lost my father to cancer. Now this. The world felt like a dark and empty place. Eating wasn’t going to change anything, and the mere sight [More]

Nana my beloved grandmother, was in the hospital with bone cancer, and I’d picked up my mom so we could spend the afternoon with Nana together. It was hard to imagine that her days on earth were dwindling. She’d lived with such exuberance.   ”I still remember those doctors who said she’d die young from a weak heart,” Mom said on the way over.   “She outlived all of them,” I said. “That weak heart never stopped her.”   Read More: A Heaven-Sent Princess Visited His Grandmother | Guideposts

The snow often fell hard and heavy during the winters I lived in Colorado. It was coming down like crazy one afternoon when my boss closed the office and sent us home. I hurried to my car. I had to stop at the sitter’s house to pick up my two baby boys.   I made it the sitter’s house without too much trouble. “Be careful,” she said, as I strapped Nick, six months old, and Jon, 22 months old, into the backseat of the car.   “You know I will,” I said.   But almost as soon as her house [More]

Katie Mahon is a miracle expert. She’s coauthor of the book The Miracle Chase and writes regularly about her hunt for God’s wonder in the world. She wasn’t always that way, though. For many years, Katie was a self-described miracle skeptic!   When she was a teenager, she escaped the clutches of a notorious serial killer in the most unbelievable of ways. But she had trouble labeling that incredible incident as miraculous.   Here Katie tells the story of that encounter. And how one morning, 15 years later, she finally woke up to that miracle from God.   Read More: [More]

I squinted. Was that a pothole?   Turning the wheel, I guided the car around potential danger. It was early, still dark, and the back roads that wind over and around our creeks in Fredericksburg, Virginia, were tricky even in daylight. The children were at home, still asleep, but I was driving to meet my carpool, all of us government workers in Alexandria, about an hour north.   A hurricane had just blown through our area, but apart from getting to work on time, I wasn’t worried. We were fortunate, with no damage to our property, and most of the [More]

I was 21 years old, spend­ing my second Christmas in Korea after being drafted into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I was alone, walking back to my barracks after a night out with the guys. It was cold and dark, Christmas Eve. I wrapped my arms around myself and trudged onward.   Everyone had talked about what they missed back home. The holiday festivities. Their families. All my comrades had some­thing they’d return to. But not me. I didn’t even mind being far away for the holidays.   I’d had a rootless childhood, landing with my grandparents when I [More]

My husband, Max, had fallen asleep beside me. I was still awake. Staring up at the ceiling of our trailer, listening to the night sounds of Texas Hill Country, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened that afternoon.   I hadn’t told anyone, not even Max. I didn’t think I could. I’d been mowing the lawn, riding a tractor with a mower attached, carefully making my way around the old mesquite trees in low gear. Max was inside the house, working on a shower in the bathroom. A couple of months earlier we had bought the old nineteenth-century house. [More]

With my husband away on a business trip, I planned to spend a quiet weekend at home. But when my friend Chickie and her husband, Dom, invited me to join them for an afternoon at the beach, I was tempted. “I had an asthma attack yesterday, and it really tired me out,” I warned them. “So I’ll probably just lie out on the sand. It’s too humid for me to do much.”   A few hours later, relaxing under a sun umbrella after a picnic lunch, I was glad I’d come. Chickie and Dom went for a dip. They liked [More]

My 70-year-old father-in-law jumped in the water first. But he couldn’t get to my daughter. His arms flailed, tangled in the camera strap around his neck.   “Mommy!” three-year-old Jinny cried, her eyes wide with panic. She’d started swim lessons at 18 months and did fine in shallow water, but she’d drifted into the deep end of the motel pool.   Jinny reached frantically for me. She was in the middle of the pool, too far for me to pull her to safety from the deck. Before I could do a thing, she went under.   Read More: Lifted Out [More]