Proof The Bible Is True

Shoppers at the antiques show in Columbus, Ohio, milled around, but I stood still, mouth agape. Was I seeing things? It seemed impossible, but there it was. A genuine 1920s era Berkey & Gay bedroom suite was being unloaded from a truck by a couple about my age. For me this was like discovering a treasure, one I’d been looking for since junior high school. The furniture was deep green, with hand-painted twining pink roses.   “Like it?” the woman asked as I studied the fine detail on the dresser.   “You don’t see these where I’m from,” I admitted. Or anywhere else [More]

Suzie, my terrier, lay down on the rug in my parents’ living room and looked at me with her sad, brown eyes. “She misses her doghouse,” I told Mom. “She loved it. I could barely drag her out of it to come inside, even when it was raining. It was her favorite place in the world.”   I sighed. Suzie’s doghouse wasn’t lost. I knew exactly where it was. Sitting in the backyard of the apartment house where my ex-husband lived. When Suzie moved into my parents’ house, I hadn’t realized how much she’d miss her old hangout. But when I [More]

This was getting ugly. Inside a massive ballroom at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, my 14-year-old son, Andrew, was competing in his first match at the Taekwondo Nationals and getting pummeled. It was hard to watch.   He took a hard kick to the chest, stumbling backward. A second kick threw him to the mat. He struggled to stand, the air knocked out of him. I felt helpless from my seat near the edge of the mat. I wasn’t overly concerned about him getting physically hurt. The competitors wore padded vests and head gear. It was Andrew’s pride, his [More]

”I’m one of those people who prays about everything,” I told my new teacher friend, Rae, as we sat on a bench in the hallway outside our classrooms. It was the end of the school day, and the students had long since gone home. That’s when Rae and I tended to sit and talk about everything and anything.   Newly married in 1969, my husband and I had just moved over a hundred miles from home in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, to the little town of Ridgway. I got a job as a third-grade teacher at the elementary school. Rae’s classroom was right [More]

The first rays of morning sun shone through my rental car window. It was the middle of August. I was in a small black Ford in a giant parking lot at JFK Airport in New York City.   I had no idea what I was going to do next.   It was 6 A.M. Five hours earlier, I’d been at the boarding gate for a transatlantic flight, on my way to Italy for a long-anticipated retreat at a monastery in the town of Assisi.   Except I’d fallen asleep at the gate and missed the flight.   I awoke with a start [More]

In the dream, I stood at the end of a long, straight gravel driveway. At the other end, I could see a white two-story farmhouse. There were no power lines leading to the house. No car in that long driveway. Details revealing that it was an Amish farmhouse, similar to the ones I often drove past near my home in northern Indiana. There was something inside that house that drew me there, but what it was, I didn’t know.   Fields spread out on either side of me, but I focused on the house. As I got closer, I saw a [More]

Bright red mittens caught my eye as I walked past the Christmas tree. They hung side by side. On one red mitten the word Friends was stitched; on the other, Forever.   The mitten ornaments were a gift from my friend, Jackie. It was hard to believe I’d just spent my first Christmas without her. Her death had been sudden, and we still didn’t know the cause. I was stunned the day her husband, Dale, called to tell me she was gone. In some ways I was still in shock five months later.   Read More: An Angelic Christmas Visit from Her Best Friend | Guideposts

I stood outside my house on a June evening, looking up at the sunset. Although the clouds above me made a radiant display, my mind was somewhere else. I was thinking about my younger brother Donald, who had died just a few months before.   Donald was a high-ranking career sergeant in the United States Air Force, and a devoted Christian who’d played drums in his church. Yet when I thought of him now, I didn’t picture him as that accomplished grown man. Instead I saw him as that little baby who was born when I was 11 years old. The way he [More]

On January 6, 2020, as always, I carefully lifted the Nativity angel from the nail at the peak of the wooden stable and held her in my hands. Just as my parents and grandparents had done before me, I waited for this day to take down the crèche. Today was the feast of the Three Kings, or Epiphany, which commemorates the Magi’s visit to the newborn Jesus. They came bearing gifts, and while I wrapped and boxed each Nativity piece for the next year, I thought about the many gifts given throughout the Christmas story. The angel was first. As I took [More]

