Proof The Bible Is True

It happened in the blink of an eye. It was 2004. A normal day for professional race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. He was at California’s Sonoma Raceway, practicing for the American Le Mans Series race later that day. No one saw the accident coming.   Dale miscalculated and took a turn too quickly. The Corvette he was driving spun out of control, clipping the wall and catching fire. It was later determined that the car’s fuel line had ruptured, leaking gasoline everywhere. All that was needed was a spark. As cars continued to drive past, the car burst into [More]

“Colt, I think I’m going to die.”   My wife, Krystyna, struggled to get the words out. I had to lean in to hear her. Her voice was weak. She looked small in the hospital bed, her skin pale and shining with sweat.   “No, honey,” I said. “Don’t say that. You can’t lose hope.”   I couldn’t blame her, though. It had been two weeks since what was supposed to be a routine appendectomy, and she was getting worse, not better. The doctors didn’t have any answers. It was hard not to feel hopeless.   It had all started [More]

I drove to the hospital, knowing that today might be the last day I’d spend with my father on this earth. He was my rock, my strength, even while he grew weaker. How could I tell him goodbye?   We knew that dad’s gall bladder surgery was risky at the age of 85, especially after a previous heart surgery. He survived the operation, but complications followed, and his organs started to fail. He’d spent the last three weeks on and off a ventilator. Dad would breathe on his own for a while, then he’d need to be intubated again. It [More]

Nobody was on the beach before dawn in Brigantine, New Jersey. The shore was completely desolate. Maybe that’s what had drawn me. My life was just as desolate.   Six months earlier, in June, I’d been on my boat, the Furthermore, trying to make good time from Florida to New York when a sudden storm had blown up off the coast. Try as I might I couldn’t keep the boat away from the notorious shoals that jutted out from the Jersey Shore. I barely got myself to the life raft before everything else I owned—my clothes, my money, my livelihood [More]

  I leaned over the hospital bed in which my 18-year-old son, Art, lay in a comatose state that seemed like death. Tubes fed him through the nose; a machine breathed for him, breaking the stillness of the room with its mechanical gasps. I moved my lips close to Art’s ear and whispered, “Honey, I had a dream last night, so beautiful it seemed real. Two magnificent angels stood by your bed. It means you’ll be healed, I know it.”   Did he hear me? Can the soul hear when the body is asleep? Art didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge my [More]

Horses have always been my passion, but I never thought I’d own a horse farm, one where I taught children and adults, many with special needs, to ride. God had made that possible. When I first started out, I felt like he and I were partners. He was on the farm with me as I fed and watered the animals, cleaned their stalls, talked with the riders. But over time the daily struggles of running a business made me feel as if I were on my own.   I felt the weight of my doubts on my shoulders the afternoon [More]

01/20/20   “No, Chad,” I snapped, spotting my energetic little boy racing for the front door as it closed. “You can’t go with your sister.” Chad ran to the window and knocked on the glass. Shauna waved before she ran off down the street to play with her friends. At two and a half, Chad was a handful. Trying to keep him out of mischief and danger, I’d nailed drawers shut, built a wooden box over the TV knobs and duct-taped safety plugs into the electrical outlets.   For nearly two years, since I’d suffered a slipped disk and had [More]

It was one of those perfect New York autumn mornings—blue skies, a crisp breeze. A day when I felt lucky to live in the city. I was on my way out of my East Side apartment when the doorman waved his hand to stop me.   “A plane just hit the World Trade Center,” he said.   An image of John F. Kennedy, Jr., shot through my mind. He had just crashed his private plane into the Atlantic Ocean in the summer of 1999. These private-plane owners really don’t know what they’re doing, I thought as the doorman pushed open the [More]

I found my usual empty seat on the school bus and stared out the window at all the other high schoolers milling about, saying goodbye to their friends. Everybody seemed to have somebody. Except me. I didn’t have any friends. No matter how hard I prayed for one. The driver pulled the door closed.   I felt someone plop down in the seat beside me. A boy had his hand out for me to shake. “Hey!” he said. “My name’s Jack. I’m new. Mind if I sit here?” I looked around to see if this happy guy was making a [More]

