Proof The Bible Is True

 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]

I heard cheers from the not-so-distant finish line. Brushed elbows with the runners clustered around me. But I couldn’t see a thing. Not really. All I saw were multicolored, human-sized blurs bobbing up and down on the gray streak of road, funneling into a pitch-black void ahead—the long tunnel into Nissan Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and, for me, the final lap of the 13-mile Tom King Classic Half Marathon in Nashville. I’d made it this far, no easy task when you’re legally blind. I squinted for any sign of my running partner, my guide up until now. [More]

I’m sure we’ve all found random numbers and letters scribbled on the money in our wallets. The kind of thing you ignore when dishing out a few bucks for coffee. Maybe, though, we should be paying closer attention.   This week I came across an ABC News story about 86-year-old Peter Bilello and his wife, Grace. The Connecticut couple was married for 50 years and had two children and four grandkids. When Grace was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, Peter never left her side.   One day, in 2009, an idea popped into Peter’s head. He pulled out two dollar bills.   [More]

I gripped the ship’s wooden railing and breathed in the salty ocean air. My husband Jeremy and I were on a week-long cruise of the St. Lawrence Seaway with several stops in Nova Scotia. Next up: Sydney, a bustling port city. Maybe Ian still lives in the area, I thought. Maybe I’ll finally see him again.   Wishful thinking. I pulled out a folded paper printout from my pocket. There was only one “Ian Vance” in Nova Scotia, according to Canada’s national directory. But was it my cousin? I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t seen him in more than 45 years.   Read More: [More]

I listened to the ocean breeze rattling the windows of our duplex while I sorted files in our home office. I was on task number seven of the day’s to-do list.   Late spring was a busy time for the employment recruiting business my husband, Richard, and I ran, and I needed to keep up with the work. I still had to schedule interviews, respond to a few e-mails and cook dinner by the time Richard got back from doing his work. It was already 7:00 p.m.   I liked this time of year on the Outer Banks. There were [More]

The Pride of Galveston was docked in the Gulfport, Mississippi, harbor, the cruise ship’s blue smokestack rising like a dolphin’s fin from its gleaming white decks. My husband, Willem, helped me up the gangway, a porter behind us carrying our bags.   Read More: A Miraculous Bit of Déjà Vu – Guideposts

I’m not an impulsive person. But three months after my husband, Lew, and I got married, I was struck by the strangest urge: to learn sign language. I couldn’t understand it.   I kept the urge to myself. It seemed so off the wall. Yet the harder I tried to push the idea out of my mind, the harder it pushed back. Finally I went to a bookstore.   I kept the urge to myself. It seemed so off the wall. Yet the harder I tried to push the idea out of my mind, the harder it pushed back. Finally [More]

Sunday evening, 7:30 p.m. That’s when I would do it.   I sat on the edge of my bed and twisted the cap off my prescription pain medication. Normally one tiny white pill would help ease the pain. Not this time. I emptied the entire bottle into my palm and counted. Thirty-two pills. If I took them all at once, I’d stop breathing, go into cardiac arrest.   I wouldn’t need to write a note for those I left behind. Everyone would know why.   It was a cruel irony, being a registered nurse with an incurable disease. Tonight I [More]

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and lathered up my full head of hair with shaving cream. With intense concentration and a few bold strokes, I shaved my scalp clean. Just like the man in the photograph I’d taped to the mirror—slick-passing (and slick-headed) NBA point guard Mike Bibby of the Sacramento Kings. That was the part where the editors inserted the voiceover: “Serious sports fans need serious sports coverage…”   The things I did for my acting career! I’d had second thoughts about sacrificing my vanity to film a commercial for the Sacramento Bee sports section. My friends [More]

We’d just downsized our home. As grateful as I was to have a roof over our heads, I couldn’t help but feel blue. Our old house was beautiful…and huge. Our current home? Half the size and cramped. We’d had to give away or toss a lot of our stuff. But there were still boxes everywhere, from the family room to the garage.   The day after the move, while the kids were in school, I tackled more boxes. By the afternoon, I’d made real progress. The furniture was unpacked. The photos were hanging on the walls. But it just didn’t [More]

I sat at my home computer, scrolling through Facebook posts. A photo of a friend’s grinning granddaughter, a video of someone else’s new puppy, an announcement about another friend’s new job. Usually I take pleasure from other people’s joy, but that day it stung. I’d been laid off after 14 years as an office manager for a company I loved. At 43, I’d need to start all over. I should have been looking at jobs instead of Facebook, but I was down in the dumps.   Read More: My Mentor’s Gift – Guideposts

I eased my aching body onto the top step of the back porch and took a deep breath. Five months pregnant, I rarely left the house. I’d come outside for some fresh air—and some company. I felt lonely and scared. I half-hoped a neighbor would see me and ask if I was okay, show me someone cared. My husband, Bill, a Navy airman, usually did that. But today, like too many days, he’d been called away to the base.   I had no clue life as a military wife would be like this. I’d left family and friends behind to [More]

I walked into my kitchen early one Saturday morning, greeted by the aroma of cinnamon and sugar. That could only mean one thing–my bowknots were almost ready!   My “bowknot” recipe was kind of famous. A scrumptious pastry ring that had delighted family and friends ever since I’d dreamed up the dish back in my 20s, a sweet twist on my mother’s biscuit recipe.   The dessert was so popular that everyone at my church knew about it too. In fact, I’d been asked to prepare two trays of bowknots for a bridal shower taking place at church later 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]

“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]

“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]