Thick snowflakes swirled around my windshield. Everything around me was blanketed in white. The light was fading as the sun set over the rocky peaks.   I was driving up a mountain pass on what was supposed to be a four-hour trip from Red River, New Mexico, to Durango, Colorado. I inched along on a winding, unfamiliar road in a snowstorm.   I was on my way to meet my boyfriend, who was visiting his family in Durango. He’d invited me to join them for the weekend. I was staying at a friend’s house in Red River. The fastest way to Durango [More]

A friend and I had just finished having dinner at our favorite spot in Reno, Nevada, where I’d lived for 23 years. We paid the bill, got up and hugged in a tearful goodbye. She was the last friend I’d see before I moved across the country.   “Are you sure about this, Joanie?” she asked. “What is there for you in West Virginia?”   It was a question I couldn’t answer. I’d simply woken up one morning in early February with an undeniable urge to return to Huntington, West Virginia. I asked God why. In Reno, I had friends, [More]

I was at a Native American reservation in California, two hours from the nearest big city. A desert landscape of scrub brush and rocky slopes extended in all directions.   I was here to run. And I was pretty intimidated.   It was November 2019, and I had just arrived at the Ragnar Los Coyotes trail relay race. The annual race is a grueling multiday relay through the rugged beauty of Los Coyotes Indian Reservation in San Diego County.   More than 200 runners were here, camped out in a small city of tents. I knew no one. Everyone looked way younger—and fitter—than [More]

Go back into the house!   Sandra Farney, of Reno, Nevada, was backing out of her driveway when she heard the voice. It was a man’s voice, coming from inside her own mind, cutting through her thoughts with surprising force. Shocked, Sandra slammed on her brakes. She debated going back inside, but she was late for work. She had to go. Then she heard the voice again. It was more insistent.   Go back into the house, now!   Read More: How Hearing God’s Voice Provides Comfort and Reassurance | Guideposts

A figure loomed in the corner of my bedroom, a shadowy specter the size and shape of a man. It was faceless, yet I could feel its burning gaze on me. As soon as I registered it, the specter was upon me, embracing me with its shadow arms, enveloping me in darkness. I was pinned, paralyzed and helpless.   I woke up to the sound of my own screams, my heart pounding until I realized I was awake. I was safe. Even though the event had felt acute and urgent, it wasn’t real. Just a terrible nightmare. I wasn’t used [More]

It was a promise I’d made back in 1971. To repay an act of kindness with a trip to the salon. At the time, my husband, Joe, was a pilot in New York. We’d bought a house in New Jersey, not too far away. I had my hands full raising two children under the age of five. Then the airline cut costs. Joe was laid off. He took any odd job he could find, from painting houses to pumping gas. I got a job teaching at an elementary school. But we struggled to make ends meet. We put ourselves on a budget.   [More]

I sat in my car, overlooking a shimmering intercoastal waterway, the night sky studded with stars. Everything around me had a vibrant, otherworldly glow. This is West Palm Beach, I realized. My family and I used to live here. But we’d moved away about a year ago…   I was aware of someone sitting next to me in the driver’s seat. Someone else sat behind me. I couldn’t tell who they were, but their presence was comforting. I felt so at peace here. As if everything made sense.   “This is why you’re here,” the presence behind me said. “This is why [More]

I was searching for something, though I didn’t quite know what. I searched frantically, though I didn’t quite know why. “Lift the lid on the third box,” I heard a calm voice say. I did as I’d been directed. Inside was the thing I’d been looking for, though I still couldn’t see what it was.   I awoke feeling incredibly relieved, my heart still pounding. What a crazy dream! I glanced at the clock beside me. Oh no! I was late for my shift at the restaurant. I jumped out of bed, rushed to get ready and dashed out the door.   Read [More]

I held up the hat I’d just finished and burst out laughing. It was my first attempt at knitting and hadn’t gone as planned. I’d made a mistake somewhere along the way, and the lavender hat I’d wanted to make for myself had turned out too small to fit me or anyone else. It was no bigger than the palm of my hand!   I have to show this to the team at work tomorrow, I thought. I was a pediatric cardiac sonographer at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital, in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a stressful job, and humor was always [More]

