Proof The Bible Is True

My husband, Jerry, drove us to church Sunday morning. I stared out the window of our minivan, looking for a sign. Not a street sign—a sign from heaven.   I’d always believed that when God has a plan for you, he makes it known. But if that was true, all the signs pointed toward something I didn’t want to accept. I couldn’t even bring myself to glance at the backseat. Empty. No car seat. No baby.   Read More: Mysterious Ways: A Blessed Event – Guideposts

The small country cemetery was deserted that breezy fall day. I walked along the pine tree-lined perimeter, lost in thought. After my husband, Wally, died a year earlier, I didn’t know how I’d go on. I read every grief book, tended to the animals on my farm, went to mass three times a week, but I still glanced out the window every evening, expecting to see Wally’s pickup truck coming round the bend. I couldn’t imagine life without him. I certainly couldn’t imagine falling in love again.   Then I met George. I was in a grief counseling group, sitting [More]

“Have you asked God as she did to use you in a Mysterious Way, if not try it.” Admin   I had a busy day ahead—drive 40 minutes to the airport to pick up my youngest sister and my brother-in-law, flying in from Kansas City, and give them a grand tour of the new town my husband and I had moved to in Florida. Before I did anything, though, I picked up my copy of Mysterious Ways. Every morning I sit at the breakfast table with the magazine and read a few stories. It helps me focus on what’s important in [More]

11/06/23   Five dimes were burning a hole in my pocket—the ones I’d saved just for this day. The carnival was in town! Part of the annual Blossom Festival in my hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio—brass bands marched down Main Street, the town’s ladies competed for the best jams and pies and the fruit trees dripped pink and white blossoms on the sidewalk. But, for me the best part was the carnival.   Saturday morning I wrapped my fingers around those coins and made my way to the carnival. “Step right up, young man, step right up,” came the call [More]

The cozy two-bedroom apartment seemed to have my daughter’s name written all over it. It felt like home. Sunlight poured in through the large windows, the building was well-maintained, and there was a bus stop right on the corner so her girls could easily get to school. And the landlady, Benita, was so friendly.   “I love it,” Julie whispered to me. “Too bad I’ll never be approved.” Read More: Mysterious Ways: A Place for Julie – Guideposts

The wind gently combing through the rust-colored weeds, calm waves lapping at the hull of my yellow kay­ak. Peaceful, right? Wrong. I didn’t want to spend one more minute on this stinkin’ river out in the middle of nowhere.   I swatted another mos­quito. I was tired of muttering to the empty air, sick of complaining, sick of being alone. Sick of myself.   Ever since my wife, Mary, died, seven years earlier, I’d been search­ing for something I couldn’t quite de­scribe. I’d quit my job as a restaurant manager to hike the Appalachian Trail, more than 2,000 miles. Then I’d [More]

Shrieks of joy, the sounds of happy children, reverberated across Rhode Island’s Napatree Beach. Two little girls playing in the sand. But I was barely aware of any of it. I plodded along, oblivious of the crashing waves at high tide. Late afternoon.   I ran my fingers through my wind-tangled hair, as if to clear my head. I’d come to this isolated spit of land on my sailboat, a place to escape. My wife and I had recently separated, our marriage in shambles. I worried about the toll on our boys, just six and eight.   It seemed like [More]

The other parents in the hospital waiting room were glued to an episode of The Jerry Springer Show blasting from the TV. But I had no interest. All I could think about was my 14-year-old son, David, who was in the middle of open-heart surgery. In fact, a nurse had informed me that, at that very moment, he was undergoing the riskiest part of the procedure.   “Luise!” a voice suddenly boomed.   I looked to my left, then my right. Who was calling me? Most people didn’t even know my maiden name, Luise. Maybe it was the nurse again. She said [More]

October 30, 2012. high tide. Calm offshore winds. Clean six-foot waves. A beautiful morning to surf. I stood on the north jetty at the entrance to Humboldt Bay and gazed out at the ocean. Shore birds flew in formation, almost shimmering in the sunlight.   I loved being out here in nature, in touch with something greater than myself.   There were maybe 20 guys already in the water at Bunkers, where waves break on a sandbar just north of the jetty. I watched them for a while, gauging the temperament of the ocean before zooming in on the perfect [More]