What better way to spend a free afternoon than sitting in the sun by the pool? It wasn’t often I had a day with nothing to do. Nothing going on. Nothing special to be ready for. My day off stretched out like the still water before me. Not even a breeze to stir the surface.   I shifted in my lounge chair, gazing out at the line of 70-foot-tall sweet gum trees that lined the property, until I let my eyes fall shut. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so relaxed and gave myself over to the peacefulness. [More]

We could barely contain our excitement as we went through the ticket booth at Kings Island amusement park in Ohio. “Let’s climb the Eiffel Tower first,” I said. “From up top we can look out over the park and see everything.”   My older brother, Luis, shook his head. “I don’t need to see the whole park to know I want to do the Drop Tower first.”   “How about we start with a family ride,” Mom said. “Something your little sister can go on too. Like the antique cars.”   Teenaged Luis and I looked at each other. No [More]

“Mommy, can we get cupcakes for my birthday? Please?”   I cringed at the thought of having to hit the grocery store on a Tuesday, Senior Citizen Discount Day. We’d already celebrated Norah’s big day. Two of her six siblings were also born in September and for the sake of simplicity we had one big celebration for all of them. Still, today was Norah’s actual birthday. Her fourth birthday. How could I say no?   “Okay,” I said, thinking of the seniors who would be swarming the aisles. “But we have to be quick.”   At the supermarket I popped [More]

“I’ve got a really good story for you,” my editor told me the other day in the office kitchen.   I was a newspaper journalist for 25 years before coming to Guideposts. There’s not a whole lot that surprises me. But this, she assured me, wasn’t the usual fare. “This guy’s done a video,” she said. “Watch it. You’ll see what I mean.”   It had been shared to the Mysterious Ways Facebook page by Karen Byerley Knutsen. A cell phone video of her father, Kenneth Byerley. I pulled it up online. Ken was an older, affable-looking man in a [More]

Dryers were convenient, sure, but I didn’t mind not having one. Especially on a morning like this. Blue sky, warm sun, a cool breeze ruffling my hair. The smell of clean clothes and grass. I reached for a fat wooden clothespin and clipped it to the shoulder of the white blouse I’d just washed. The one I planned to wear on the plane…   I suddenly shivered. Not because of the breeze. In just a few days I’d have to get on an airplane for Florida. My sister was scheduled for gall bladder surgery and needed me to help watch [More]

I woke to the sound of wind whip­ping outside my window, rain pelting the roof. I switched on the TV.   “A severe storm warning has been issued for the Tulsa Metropolitan Area,” the newscaster said. “We’re predicting hail, heavy rains and high winds. Please be advised, folks, it could turn into a tornado. So hunker down—we’re in for a rough one.”   I sat on the edge of the couch, my mind focused on one thing. One per­son. Hilda. “I can’t believe the torna­does you get out here!” she’d told me a few months ago, shortly after we met [More]

The last thing I remembered, I was sitting in my hospital room, recovering from the birth of my second child, a daughter. It was February, 1971. After a long, difficult delivery my husband and parents had gone home to rest. The baby was in the hospital nursery. I was ready to sleep too. Then my back started to hurt. I told the nurse when she came to check on me and then…   How could I explain it? More nurses rushed in. One said the word “hemorrhage.”   The next thing I knew I was weightless, floating around as if [More]

I’d been on the pipeline job as a laborer for five months, the lone female in a field of men. My job was to work directly with the engineer as he marked the bends in the pipe. A hundred yards in front of us, the backhoe clanked and rattled as it cut a five-foot ditch across the northwest Colorado high desert.   Climbing up on a rocky hill and staring ahead at the long ditch, I decided it looked like a giant snake easing its way through the sagebrush and pinyon pine trees. Snakes were on my mind. As they [More]

She was forced to make a two-story leap to the sidewalk to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend, but an unexpected visitor put her at ease.   I stood on the window ledge trying to gather courage. In front of me was a two-story drop down to the street. If I jumped, I risked hitting one of the wrought-iron fence spikes. But the alternative was even worse.   My ex-boyfriend had somehow found my rented apartment. He’d burst inside, reeking of alcohol. I thought I had finally gotten free of him. I was trying to get my life back on track, trying [More]

