Proof The Bible Is True

The bleeding had gone on for days, sometimes coming in a sudden gush. A complete evaluation revealed the cause. One that was rare so early on in a pregnancy. “You’ve had a severe partial abruption,” the doctor said. “The placenta has torn away from the uterus.” My husband, Mark, squeezed my hand. “You won’t carry this baby to term. I’m sorry.” As a registered nurse, one who had worked in OB-GYN, I knew there was no treatment that could stop the placenta from detaching completely, and there was no way to reattach my baby’s life support system in the womb. [More]

I know from personal experience that God’s messengers are ready to come to our aid in times of crisis. You will probably remember the disaster that happened in 1986 at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in the former USSR (now Ukraine). The zone of damaging radioactive contamination was still spreading when I traveled to Minsk, Belarus, to serve as a prophetic intercessor for a festival outreach for Jewish people. I had gone there with my two friends David Fitzpatrick and Richard Glickstein, with whom I had prayed a lot in New York City and other places in the United [More]

Indian summer in Montana—the perfect day to float down the Clark Fork River and catch a few trout. My buddy Mike, a Chicago native, had been bugging me to take him on a river float, so he and his sister-in-law, Lagora, met me by the Petty Creek Bridge, about 30 minutes north of Missoula. As we put my Hyde drift boat, loaded down with fishing rods and other equipment, into the water, I explained that I’d been on thousands of trips down the river, in the past as a professional guide and fisherman. “I’ve never gotten anyone wet,” I said. [More]

Evergreens had dropped so many needles on my lawn that I had my work cut out for me in cutting the grass. I turned off my hearing aid to block the noise of the riding mower, climbed on and started the engine. On my first pass over the yard a low-hanging branch knocked my sunglasses right off—and my hearing aid along with them! I stopped the mower and looked down at the ground. The sunglasses were easy to spot. But the hearing aid? A beige-colored device about the size of my fingertip? Forget it. I would never find that among [More]

“Just shows how important it is to listen to and do what the Holy Spirit prompts you.” Admin A big ol’ Texas-style Easter Mass? Count me in! St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Amarillo was an hour from Borger, our small town, but my husband, Mervin, and our son, Vinay, and I couldn’t wait to make our first trip there. Just as we were about to leave, a thought stopped me in my tracks: Take two angels. I had a stockpile of little fabric angels. Reminders that God was with me, always. But why would I bring some to a church [More]

“Mommy, I want to go home.” It was heartbreaking to see my seven-year-old like this. “Honey, you are home,” I said, stroking her face. “We’ve left the hospital. This is your bed. And I’m right here. You had a really bad fall and need a long rest.” “I don’t remember falling.” Abby sounded scared—my fearless tomboy was never scared. At least she never had been, until the accident. “You were climbing the tree next door…” I reminded her. Even now, a week later, the memory of that day made my chest tighten. I was in the house when I heard [More]

A hard, angry pounding came at the front door. I crawled underneath the bed and nestled into the space between the floor and the mattress. I curled up into a ball, trying to make myself disappear. My mother had hidden herself in a kitchen cupboard. It was June 1945, and I was 17 years old—too young to fully understand what was happening around me in Berlin, the city I’d grown up in. The war had ended a month earlier. Mutti, my mother, told me that life would go back to normal soon. Papa would come home any day now. We’d [More]

“Ma’am, there is no seat for you on the plane,” the check-in clerk at the airport told me. “You must fly standby only.” “But, here, this is my ticket. I confirmed my seat three days ago.” The clerk only shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But there is no seat for you on this flight.” I grabbed my luggage and wandered away from the counter before I burst into tears. I was alone in the domestic airport terminal in Delhi, India. I didn’t have any friends in the city. I didn’t even speak the language. What was I going [More]

A man strode toward me across the dock in Charleston, South Carolina. I didn’t recognize him, but he sure seemed to know me. “Stuart!” he said, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. I only had a second to look at his face before another meaty paw clasped me to his breast in a rib-cracking hug. “It’s me, Fred. From Bequia. Don’t you remember? You saved my life!” Saved a life? That I would remember! The only saved life I knew of was my own. A life I almost lost as a hopelessly drunk sailor. Which made me think twice. [More]