Night driving made me nervous. I usually left it to my husband. Just before my sister’s anniversary party, though, Bob was called away by one of his parishioners. A pastor’s emergency. I couldn’t miss the party, so I took our 18-month-old granddaughter, whom we were babysitting, and went without him.   I’ll just make sure to leave while it’s still light out, I thought. But I lost track of time showing the baby off to everyone. Before I knew it, it was nine o’clock. I said goodbye, buckled my sleepy granddaughter into her car seat and took off.   Willeo Road is notorious here for [More]

Many years have passed, but I’ll never forget that day in 1976, when I pulled two ivory envelopes from my mailbox. One, the phone bill. The other, a letter from my old friend Buz, who was due to visit me and my husband Clint the following week. Bad news first, I thought, walking into the house.   I tore the phone bill open. The amount made me cringe. $138.37–about $600 in today’s dollars. Back then, we simply couldn’t afford that.   Read More: Miracle in the Mailbox – Guideposts

The ivory face of the gold watch stared up at me from my dresser. A vintage Omega Seamaster, the bracelet scratched and crystal scuffed with age. My grandparents had given it to Dad back in the sixties, before he joined the Navy.   I’d never seen him without it on his wrist, until the day the mainspring seized up and it stopped ticking. He never got around to repairing it. I wished he could see me wearing it tomorrow on my wedding day. But like the watch, he’d run out of time.   Buttoning up my shirt sleeves for the [More]

In the movie The Wizard of Oz, a twister comes and picks up Dorothy’s Kansas farmhouse, transporting her somewhere over the rainbow. She lands safe and unharmed; the wicked witch wasn’t so lucky.   As we’ve seen time and time again, however, this fantasy ignores the truth about the devastating impact of tornadoes. They leave a trail of wanton destruction wherever they go. Homes and towns are reduced to rubble, lives are lost.   The Ashworth family of Bertram, Texas, seemed to be the latest casualty of one of these terrifying forces of nature. Last week, their small town, 45 [More]

I turned the corner onto our street and braced myself. I had to talk rebuilding plans with our contractor, but just the thought of seeing that empty lot–where my family’s house had burned to the ground seven months earlier–made me feel sick.   That night still haunted me. Waking up to the blaring of smoke alarms. Bolting out of bed with my husband, Keith, and grabbing our two young daughters from their rooms. Huddling outside in our pajamas, shivering, before seeking refuge with a neighbor.   We lost everything but the clothes on our backs and a jumble of items [More]

“Move it, lady!” an angry man shouted from his pickup truck, swerving to narrowly avoid a collision with my car. “You’re gonna get someone killed!” yelled another driver, racing by. I jiggled my keys in the ignition again. Come on old girl, you can start, I thought.  Just give me enough to get to the shoulder. The engine revved, then seized and died. Kaput.   Why did my little sedan have to break down here? In the middle lane of rush hour traffic on Durango Drive, a busy road in Las Vegas. There was a gas station at the intersection up ahead, but I [More]

Wayne George knows he had a close call, but says his survival had nothing to do with luck.   On Tuesday, George and his wife had spent the afternoon watching their granddaughter’s swim meet. Afterwards, he dropped off his wife at their home and he went out to run a quick errand.   He made it to Jefferson Road, less than a mile from his home, “I see a tree falling, a huge tree falling off to my right and it’s in a wooded area. I realize I can’t avoid it,” explains George.   Read More: Man thankful to be [More]

“They’ll hire some young college grad,” Dave told me. “Not an old guy like me.” I’d never seen my husband so discouraged. He’d been doing great work as a field applicator for a farming co-op for 10 years, but when a higher position opened up, the company said they were looking to make an outside hire.   After a few weeks of searching they finally let him take a skill test to be considered. Dave felt sure he’d passed, but didn’t think it would change their minds.   “If it’s meant to be, God will open the door,” I told [More]

Darrell Ellwood wasn’t just any firefighter. He served with my department for 11 years and the City of Windsor for another 18, and had a reputation for being “the man with the plan,” always looking out for his brothers. He was the provincial firefighters association’s best advocate as a member of the provincial labor department’s firefighter health and safety committee.   He was a husband, and a father to three children. He was also one of my best friends. His death at age 50 from multiple myeloma, a cancer, shocked me. How could someone with such a profound influence be [More]

