Proof The Bible Is True

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]

My daughter, Amy, and I were getting ready to drive to the supermarket. I’ll put on some Colton Dixon in the car, I thought. Amy liked his songs. I liked the Christian message in them. I was always looking for ways to encourage my daughter to pray, but she was a natural doubter—and a teenager! If I pushed too hard, I knew she’d stop listening for sure.   We stepped down the three stairs that led to the garage and found my husband, Bob, standing by his old Mustang, looking up toward the ceiling.   “It’s a hummingbird,” he said, [More]

So many beautiful items lined the tables at the craft booth where my husband, Tony, and I were shopping, but my eye went straight to the woman behind the counter. She had long, snow white hair and an air of…  I didn’t know how to describe it, but she was the first thing to have gotten my attention all day.   I’d spent the day before in the hospital, visiting a good friend in the mental health ward. The hospitalization wasn’t a surprise. It came after months of worry, late-night phone calls and troubling conversations. Nothing Tony or I had done—listening, [More]

“Mom, you really need to find a new home,” my daughter Tammy Sue said. “Don’t wait until your lease runs out.” After we hung up, I started on the dishes, gazing out the window at my bird feeders. Moving was going to be harder than I thought. There was a lot I liked about my double-wide mobile home.   No stairs. Room for an office. A front and back porch. A shower stall instead of a slippery bathtub. And best of all, my kitchen-window view of the trees and my beautiful bird feeders. Problem was, my home had a toxic [More]

I had just walked in the door after a long commute from downtown Toronto. The bus had been late, and I was tired. It wasn’t easy working three jobs and raising four active teenagers.   Mine were good kids—three girls and a boy—but they were still a lot to handle. Especially for a single parent. I had hoped to come home and find them all quietly doing their homework. That was the deal. But they were running around with the five next-door neighbor children instead. I sighed.   My oldest daughter rushed up to me. “Mom, can they stay for [More]

Staring out at the highway, I could barely keep my eyes open. Already I’d been driving for more than four hours. Now it was long past midnight and we still had hours to go to reach our home in a small town in the foothills of southeast California.   Please, God, help us get there safely. The thought, more reflex than prayer, jolted my consciousness for a split second. I looked over at my 16-year-old daughter, Katie, sleeping peacefully in the seat next to me. I hated to wake her. She was as exhausted as I was. She would have to take over for me at [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]

Two more dives. That’s all my husband, Larry, and I had left in St. Lucia. We’d spent a week here in paradise. It was almost time to go back to Kentucky. Almost, but not quite.   “What a gorgeous day!” I said as we boarded the dive boat. On the agenda was viewing a wrecked ship plus whatever tropical life we’d encounter: fish, coral, maybe even some sea turtles.   “Look who’s here.” Larry pointed to another couple waving to us, the Brits we’d sat with at dinner the night before. They were novice divers who wanted to hear about [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 had tried repeatedly to stop smoking, but my resolve never lasted. I had built up a powerful nicotine addiction. It had started in the Marine Corps when I was 17. By the time I was city editor of a Pennsylvania newspaper 23 years later, I was up to a four-pack-a-day habit.   One afternoon I was walking down the street puffing away when I had an urge to go into a used-book store. While browsing among the dusty bookshelves, I spotted a worn volume whose title, Direct Healing, caught my eye. I snapped it up.   At home in my apartment that evening [More]

  One cold winter morning as I looked out my bedroom window at the gray, bleak landscape. I wondered, What is my life worth? Where do I fit into the scheme of things? I felt completely overwhelmed by rejection. I couldn’t see any hope in my future. And when I considered my past, I didn’t like anything I saw. I was 45 years old, and had recently lost my job. I was getting no response to the dozens of resumés I sent out.   The idea of taking a drink occurred to me, but I had already been down that road. Alcohol had wreaked havoc on [More]