Apprehension? Excitement? My wife, Rosland, and I didn’t know what we felt more while we packed our belongings into the rented U-Haul trailer. We’d married young, even for the freewheeling 1960s— and at 18 we’d already added a new baby to our family. I’d just completed my basic training at Fort Ord in California, which meant I could eventually expect a tour in Vietnam. Already I worried who would take care of my young family then. For now, though, I was in charge. We were leaving Southern California for my first duty station at Fort Riley, Kansas. We hitched the [More]

Rose was the youngest of the seven Johnson children, born late in her parents’ life, and named after the roses that bloomed in the front yard. This unexpected addition to the family seemed to everyone like a miracle. The entire household took delight in her every coo. On a May afternoon in 1935, when Rose was 10 months old, she’d been down for her nap longer than usual. “I’ll go check on her,” Mrs. Johnson said to the other children. Her eldest daughter, Bessie, followed her mother into the baby’s room, where Mrs. Johnson leaned over the crib and laid [More]

It was the end of harvest. Twenty-three-year-old Joanie had just come home from a job interview in town when her sister met her. “Dad needs you out in the field to help bail the rest of the hay,” Joanie’s sister told her. So Joanie hurried into the house to exchange her business clothes for jeans. When she met her dad, he had almost finished, but the wagon was full: 225 bails. “We decided to take the wagon back to the barn to unload,” Joanie says. “But as I drove the tractor, the bailer, and the full wagon of hay toward [More]

Jack, my young son, held my hand tightly as we walked up to the hospital entrance. “This won’t take long at all, sweetie,” I said. “The doctor just needs to take a picture of your chest. Then we’ll go meet Grandma and Nathan, and you can tell your brother all about it.” Jack never liked going to the doctor, but because of his asthma my husband and I weren’t taking any chances. He had quite a wheeze and only a chest X-ray could assure us he didn’t have pneumonia. We pushed through the doors into a long corridor that led [More]

The last thing I wanted to see that night was some teenaged guy in a baseball cap. But there he was, standing by the exit door on the roof. I looked away, trying to give off a vibe: Do Not Disturb. What did he want anyway? Guys weren’t interested in fat girls like me. He wasn’t scary or anything. He just stood there, staring into space. I’d never seen him before. What was he doing on my roof? I often came to the top of the parking garage at night. It was quiet. I liked being alone up there, above [More]

“Blackberry cobbler! I can already taste it,” my brother Grady said as we made our way to the field in front of our house. We were on a mission to fill the new basket swinging on his arm to the brim with ripe, juicy blackberries. He’d admired it in town weeks ago, and so our oldest sister went out and bought it for him. The basket was his to keep, but on one condition: “You have to fill it with berries,” she said. “I’ll whip up one of those cobblers you’re always going on about.” I quickly agreed to help–anything [More]

He was sure he’d heard someone call his name as he navigated the swollen river, but there was no one around…or was there? Since sunup I’d been out on the Missouri River, riding around in my 14-foot metal boat. The river was running high and fast, swollen from heavy fall rains. Lots of debris floated past, mainly branches from the willow trees that grew along the shore. Every once in a while an entangled mess would come my way, and I’d have to maneuver around it. But I was used to the outdoors, and to adventure–small boats, single-engine planes, hiking [More]

On September 11, 2001, I was on the phone at my desk in 2 Chase Manhattan Plaza, a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. The second plane had hit. I was frantically trying to warn people in the downtown buildings I supervised. “We gotta get out of here,” my buddy Andre said. “The Towers are collapsing!” We made our way to the lobby, where blackness enveloped us. People were screaming. “Where do we go?” someone cried. “Here,” I called out, and Andre and I led a few others into the terrifying dark cloud of smoke and dust outside [More]

What was I thinking? On top of my night rotation as a nurse, I’d volunteered to manage First Lutheran Church’s Thursday night Share a Meal program. It was a worthy cause–we’d provide a balanced meal to more than 50 people. And I was just filling in for a friend this one week. But I was already overwhelmed by my work schedule, and didn’t completely trust myself not to mess up. “Don’t worry,” I’d told my friend. “You can count on me.” At least I hoped so. In the days that followed, my calendar became a balancing act. I hadn’t factored [More]

