Proof The Bible Is True

In a frenzy over the weekend, I went online and ordered each of the girls a special edition Barbie. Holiday Barbie 2009 for Evangeline, and the more sophisticated Generation of Dreams Barbie for Louisiana.   With a click of the mouse it was done. The girls would love them! Maybe I could get my Christmas shopping done after all!   The box arrived at my doorstep when I came in from work early the next week. It was a bigger box than I expected. I tore into it before going upstairs. Inside were the two Barbies I wanted—hurray!—and a second Generations [More]

“Ready to fly, girl?” I said, stroking the Arabian mare’s mane.   It was nighttime–pitch black. I’d just snuck out of the girls’ dorm at my boarding school. If I got caught I’d be in deep trouble. But sometimes a secret midnight ride on a horse, Sakie, pastured close to the school was the only way to clear my head.   At sixteen there was so much I couldn’t control. I felt somewhere in the middle of being an adult and a kid. Everyday life could seem downright scary.   My new boyfriend had broken up with me for another [More]

Birds of a feather, that was my dad and me. We loved birds, all kinds of birds, and traded notes on our sightings. He and Mom had even more feeders in their yard than I did.   Dad used to make much of the fact that he’d never seen evening grosbeaks at my feeders. Large birds, easy to spot–the male with his bright yellow and black feathers, the less colorful female never far from his side.   Evening grosbeaks were unpredictable migrants, but every winter flocks of them devoured the sunflower seeds in Dad’s feeders just miles from where I [More]

Empty. No other word described how I felt. I’d lost the baby I’d carried for six months. Six months of planning for the daughter I’d named Angelica.   The loss of the baby had been too much for my already rocky marriage, and my husband and I separated. Now there was just Jordan and me. My son was my pride and joy, but he was only three. How could he give me the comfort I needed so desperately?   Jordan had looked forward to being a big brother, and I took him in my arms when I came home from [More]

Every year my family gathered for a week at our summer place in northern Michigan. Kids, grandkids, great-grandkids all descended on my lake house. Normally I loved gathering at the house for a week of sun, swimming, and time with my family. But this year was different. My beloved husband, Bill, had died less than a year before, after a long battle with brain tumors, and I couldn’t imagine being up at the lake without him. He’d loved that special place every bit as much as I had, all 62 years of our marriage.   But my kids kept begging [More]

Our family needed to come together more than ever that fall. I decided to have Thanksgiving at my house.   I hadn’t fixed a formal dinner in months, and I had a full set of white stoneware in my china cabinet just begging to be used: plates, salad plates, cups and saucers, creamer, sugar bowl, butter dish—the works. A week in advance, I made out my grocery list, including ingredients for my special fruit punch. It had been my granddaughter’s favorite.   Amanda, 20 years old, had lost her life in a car accident in the spring. She had visited [More]

You can’t go home again. That’s what they say. But I returned to California, where I grew up, after seven years of being away.   My roots were there, I figured, even though my parents and grandparents were now gone and I’d lost touch with all my old friends. Besides, my lonely new house was about to become a home. I was getting a dog. I straightened the family photographs on the end table while I waited for the shelter volunteer to drop the dog off for a trial run.   My father and grandmother smiled out at me from [More]

I couldn’t believe my eyes: “Mom, is that really me?” In the mirror stood a happy young woman in the most beautiful wedding dress I’d ever seen. “The one and only,” Mom said. “This is your big day.”   Right at this very moment, friends and family were taking their seats in the lovely church my fiancé and I had chosen. Dad waited to escort me up the aisle. I’d tied white satin bows on the pews, and arranged white and lavender flowers by the altar. Lavender, to match the bridesmaids dresses.   It all seemed like a dream, especially [More]

Before the party started I hoped to steal upstairs to the trunk where I kept our son Rod’s favorite things. I spent a lot of time with that trunk since Rod’s death in a car accident in his sophomore year in high school. That’s where I went when I missed him so much I couldn’t bear it. Like now.   My husband, Rodney, and I had decided to throw a graduation party for Rod’s classmates. They’d taken his death hard too. In the months after the accident the kids wrote dozens of letters telling us how much our son had [More]