I was going to miss my flight.   I was at Myrtle Beach International Airport in South Carolina, waiting to fly out to Michigan and then New York, where two days earlier my 44-year-old daughter, Laurie, had died of a heroin overdose. I had lost my 45-year-old son to the same drug a year and a half earlier. Shock and heartbreak couldn’t begin to describe what I was feeling.   I already had my boarding pass when I got to the airport, but something nudged me to go to the ticket counter to check on my flight before I went through security. The agent told [More]

One by one I wrote out the checks for the monthly bills and stacked the stamped envelopes neatly on the kitchen table. I checked and rechecked the balance in my bank account.   My years as a single mother before getting remarried had really taught me how to make every dollar count. God had never failed to provide for my family, but that was no excuse for not sticking to a budget. I wasn’t one to dream about things we couldn’t afford. Well, except the night before.   What a crazy dream I’d had! I told my daughter, Shelly, about [More]

Four pairs of children’s shoes were lined up on our kitchen countertop, ready for a good shine before church in the morning. It was near midnight on Christmas Eve 1968, and everyone else in the house was asleep.   I had the TV on low in the living room. The astronauts manning the Apollo 8 spacecraft kept me company, the footage from the mission a comforting hum in the background. As I worked the polish into my daughter’s little saddle shoe, my mind kept wandering to her upcoming appointment at New York Presbyterian Hospital.   Lauren was four years old. Outwardly, nothing was wrong [More]

My daughter, Tori, knelt in the parking lot of our condo petting a scraggly black-and-white cat without a collar. “Can we keep her, Mom, please? I already know what to call her. Oreo.”   “Honey, you know I’d love to help this cat. But … ”   We already had two cats. There was simply no room for this bedraggled little stray. But how could I tell that to my child?   “Where else is she going to go, Mom?”   “All right,” I sighed. “We’ll take her for the time being. But just remember, she can’t stay. God will [More]

You can get a kitten,” I promised my seven-year-old daughter, Cali. “As soon as we get settled in our new apartment.” Her life had been uprooted when her father and I divorced, and I wanted to give her something to look forward to. So one Saturday morning, shortly after we unpacked the last box, we headed to North Bay Animal Services to pick out her new pet.   There were plenty of cats to choose from, but Cali had her heart set on an orange-and-white kitten. “Actually, we’ve got two of those,” the attendant told us. “Brothers from the same litter, in [More]

Beth, our dietary manager, peeked in my office door. “I want you to meet our newest resident,” she said. I smiled and turned in my chair.   Welcoming people and helping them adjust to their new surroundings is one of my responsibilities as chaplain at Madrid Home Communities, a nursing home with 110 residents in central Iowa. I was always happy to greet a new resident. But Beth was holding a tiny calico kitten.   “One of the nurses found her at the front door,” she said. “She had her paws against the glass like she wanted to come in. [More]

Six days in the hospital after open-heart surgery, and I was finally coming home. My neighbor drove me in her car up my street. A million thoughts clattered through my head. How was I going to manage? No more nurses and doctors monitoring me 24 hours a day. The stitches keeping my chest closed up caused pain if I tried to lie down. How would I get to sleep at night in an upright position? What would happen if I tripped or fell on the way to the kitchen or the bathroom?   Most of all, I worried about my [More]

The dream felt so real. I was in my childhood home, the townhouse we lived in when we first moved to Virginia. My grandfather was there too.   I could hear a storm brewing. Somehow I knew the house would be flooded. We needed to hurry. As we threw belongings into boxes, Grandpa and I laughed and joked around. Even with disaster looming, I wasn’t worried. Grandpa was the bravest person. He would protect me.   My grandpa was my best friend growing up. My hero. Larger than life. He had been an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and I loved listening to [More]

I don’t know about your cat, but my cat, Desmond, sees things. Things that I can’t see. Yes, he has senses more acute than mine—smell, hearing, etc. I’ll give him that. Still, that doesn’t explain the moments he seems transfixed by something invisible to me. Almost as if he can see into another dimension, another world. How is that possible?   Dr. Linda Bender, a veterinarian and author of the book Animal Wisdom: Learning from the Spiritual Lives of Animals, believes that experiences like I have with Desmond occur because animals are more naturally attuned to the spiritual world.   “Humans have [More]