She had a vision of a little girl … and an angel. That vision soon became a reality. Was this a church? The high, vaulted ceilings made it seem like one–almost, but not exactly. That’s the way things often are in dreams, and I was dreaming now. Deeply. A woman entered the room. With her was a small child, a little girl in soft, lavender footie pajamas. She was barely a toddler, still a baby in many ways. Her brown hair was braided and her big, dark eyes were beautiful. But it wasn’t their beauty that struck me so much [More]

“After being hit by a car an angel takes a young boy to see Jesus who promises his healing.”  Admin On the Friday before school started, I was cleaning and equipping the bus I would drive that year. I had parked it near my mom’s town house, and while I scrubbed the seats and made the windows sparkle, Travis Daniel, my four-year-old, played inside at Mom’s. At least that’s where I thought he was until he startled me from the street: “Hi, Mommy!” “Danny, you’re supposed to be with Grandma.” He was all smiles at the foot of the steps [More]

I was driving on the highway with my daughter and grandchildren when a red pickup truck barreled down a ramp into my lane. I swerved too late– Smash! The pickup hit our right rear door. We spun and came to a stop in a patch of wet grass. The children screamed, then burst into tears. “Shh,” I said, trying to comfort them and check for injuries at the same time. Besides minor scrapes, bumps and bruises, they were all okay physically. But they were still badly frightened. They couldn’t stop crying. “It’s all right,” their mom and I assured each [More]

My husband, Don, retired 10 years ago. Soon after, we bought a three-quarter-ton Chevy Silverado and a fully equipped travel trailer, and set off in search of adventure. Our eventual goal was to visit all 48 continental states and Canada. We saw New England and New Mexico, and everything in between. One night, deep in Wisconsin wilderness, I marveled at how safe we always felt, no matter how far from home we roamed. “God’s angels are with us,” I said, and Don nodded, knowing I was right. Once in Colorado, Don wanted to ride a 19th-century train between Durango and [More]

Summer was supposed to be free of worries for a high school grad like me. No studying, no homework–at least not till I went away to college in the fall. I even had a good secretarial job at an industrial company so I could go off with some money in my pocket. But one afternoon, while I tried to concentrate on entering orders into my computer, doubts crowded in: I’d never been on my own before. I was shy. I’d always lived in the same small town. How would I make it out there in the big, scary world? I [More]

After my three-year-old son, Zac, was diagnosed with leukemia, I had questions for the doctors–and for God. Will you keep Zac safe? Will he be okay? Zac checked into Hemby Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. One night he had a seizure. All my fears came to the surface. When I finally fell asleep in the hospital room, I dreamed there were many children surrounding me. One little boy had chicken pox. Some kids were giggling. “Do you have any candy?” one little girl asked. Read More  The Angels of Hemby Hospital – Guideposts.

New York City never gets dark at night, not the way it does in the country. That’s one thing that always fascinates me whenever I make the seven-hour trip from Lynchburg, Virginia. But by the time my two friends and I hopped off the Circle Line boat tour, the meatpacking district was a ghost town. The bright lights of Times Square, where we were heading for dinner, seemed far away. “Doesn’t the city make you nervous?” one of my friends asked as we walked to the bus terminal. The Big Apple could be overwhelming for folks not used to it, [More]

On bright, clear summer days on our family farm I wasted happy hours on the wooden swing hanging from the maple tree. Something about flying through the air, trying to touch the clouds, made me feel closer to God. One afternoon I was halfway to the sky when I heard a voice. “You’d better get out of the swing before it breaks,” the voice said. My legs stopped pumping and I turned around to see who was there. No one. Mom was inside. Read More  Heeding a Heavenly Voice – Guideposts.

Burga, my 50-pound Rottweiler, jumped out of the pickup truck when we got to Boynton Canyon in Sedona, our go-to spot for a late afternoon stroll. “This might be our last walk for a while, Burga,” I said as I led her to our favorite trail. I was scheduled for foot surgery the next day and overwhelmed with worries. Would things be worse than the doctor initially thought? Would I fully recover use of my foot? Would the surgical staff be well rested before the operation? My fears were out of control! When Burga and I got closer to our [More]