Proof The Bible Is True

Every year, thousands flock to San Francisco to walk across that fabled vermilion span, the Golden Gate Bridge. They come for the sweeping views of the city, the fog-wreathed hillsides abutting cold gray waters. The bridge rises 220 feet above the bay. Below, sharks and sea lions swim and dangerous currents churn. Tourists crowd the walkway, braced against the wind, snapping photos.   On a cool, foggy September afternoon, I boarded a bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. I wasn’t a tourist. I didn’t care about the view. I was going to jump.   Read More: Last Leap – Guideposts

Mamaw Clark’s faded homespun skirt trailed in the leaves as she walked along the creek at the forest’s edge. Mamaw bent down beneath a cedar sapling and picked a handful of wild mint.   I took a handful myself and breathed in the sweet, cool scent.   “Don’t go eating that there mint,” Mamaw warned me. “It’s still green as grass and will upset your innards. You can chew on a sprig, but don’t swallow a drop or you’ll be sorry.”   Mamaw was a fourth generation medicine woman. Her own mother was full-blooded Cherokee. Mamaw didn’t talk about that [More]

Residents of a quiet block in Fresno could hardly believe their eyes when a house near the intersection of Cedar and Dakota Avenues went up in flames. “My daddy’s in there!” a woman outside shouted, clutching her baby close.   Read More: Wonderful World: Rescued from a Raging Inferno – Guideposts

“Your shoe?” my husband Michael asked. He kept his eyes on the road but shook his head. “How did you manage to lose one shoe?”   I wondered the same thing. We were on vacation, driving from Montana to Erie, Pennsylvania, and I’d taken off my favorite pair of black clogs to be more comfortable in the car. We hadn’t made a stop since lunch, hours earlier. But I’d looked under every seat, combed through the empty wrappers and maps littering the floor—all I could find was the right clog.  Somehow, the left was missing. Could it have fallen out before I’d [More]

Swim to my voice. The words washed over me like the waves I was hopelessly fighting, salt water spraying my face. My legs were cramping from the exertion of staying afloat. But I kept moving. I had to.   I was stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. What would happen if I stopped fighting the terrible current? Would I be swept out further into the gulf, my body never even found?   I was miles from shore. It was dark. I scanned the horizon, looking for a sign that help was on the way. All I saw were the blinking red [More]

“Mom, can I bring two chicken legs for lunch?” my 6-year-old son AJ asked, smiling sweetly at me. I sighed. My son always made me proud—he’d recently been selected as one of two first graders to compete against two second grade students in the school’s spelling bee—but I wished he wasn’t such a picky eater. After all the delicious, healthy lunches I made for him came back to me uneaten, I’d finally given in and packed one of his favorite foods—a fried chicken leg. I was hoping he’d tire of it quickly—now he wanted two?   “Are you really going to eat [More]

When you have to bury your children, it doesn’t matter how long they’ve been gone, you never stop missing them. My husband, Myles, and I lost both our daughters. Linda’s alcoholism brought her life to a tragic end at age 45. Renee passed away at 48 after a long fight with breast cancer.   It’s been more than eight years since our girls died, but some days grief still hits me so hard, it’s as if I just kissed them goodbye for the last time.   Like the other day. When Myles saw me staring at our girls’ pictures on [More]

My friend, Loretta, was dying of stomach cancer. She had undergone a debilitating round of chemo that hadn’t worked. But she was so brave, even in the face of death. That didn’t surprise me. She was the friend who’d comforted me two years earlier, after my 21-year-old daughter, Nancy, was killed by a drunk driver.   I’d never gotten over the pain of being unable to say goodbye to my daughter. As I thought of Loretta going to heaven, I wondered if she could give Nancy a message. But what would I say? Nancy knew we loved her. To say how much [More]

“A troubled marriage.” That’s what our working relationship had become, my company’s CEO told me, the morning he fired me.   It didn’t make any sense. Sure, we’d had some strategic differences over the way our technology consulting firm operated, but I’d spent nearly every waking minute of the past ten years helping to build the company from its infancy.   I’d worked 50-hour weeks, putting vacation time and family time on hold to manage one of its branch offices to profitability. My husband and I didn’t have children–I often called the office my extended family.   “You’re no longer [More]