A few weeks ago, three children in Moreno Valley, California, released a trio of colorful, helium-filled Mylar balloons into the sky. Attached to each was a handwritten, heartbreaking letter.   “Hi Mom, I miss you,” one letter read. “I hope you come and visit me soon because I have questions to ask, like why you had to leave…”   Each of the letters carried a small expression of the children’s grief. Their mother, 42-year-old Renee Finney, had recently lost a two-year battle with cancer. She’d passed away five days before Mother’s Day.   The children, ages 16, 18 and 25, [More]

Hurricane Gloria was wreaking havoc on our neighborhood. Looking out my kitchen window, I could see the force of the violent winds rattling the windows of the ranch houses in our development and hurling branches and other debris down the street.   Just moments before, a massive tree had fallen from our neighbor’s property into our backyard. What other damage had been done? Had the cover on our pool torn away? Had the metal shed with all my gardening supplies been bowled over? I was anxious to get outside and see for myself.   Read Moree: Mysterious Ways: The Howl [More]

I stepped out onto the cornfield, my tennis shoes sinking into the waterlogged ground. I tried to block out the overpowering smell of fish. But I couldn’t block out the scene of destruction that greeted my husband, Darren, and me.   How could this happen? I wondered. In the distance, I saw a row of cabins, half-submerged in the receding floodwaters of the Missouri River, but I couldn’t make out our own–whatever was left of it.   Read More: Swept Away – Guideposts

“Gary! We need you here right now!” The dispatcher’s voice on the phone jarred me awake. Rain and wind rattled the windows something fierce.   My bedroom seemed darker than normal. I searched for the clock on my nightstand, but couldn’t find it. The heck with it. I had to get to work. They wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t an emergency.   “I’m on my way,” I said, swinging my legs out of bed. “Be there in ten.”   I found my closet, grabbed a pair of work jeans, a shirt and my tool belt. I pushed my arm through a [More]

I walk leisurely up the steep, narrow, rugged path high above a roaring river. I’ve been here before. I feel sure of it. The stately evergreen trees and the water are familiar. J, my 60-pound Border collie, lopes along beside me, my trusted companion.   I stop to take a picture of the river, looking down over a sheer rock face. The water is a brilliant turquoise blue, except for the white of the rapids, crashing violently over jagged rocks.   J goes on ahead of me. I’m not worried. She’s well trained. Smart and obedient. I hear a scampering [More]

I couldn’t sleep. Again. Negative thoughts filled my head. Again. The pain, the cold…. No cure. No relief. There’s nothing I can offer you. Six months ago, at the start of this nightmare with my leg, I would have prayed for comfort. But no more. All I wanted now was to sleep, to stop feeling so scared.   Could I pinpoint the moment God stopped listening to my prayers? Just last fall, right after the start of the school year (I’m a teacher), I rolled my left ankle. A mild sprain, I thought. No big deal. Except it was. It got worse. [More]

He was trapped under his tractor. Only God and Shannon knew where to find him.   Ted: Twenty-five years of tending our 80-acre farm. It didn’t seem possible. But I still got excited every morning to go out in the fields.   One fine June morning in 2004 I planned to mow a lot of hay. I dressed quickly, snapped my sheath knife onto my belt and tucked my ring rosary into my watch pocket.   Peggy: Breakfast was ready when Ted came into the kitchen. Pancakes with lots of butter and syrup. His favorite. Shannon crawled out from under the table [More]

Can a miracle come in the form of an old cookbook?   Doctors didn’t have much faith that 100-year-old Ruth Levy would get better. Complications from pneumonia made it unlikely she’d ever return home from the hospital.   That all changed when one of her relatives, David Vos, decided to pay her a visit. Before he left, he pulled a first-edition book off his mother’s shelf: Clémentine in the Kitchen, by Samuel Chamberlain. Something to read to Ruth in the hospital.   “I didn’t know the book,” David told The New York Times, “but it was about cooking, it looked old and [More]

Four hours on the road, crammed into an old Chevrolet with two antsy boys, a fussy two-year-old girl and one very pregnant cat named Midnight–I could use a break to stretch my legs. We all could. But try telling that to my husband, Ernie, behind the wheel.   “Midnight’s acting funny,” my son, Ken, yawned from the backseat. His brother, Jerry, stroked Midnight’s fur, trying to calm her down.   “She’s probably getting ready to have her kittens,” I said, glancing meaningfully at Ernie.   “No stops,” he said. “We’re almost there.”   Read More: Mysterious Ways: The Lifesaving Craving [More]