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Funny, but I can’t remember any of the gifts I gave my dad for Father’s Day when I was a kid. Try as I might, nothing comes to mind, unlike some of the awful presents I gave Mom, who saved every one. I came along late in Dad’s life, a “surprise baby.” I don’t think he was quite ready for me. I saw him as a stern, taciturn disciplinarian, both present and distant. He grew up hard during the Depression. His wasn’t a generation when parents were besties with their kids. He worked hard at a job he found little satisfaction in. (When I graduated college, he accused me of wanting to find a “fun” job—and, well, hey, I did.) He found his greatest satisfaction in his faith. I do…

MISSING HIM BUT NOT MISSING OUT When my oldest son, Ben, went away to college, I really missed him. He attends Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia—some 400 miles from our home in Ohio. Ben is studying to be a worship pastor, and he often leads praise and worship in the campus chapel. I longed to be there with him, listening to him sing and play his guitar. Knowing I was missing his performances made me miss him all the more. Then one day, I got a text from a phone number I didn’t recognize. It turned out to be from one of Ben’s new friends at Liberty. He’d taken a cell phone video of Ben leading worship that morning and sent it to me. I told Ben’s friend how much…

For our sixtieth wedding anniversary, John and I planned a little party. My thoughts went back to another party we threw nearly 50 years earlier. That was a sixtieth anniversary celebration too—my grandparents’. For a week before that event, I vacuumed, washed windows, borrowed dishes. I even splurged on a cleaning lady to help me wash and wax the floors. Mrs. Hargrove was a large, silent, efficient person who went stolidly about her work without much interest in the reason for all these party preparations. “Just think, Mrs. Hargrove,” I said, trying to draw her into my excitement, “sixty years together!” Nothing but the sound of the mop slapping the floor. At last, Mrs. Hargrove picked up the bucket and made her only comment on the subject: “An awful long…

“I am grateful, and my gratitude makes me joyful.”HENRY WINKLER, 79, actor “I’d rather be kind than right.”VINCE GILL, country musician, on how he makes his 25-year marriage to singer Amy Grant work “A friend of mine said one of the reasons God told Moses to take off his shoes, in Exodus 3, [was] because God was about to tell Moses his story. And whenever someone reveals the story of their life, that ground on which they’re standing is holy ground. That’s the common ground: We’re human, and we’ve got a story.”MICHAEL CURRY, retired Episcopal bishop, on understanding others “The good news is that joy, collected over time, fuels resilience—ensuring we’ll have reservoirs of emotional strength when hard things do happen.”BRENÉ BROWN, author “Unstoppable just means you have the courage…

Twenty-three and one—that was the rule in the intake unit at El Dorado Correctional Facility, a state prison 170 miles away from Leavenworth, Kansas, the city where I grew up. You were locked down in your cell 23 hours a day, with one hour out for supervised recreation, while the staff did an assessment to determine what programs you were eligible for and where you would serve out your sentence. I landed in that intake unit in March 2008. I was addicted to ecstasy, and I was selling cocaine. I got caught with drugs in my car and was sentenced to three years for possession. Once I detoxed from the ecstasy, my mind cleared and the reality of my situation hit me. I’d already served four years in juvenile corrections.…

The crowd cheered in Beaumont, Texas, 16 years ago as a college student with a bright purple mohawk bounded up on the stage. At only 20, he’d been chosen to help chair Relay for Life, an annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, an organization he’d volunteered with since he was 12. The charity was $10,000 short of its $110,000 goal that night, with the clock ticking down to the midnight deadline. A committee member shouted, “Hey, how about you shave off your mohawk if we hit our goal?” The young man onstage was into his hair; it was a way to express himself and the causes he cared about, but he didn’t hesitate. He shouted back, “Sure! It’s only hair!” His co-chair, a hairdresser, had clippers in her car…

It should have been a wonderful day, a day to celebrate. The genetic disease that had caused benign craniofacial tumors for most of my life had subsided. My battle with mouth cancer had been declared history after 15 years. Now I was at the ophthalmologist’s office, where a new lens prescription would doubtless fix my niggling vision issue. I’d been filling in missing letters of words. Reaching for what I thought was a Winnie the Pooh book and finding out its spine said Winning With People. Moving from window to window to work at my computer. Upgrading light bulbs. Dr. Skolik’s voice seemed a hundred miles away. As she finished the exam, she gave me the same diagnosis my father had been given three decades earlier: “You have macular degeneration.…

—HEBREWS 13:16 (NIV) It was the usual Saturday frenzy at the grocery store. Heads down, everyone hustled by, strangers in a silent ballet. But last week, something drew my attention as I neared the dairy coolers. A frail hand, etched with a map of blue veins, strained to reach the top shelf. An elderly woman was struggling to lift a gallon of milk. Suddenly, a lanky teen, earbuds dangling, showed up beside her. With a basketball player’s grace, he snagged the milk, then set it in her basket. Her eyes crinkled in gratitude. “Thank you, young man,” she rasped, her voice thick with emotion. She reached into a pocket and offered the boy a crumpled dollar bill, but he flashed a grin, the kind that reached his eyes, and shook…

JUST ONE MIRACLE Despite the chill that morning, I went out onto the deck in my pajamas to light a cigarette. For me, every day started with a smoke. I’d been a smoker for 24 years. I’d tried to quit more times than I could count. Over the years, I’d used nicotine patches, gum, willpower and, of course, prayer, but my cravings were just too powerful. They were even more powerful than the shame I felt over not being able to quit. I stubbed out my cigarette and went back inside to get dressed and face the day. I wasn’t optimistic. Nothing in my life was going well. My marriage was in trouble, my family was in turmoil, and my beloved dog had just died. Lately it seemed as if…

Every summer brings new adventures for Raylene Nickel (Grateful in All Things, page 22). On her farm near Kief, North Dakota, a new group of calves plays in the pastures with their mothers. Sometimes their behaviors can be difficult to manage. And, driven by rain or drought, the grass, alfalfa, and weeds grow in rhythms that are hard to predict. “The unpredictability of farm life keeps me on my toes,” Raylene says. “It’s a constant challenge to manage the forages and the cattle in ways that are best for both. Sometimes the challenges are overwhelming. But it’s a life I love.” This summer, she’s keeping an especially careful watch on the progress of young alfalfa plants she seeded in the winter of 2023. Also on her watch list are 100…

THRIVING IN NEW HOME A few years back, I shared a story in Guideposts (The Good Seeds, April 2021) about some seeds I discovered tucked away in the back of the garage of our century-old city house. A note found with the seeds dated them to the 1940s and identified them as hibiscus. I planted the seeds in a large pot, and amazingly they grew. But the hibiscus never flowered. Then, three years ago, my wife and I were thrilled when we were finally able to fulfill a longtime dream of ours: to move out of the city to a small house in the country. Our dogs love to romp across the expanse of our property of more than an acre. We took the hibiscus bush with us and transplanted…

The mayor of Chandler, Arizona—better known to me as my husband, Kevin—strode into the kitchen as I was putting the final touches on dinner. “Great news,” he said, sampling the stew simmering on the stove. “The city is offering a rebate to homeowners as an incentive to replace their grass.” “We’ve been talking about putting in rock and desert-friendly plants for years,” I said. “It would be nice to have a yard that uses less water.” “Yep,” Kevin said. “This is the time to do it!” “You mean like now?” “Of course,” Kevin said. “Is there a problem?” “Aren’t you heading into budget season?” Our city’s fiscal year begins each June. From experience, I knew that Kevin’s schedule would be packed with meetings throughout the spring. “I have a window…