The house was quiet. Clinking silverware was about the only sound my wife, Elaine, and I made at dinner anymore, and sitting outside on the patio afterward, it seemed like even the crickets spoke in hushed tones.   I longed to hear rock music boom­ing from upstairs, or the rattle of skateboard wheels on our driveway. Elaine glanced up at the dark bal­cony overlooking the patio and I followed her gaze.   Stop it, I thought. It had been six months since the motorcycle accident that killed our 16-year-old son, Austin, and it was time to stop looking for ghosts. The silence [More]

So this is what the end feels like. I stared out the window of my parents’ living room. The sun shone brightly, but I couldn’t feel its warmth. The light felt harsh and unforgiving.   Winter’s typical days—cold, gray, overcast—had been slow to arrive that December in southern Missouri, but I was in a kind of darkness, lost in my own personal blizzard. I could barely find the will to get out of bed. I didn’t see the point.   I’d been here a month, mostly staying in my room, blinds closed, or wandering the house like a ghost. Daddy had [More]

The answer must be in the Bible, Joel Haler’s father told him. Of course, the minister’s son was used to that response—he’d heard it often in his 20 years, though what he read didn’t always make sense to him.   Still, Joel rolled his wheelchair up to the kitchen table and flipped the pages of his Bible to the Book of Job. Chapter 23: “Then Job answered: ‘Today also my complaint is bitter, his hand is heavy in spite of my groaning….’”   Joel read the chapter through twice, considering every word. A bitter complaint? He knew all about that. [More]

Even in Texas, December gets cold, but we needed to keep our heating bill low. With my husband, James, at work, why keep the house warm just for me? I turned down the thermostat until the display read 66 degrees, then hit the “Hold” button. With a click, the furnace shut off. I started sweeping the floors as the winter chill slowly began to seep into the house. I could practically hear my dad admonishing me—“Turn up the heat!”   It was December 6th, exactly one year since Dad had passed away. The memories were too painful to revisit, yet [More]

’Twas the day before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring—except for me and my cat, Mittens. It was just the two of us this year. I wasn’t sure what was worse—having a broken heart or becoming a lonely old cat lady.   My soon-to-be ex-husband had just picked up our 9 and 12-year-old sons, Patrick and Michael, to spend Christmas Eve at his new condo, as we had agreed.   “Mom, seriously, what’re you gonna do?” Michael asked as his father beeped the car horn from the driveway. “You gonna be okay?”   “Who, me?” [More]

“Hold it right there!” I froze mid-step, pinned by a blinding beam of light. The voice behind the flashlight echoed in the hospital stairwell. “What are you doing here?”   I tugged nervously at my hat. How would I get out of this jam? I knew I looked ridiculous—or worse, suspicious—in my Santa suit, complete with curly white beard, heavy black boots and ample padding to hide my decidedly un-Kris Kringle-like 21-year-old frame.   It was Christmas morning, just after midnight. I wasn’t looking for attention. The whole point of this get-up was to sneak into the hospital. It had [More]

Remember David Fredericksen, the truck driver whose dash-cam video of his daring rescue of a woman and her granddaughter from a fiery crash on I-10 became a YouTube sensation last August? We always suspected there was more to his story than the five-minute footage shows. So we asked him.   Read More: The Choice to Trust God – Guideposts

Out of work at Christmas. Was there any worse time to be unemployed? The baby was only nine months old, but his brother, Buddy, was three.   “I hope he’s not expecting anything special,” I said to my husband. It was all we could do to keep food on the table. And being proud, we didn’t let on to family and friends how bad our circumstances were.   “At least we have a tree,” I said. We’d sprung for it before I lost my cashier job. It almost called more attention to our predicament. We had a tree, all right, [More]