Four years ago, in the dreary lull that comes with the New Year, I was battling a familiar foe: depression. I’d gone into town to run a few errands, but the looming gray hills only added to my gloom. I bought beer and put gas in the car. Squeezing the metal handle of the nozzle, I tried not to dwell on the parallel between a car’s need for fuel and my dependency on alcohol.   Depression and alcoholism ran in my family. Knowing that my feelings were inherited did little to make them more bearable. It was worse, in fact, [More]

02/06/19   I was making my morning coffee in the kitchen and wondering how I would get through the day, especially with the rain coming down, when Tony’s picture toppled from the mantle in the family room. Again. Ever since my husband died two years earlier, that gold-framed photo—Tony posing with his prize hunting dogs—kept falling. That wasn’t all that was happening. Sometimes the TV would turn on out of the blue. And I’d get this feeling that Tony was still with me. Was it just the wishful thinking of a lonely widow? I couldn’t be sure.   I picked [More]

Wind whipped through my hair as I flew over the snow. It was glorious! Until my snowmobile sputtered beneath me. Not again. I slowed to a stop. My friends zoomed ahead on the snow-covered trails through the woods, maneuvering easily, dodging trees and rocks.   I’d never ridden a snowmobile before today. But when I met some folks who invited me up to the trails outside Twisp, Washington, I jumped at the chance. Excitement? Count me in. I went scuba diving, climbed mountains, even jumped out of airplanes. Did I ever worry about hurting myself? Never! I was young and invincible. I’d [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]

I lifted the heavy lid of our old freezer in the garage and peered inside, looking for some vegetables to make for dinner. For the past year, we’d scraped by on my small teacher’s salary while my husband, Mike, was away at graduate school. With three hungry teenagers to feed, it was a challenge to stretch our grocery dollars. Now, one glance at the half-empty freezer made me question what I’d done on impulse a week earlier.   The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Kathy, my 14-year-old, blurted out that one of her friends wasn’t celebrating the holiday because her mother couldn’t afford [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]

Firefighters will tell you that a fire is like a living thing—a living engine of destruction. And each blaze has its own personality.   There’s a sound and smell to a wildfire that you never forget. Burning brush and searing wind roaring like a jet engine. The acrid odor of scorched earth. Then there are the trapped and smoke-poisoned firefighters hunting for any avenue of escape. It’s a world I know all too well.   I’ve battled many large blazes in my 18 years of firefighting. So I had no illusions about what was ahead when the call came last [More]

Here I was again, back in Memphis, Tennessee. I stood in front of the massive wrought iron gate, shaped like a songbook and dotted with musical notes. A sense of calm washed over me. Like I belonged. Like I was home. I pushed the gate doors open and made my way up the long, winding driveway. The mansion rose before me, its white Corinthian columns and stone lions unmistakable. He was calling me closer with every step. The King himself. Elvis Presley.   My eyes snapped open and I sat up in my bed on the couch with a start. [More]

Every July, my two sons and I drive up to a reservation in the White Mountains of Arizona for a guys-only camping vacation. On the second night of our trip one year, the three of us sat around a roaring fire. It had been raining off and on the whole weekend, but we’d brought plenty of firewood with us. My older son, Parker, made sure the fire was always crackling.   “Where’s the rest of the wood?” he asked, adding more logs to the fire.   “It’s all over there, behind that tree,” I said, pointing to the spot where [More]

I shuffled through the articles I’d brought, trying to look like I belonged here—the offices of the Wichita Eagle, the biggest newspaper in the city. The receptionist spoke to someone on the phone in hushed tones, probably discussing how to politely turn me away. After all, I’d walked in off the street to ask for a job, even though I knew they weren’t hiring. If I told them I was following the command of a strange voice, they’d probably call security.   Just a few months prior, I never imagined I’d be looking for a job. My husband was the [More]

A late-night call brought Mike to the swamps to rescue his grandson. But then his boat flipped in dangerous waters, and they prayed for a miraculous delivery. cbn.com

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]