A young woman is threatened on a deserted beach by a man she’s only just met. With no one else around, how could she escape unharmed?   I saw him among the sea of partyers on the beach at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Blond hair. Athletic build. Total jock. Not my type at all. I usually went for the quiet, geeky types, like me. But this guy kept glancing my way, and I had no one else to talk to. I was standing awkwardly by the bonfire. My older sister, Elizabeth, and I had snuck out of the bungalow [More]

Sunday night at the laundromat. It was a huge inconvenience, especially with Christmas just a few weeks away. But my dryer was on the blink. I’d washed my clothes at home, and then transported them in plastic bags to finish the job here.   As I loaded the dryers—one for towels, a second for jeans and another for delicates—I caught sight of one of the machines below the three I was using. Spinning around together to the backdrop of the evening news were tube socks and a child’s party dress.   They don’t belong in the same dryer and I [More]

Retirement was supposed to be relaxing, but just a few months after I’d left my teaching job I found myself rushing around. It was our last day at home before my husband, Larry, and I took the three-hour trip to our summer place on Lake Roosevelt. And summer was certainly in full swing.   Today the temperature hit 100 degrees. But Larry and I had a lot to take care of before we could get going. I grabbed the keys to my Subaru Outback.   “You take the truck to run your last-minute errands,” I said. “I’m headed to the [More]

My mom and dad had known each other since high school. “We were meant to be together,” Dad said. My father didn’t show his emotions much, but you could see a sparkle in his eyes whenever he talked about Mom.   My older brother, Roland, and sister, Alma, and I always knew how much our parents loved each other. Long after they sent us kids off to bed they lingered at the kitchen table, talking and holding hands, just enjoying their time alone.   We lived in Midland, Texas, where Dad was a full-time CPA, and Mom had her own [More]

I was clearing up the breakfast dishes when the phone rang. “Something’s happened to your mom,” my dad said. He was trying to keep calm, but I could hear panic in his voice. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”   A rush of cold swept through my body, as if I could feel the blood draining to my feet. “Ambulance?”   “I found her collapsed on the floor. Hurry over! I’m alone here.”   I stumbled upstairs, jerked on my shoes and ran out to the car. Luckily my family all lived close together. My parents were only a [More]

Seven o’clock. Just about time for my evening walk. I tucked my cell phone into my pocket and headed off down the road, where the summer cottages stretched out along the Juniata River in Bedford County, Pennsylvania. I walked past the cottage next to mine, past . . .   I stopped. Gladys’s cottage stood empty. It was still hard for me to believe that she wasn’t inside. We weren’t family by blood—she and her husband were great friends of my parents while I was growing up. Her daughter and I were like sisters, and Gladys was like a second [More]

They call it the most magical place on earth. What better vacation spot for us to visit than Disney World that summer of 1985? My husband and I had only been married a few months, but all signs pointed to a long and happy future for our brand-new blended family. Life felt more settled already, and I was relieved to no longer be alone.   “Let’s do Space Mountain tomorrow,” my older daughter said as she got into the sleeping couch on the opposite side of the room. Her sister was already tucked into the cot. “And Cinderella’s castle!” she [More]

Knuckles white, I gripped the sides of our ski boat. The storm had hit with almost no warning and we were being tossed about like a cork, the wind and waves threatening to capsize us.   “We’ve got to get back to the dock,” Phil yelled over the gale. We’re veteran boaters. Not easily panicked. My husband and I were fighting for our lives.   From the middle of Kaw Lake, a massive body of water in northeast Oklahoma, I looked to where we had put in that morning, hoping to enjoy the day exploring the lake’s many coves. But, [More]

Scotch burned my throat on the way down. Finally. I’d waited hours for my favorite bar to open up and it wasn’t even noon yet. I couldn’t deny it anymore. My drinking was out of control and I was scared out of my mind.   “How are things, Jim?” asked Betty the bartender.   I shrugged and looked around the bar. The place was dim—none of the customers wanted to see anything too clearly.   I could make out a few faces against the wood paneling: A man in a rumpled coat hunched over a tumbler of whiskey. A woman [More]