“I don’t want to have Christmas!” my 10-year-old son Jacob yelled. He threw a box of decorations on the ground and ran out of the room, followed by his twin brother, Jarom. I’d just told them that their dad wouldn’t be with them on Christmas Day, the first since our divorce. Another unhappy surprise.   I cleaned up the mess. As I bent down to sweep the last broken pieces, I couldn’t help but notice the meager presents under the tree. There was no money for the bikes they’d both asked for.   The boys didn’t need piles of toys, [More]

My last-minute Christmas shopping couldn’t wait another minute—even though it meant driving in the snow. Now all I had to do was find my way home.   There’d been big changes in my life recently. I’d moved back to my old hometown after a 40-year absence—and married my high school sweetheart. The town had grown in leaps and bounds since I’d last lived here, and driving was an adventure, snow or no snow.   I threw my packages in the trunk and brushed off my windshield. As I got behind the wheel, my friend Pam called. “I was out shopping,” [More]

“You’ve been approved!” There were no sweeter words our adoption case worker could have said to us that cold March day. For nearly a year, my husband, Femi, and I had been subject to interviews, training weekends, home studies, criminal checks and a whole lot of waiting in order to pass through the intensive process required by the Canadian government to adopt a child. The case worker wasn’t done talking, though. “The average wait for a baby could be two or three years, even more,” she said. “You might as well begin your biological family first.”   Read More: A [More]

When this letter from reader Valeria Olson arrived for us in the mail, we couldn’t wait to share it. With holiday shopping season just around the corner, it’s a perfect reminder that angels aren’t just with us on Christmas Day.   Valeria decided to spent the day at the mall with her daughter and granddaughters for a holiday shopping marathon. Eventually, they separated to pick out gifts for each other, planning to meet up later for lunch.   “Happy and satisfied with my arms full of gifts, I was idly window shopping when my cell rang,” Valeria wrote. “Spying a vacant bench [More]

A writer attending an out-of-town seminar is given reason to be thankful her luggage was lost.   Watch: Mysterious Ways: Close Call – Guideposts

Early on a Sunday morning, I was startled awake by vivid, disturbing images, settling into my consciousness as if I had seen them in reality. In my dream, I had seen inside the office of a U.S. Army first lieutenant—walls adorned with matted certificates and a few framed army medals, a wooden desk and an American flag standing at attention in the corner. What frightened me were the pages of reports that sat front and center on the desk, with the word “suicide” written prominently across them.   I immediately thought of my brother, Mike, a first lieutenant Green Beret [More]

The story wouldn’t leave my mind. I pulled my jacket tighter against the late-October breeze, hurrying from my office to the drugstore, where I intended to buy a card. Occasionally I glanced up into the clear blue sky for those shimmering wings.   It’s just a story, I thought. A parable about heaven in a book that a friend had put in my hands after my daughter’s funeral, four months earlier.   Kari was only 27 years old when she died in an ATV accident. She occupied my every waking thought. All it took was a simple “How are you?” [More]

Babies don’t follow a nine-to-five schedule, so how could obstetricians? I was asleep when the phone woke me in the early hours of a Sunday morning in December back in the 1980s. “You’re on call,” my wife said, shoving me toward the phone.   I was so sleepy it took a few seconds to understand what the person on the line was telling me. A midwife, at the Evergreen Motel. With her was an Amish couple from a community about three hours away. The woman was in labor.   “I work with Doctor Whitman,” she explained. “I tried to call [More]

Two weeks until the marathon—and my right leg looked like it had been through a war. I sat in the car, idling in my driveway, unable to stop staring at my swollen, throbbing knee. I winced just trying to flex it. My calf felt tight and sore too. I could barely climb out of the car, how was I in any shape for a 26.2-mile run? Was it time to let my dream go?     Read More: Mysterious Ways: Fueled to the Finish Line – Guideposts

The snow was coming down hard when I pulled into the carport beside our double-wide and took out my groceries. I couldn’t wait to get inside and warm up.   But just as I started for the front door, my arms full, the stray cat I’d found several months earlier jumped down out of nowhere and planted herself on the steps right in front of me. “Move, Kitty, these bags are heavy,” I said. “Scat!” But Kitty refused to budge.   Read More: A Heaven-Sent Watchkitty – Guideposts