Different. That’s what I’ve always been.   As far back as kindergarten, the other kids saw I was clumsy and got really distracted sometimes. They didn’t want to be friends, so God and I got extra close.   One night in my room, when I was five years old, he even spoke to me. “Kyle,” he said, “this is God. You’re going to have a baby sister.” Sure enough, a few days later, Mom found out she was pregnant.   My new sister, Libby, never shied away from me or laughed when I fell down. I wished the other kids could [More]

Jeff was one of the most popular kids in my high school class. He was a soccer and baseball star, a talented artist, an honors student, and “best-dressed senior.” But the list of honors under Jeff’s yearbook picture didn’t convey his real achievement.   At the beginning of senior year, Jeff was diagnosed with cancer. Even as the disease rapidly advanced, he continued to come to school and do all his work.   Read More: Graduation Day – Guideposts

Communication wasn’t easy when I started dating Lynn. She was deaf, and my sign language was limited to the alphabet. Lynn would wait patiently for me to spell out a word and then teach me its sign.   The tedious process was worth it. Taking the time to really communicate only brought Lynn and me closer. I was fluent in sign language by our wedding day and our 10 children also learned.   Lynn was killed in a car accident in June 1999. “She’s with God in heaven,” I told our children. But silently I wished I knew that for [More]

Elsewhere in the world it was Christmas Eve. The calendar said December 24, 1944, but it seemed impossible.   This was no holiday for us American soldiers, out in the snow-covered forests of the Ardennes Mountains, in Belgium along the German border. We were far from home, battling subzero cold, and the enemy was all around us.   Most of us were young college graduates, trained as pilots or bombardiers in the Air Force. But there was a shortage of B-17s for us to fly, so we’d been assigned to the ground troops and reduced in rank from lieutenant to [More]

My husband and I searched for a housekeeper for months. Running our business left little time for the house, but we just couldn’t find the perfect person.   Our home was filled with eclectic souvenirs from our travels—glassware from Eastern Europe, hand-carved spoons from Poland, ironwork from the Czech Republic, pottery from Japan. We wanted a housekeeper who would care for our mementos as we would.   Then one day I bumped into my old neighbor Michelle, who had recently moved back to the area. I hadn’t seen her in years. She invited me over to her new place. I [More]

Christmas Eve I woke up early for our big family dinner.   Dozens of relatives were due to arrive in a matter of hours, and of course there was lots to do. I went to the kitchen to put in the turkey. But first I took a deep breath.   I had a special Christmas request I didn’t want to forget. A prayer not so much for me and our guests, but for my teenage son, Darryl. Please, God, I asked, let us spend Christmas at home, and not in the hospital.   Darryl was born with spina bifida, a disease that [More]

The Boston Red Sox and our grandson, Justin. Two of my husband’s greatest pleasures. Justin spent countless hours with Grandpa Gabe, laughing and talking while they worked in the yard and around the house. Gabe taught him how to use tools and even to repair our riding lawn mower.   Their happiest times together were in baseball season, cheering for the Red Sox on television, munching handfuls of peanuts, Gabe’s favorite snack. “He’s my best friend,” Justin always said.   My husband battled gastrointestinal cancer for most of Justin’s young life. He never gave in to the disease, and our [More]

Early one July morning I arrived by train in Salt Lake City eagerly anticipating a week’s camping trip with my son, Dan. We planned to explore the Oregon Trail. My great-great-grandfather had trudged West along that trail beside a covered wagon. Dan wouldn’t arrive for a while, so I stowed my gear in a station locker and walked into town. When I returned, the station doors were locked. A sign announced it wouldn’t reopen until ten o’clock that night. I peered in the window, but no one was inside.   Read More: The Key to Praying – Guideposts

Before my husband, Omar, and I got married, we had the “kid” conversation. This wasn’t our first marriage, and we each had children from previous relationships. Our blended family got along wonderfully. Why add a new baby to the mix?   Besides, I was 39 and Omar was 42. In a few years, our kids would be out of the house. Neither one of us wanted to start over, to go back to sleepless nights and changing diapers, right?   Then my period was late. I’d left Omar and the kids back in Texas to spend a week with family in Massachusetts. [More]

I sighed and leaned back in my glider, content to sit by the Ohio River with my husband beside me. Music buzzed lazily from the radio in our camper. Brian had driven us to our favorite getaway spot for some rest and relaxation. He knew I needed it.   My little sister, Tracy, had died of brain cancer a few months earlier. Throughout her battle she had maintained what we called a “Don’t Stop Believin’” attitude because that song kept her going. I wanted to keep alive my happy memories of her.   “I heard that Journey is touring,” I [More]

This dog! She insisted on following me every time I hiked this trail. Why couldn’t she see that I wanted to be alone?   It was a crisp November day. I was halfway up to Rocca Angitola, a breathtaking hilltop in the Calabria region of southern Italy. I’d lived in Calabria part-time for years, and this was the place I’d always come to find peace and renewal, the place I felt closest to God. But now I could barely take a step without this darn dog getting underfoot.   I whirled around, then picked up a clod of dirt and tossed [More]

“The miracle we need can at times come in a “non-miraculous” way.” Admin When God gives you a miracle, why would it be taken away?   I had really felt like that: God’s walking miracle. I traveled all over the United States, talking to different groups, telling my story and giving witness to my dramatic turnaround. I wrote a novel, got it published, did book signings. Everywhere I went, people were fascinated by how God had healed me of a mysterious illness. What an amazing thing! A miracle.   Why would that all suddenly come to an end?   Read More: How [More]

It was one of the first stories I ever worked on as an editor at Guideposts. A waitress walking home late at night hears someone following her. Thieves? Troublemakers? No matter how fast she went, she couldn’t outrun them. It was then she heard a voice: “Eat the chicken!”   What? Why? She had a bag of leftover chicken from that night’s serving. But why eat it now? She was running for her life. Still, she opened the sack and the smell of the meat attracted a pair of dogs who safely accompanied her home. Eat the chicken? It was just [More]

If someone told you they sometimes hear voices, you might think he or she was nuts. And yet, how many of us have heard a voice that came out of the blue, seemingly outside ourselves, that we chose to either listen to or ignore?   It’s a phenomenon we’ve observed in the stories told to us by the readers and contributors of Mysterious Ways, and we were curious to find out just how common it is.   To do so, we commissioned the first survey of its kind to determine how many believe that these mysterious thoughts, urges, and sounds represent [More]

My husband, Russ, and I drove through our neighborhood, the place we’d called home for 28 years. The Sierra Nevada foothills, once thick with towering pines, were unrecognizable. The ground was covered with a heavy layer of ash. The trees that remained were charred stumps.   Two weeks earlier, we’d gotten an early-morning call telling us to evacuate immediately. The wildfire tearing through Northern California had spread and was headed our way.   Read More: Mysterious Ways: Rising from the Ashes – Guideposts

The first thing I did when I woke up in our hotel room in Albuquerque was check the weather in Austin. My daughter, Ellen, lived there. I’d dreamed about her the night before—two dreams, one of her as a little girl and another of her today, a grown young lady. Austin was suffering torrential downpours. Major flooding. “I hope Ellen’s okay,” I told my husband.   It had been so long since I’d seen her. Except in my dream. Ellen was a blessing in my life—the only other girl in my house full of boys. She was always so creative [More]

 The C-141 Starlifter had just returned from a cargo run. My husband, Jeff, an airman 1st class, checked the life support equipment—the oxygen masks, the parachutes. All in working order, nothing out of place. Except for something odd left behind on one of the seats. A crocheted white cross, three inches long. It didn’t belong to any of the crew. No one knew how it got there.   Jeff brought it home for me. He thought it would provide some comfort. I’d been five months pregnant with our first child, Aurora, when we left our home in West Virginia and moved [More]

Thwack! The 5 x 7 wooden picture frame fell from my desk onto the growing pile of garbage on the floor of my home office. One of the slats popped off. Just as well. There was no photo inside—the old box frame had belonged to my grandmother, Bom Bom, and it had started falling apart years ago. I should have tossed it earlier, but I couldn’t. It reminded me of her.   It was May 10th, Bom Bom’s birthday, the first since she’d passed away the previous summer. I wanted nothing more than to call her and tell her how much [More]