Índex per November 2018 a Guideposts

Healing the Broken Becca Stevens (page 50) discusses the mission of Thistle Farms, a community of women who are healing from prostitution, trafficking, addiction and abuse. guideposts.org/thistlefarms Head Home With the Napiers Erin Napier (page 32) and her husband, Ben, hosts of HGTV’s home renovation show Home Town, bring us to Laurel, Mississippi, to talk about what makes living in a small town so special. guideposts.org/enapier You’ll Be Grateful Thanksgiving can be stressful. Follow these practical tips for staying calm, keeping the peace and setting limits. guideposts.org/thanksgivingstress Keep Your Guideposts Coming We make it easy to renew your magazine subscription, check on your donation history or manage book series shipments. guideposts.org/ecares…

CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW I perched my readers low on my nose and studied the intricate embroidered stitches on a handbag at a shop in Ollantaytambo, a Peruvian village at the beginning of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. A friend had suggested I join her on this trip to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. Embracing my age was bittersweet, and these bifocals (which had recently increased in power yet again) were a constant reminder that I was now solidly middle-aged. As we hiked, I thought about the women making the souvenirs. They did close work, yet none of them had corrective glasses or sunglasses and they live where the sun’s UV rays are especially strong. Did they get their eyes checked? Back in the States, I gathered up all the…

EMILY IRETON Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada SO MANY OLDER PEOPLE HERE IN Regina, Saskatchewan, don’t have family nearby. It’s a reality I became even more aware of after I retired. After many years as a pastoral care volunteer with my church, I’d seen the need—loneliness, requiring help for small daily activities—firsthand. Was there something I could do to help? I talked to my husband, Tom. We’d worked together in real estate before retiring. “Why don’t you start your own business?” he said. “I’ll help you get the word out.” I took a course in how to be a caregiver, as well as first aid and CPR through the Red Cross. Tom helped me put together a brochure and business cards for My Angel Personal Care Services. My first client was someone…

MY HUSBAND, BEN, AND I ARE about to launch our third season of Home Town on HGTV, where we help folks in our town of Laurel, Mississippi, make and remake their houses into dreams come true. Truth to tell, the whole thing still boggles my mind. It is not at all what we thought we’d do or become when we met at Jones County Junior College. I figured I’d be an art director for a publisher in a big city far away. Ben was a fledgling history major who volunteered on every committee on campus. I was quiet and shy, not seeking out the limelight that seemed to belong to him. He was tall (six foot six) and broad-shouldered, bearded and magnetic without ever letting it go to his head.…

MY WIFE, CATHY, SAT WITH ME in the doctor’s office. I needed her there. It was hard for me to process what was being said. When you don’t get enough oxygen in your lungs, it affects your brain too. After three years of seeing specialist after specialist with no diagnosis, I was depressed. I was constantly sick, too weak to help around the house, struggling for every breath and so exhausted I could barely work. The doctor looked up from my chart, peered over his glasses and said, “Sean, from all that you’ve said and what the tests show, I think you have the beginnings of COPD.” COPD. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It was like getting a death sentence. I’d read enough to know: There was no cure. It could…

“MOM, CAN I GET A VIDEO game system?” A typical request from an eight-year-old. But not my eight-year-old. My son Cade’s question startled me. “You know, like a Wii or something,” Cade went on, referring to the Nintendo home video game system that lets players control action on the screen by waving their hands. “It’s active. My friend has one, and it’s cool.” Active. That summed up Cade—our whole family, really. Living in central Oregon, close to mountains and trails, we were outside year-round. My husband, Cory, and I went on a two-week backpacking trip on our honeymoon. We took Cade and his younger sister, Rebekah, on hikes from the time they were babies riding on our backs. Cade loved playing soccer and mountain-biking with his dad and climbing trees.…

"There’s nothing better than Oklahoma City’s annual Red Andrews Dinner last Christmas. The organization collects coat and toy donations during the year to make the holiday brighter for people in need. Sean also leads informal knife skills classes for ex-inmates. “Restaurants seem to be short on help all the time, so they’re more than willing to take people who might not be hired at other places,” he says. He gets referrals from other former inmates. Sean estimates that almost half of them have landed good jobs. “Someday I would like to start something like Homeboy Bakery in California, an impressive operation that employs ex-convicts and ex-gang members,” Sean says. Erin Napier (For the Love of Laurel, page 32) and her husband, Ben, are quite the busy pair! In October, they…

I contribute devotions—little spiritual stories with a takeaway lesson and a prayer—to our annual devotional book, Daily Guideposts. This morning when I got to work, I opened up an e-mail from another Daily Guideposts writer, Carol Kuykendall, who had just finished reading my devotion for the day. Carol and I have a few things in common, including dogs, especially golden retrievers. I write a lot about my dogs and what they teach me. In fact, I wrote a book for Guideposts about my late golden retriever called Always By My Side: Life Lessons From Millie and All the Dogs I’ve Loved. When my wife and I lost Millie to cancer a few years ago, we were devastated. Eventually we overcame our grief and found another golden, a puppy we named…

Spokane, Washington who he is Sather Gowdy is a law student at Gonzaga University, a lifelong resident of Spokane, Washington, and the man behind Heal Spokane, a movement and nonprofit focused on improving his community. “Heal Spokane is dedicated to serving our city through acts of kindness,” he says. “I’m just a regular guy who is passionate about helping others and serving my neighbors.” what he does “Heal Spokane is all about grassroots acts of service that support our most vulnerable populations,” Sather says. Over the past year, he has spent more than 500 hours doing everything from cleaning up trash and mending fences to buying food for food banks and building relationships with neighbors. why he does it In October 2017, Sather felt as if his world were falling…

Emily Ireton, Pat Crosby and Carolyn Adkins are part of a growing trend of people unretiring, or going back to work after retirement. A survey published in 2017 by the nonprofit RAND Corporation showed that nearly 40 percent of currently employed workers 65 and older had retired previously. Are you considering returning to work? Take a look at these popular unretirement jobs, and search retirementjobs.com for opportunities in your area. Driver If you like being on the road and chatting with new people, driving for a car or ride-share service could be a good fit. Unretirement benefits: Little training. Lots of variety. No office. Where to look: Contact the company you’d like to drive for. Caregiver Thrive on building relationships and want to make a difference in the lives of…

Huntington, West Virginia THANKSGIVING WAS OVER. Time to start thinking about Christmas. Yet I couldn’t get last Christmas out of my mind. As always, we’d spent Christmas Eve at Mom’s house. She’d decorated with fresh pine boughs and loaded her table with bacon-wrapped chicken, her special cheeseball and a ham studded with pineapple slices. She was also miserable the whole evening. She stood with her back against the kitchen sink, chain-smoking and biting her lower lip, her face creased with worry and regret, looking every one of her 74 years. She’d lost weight since the last time I saw her. Her blue eyes avoided everyone’s gaze. “Have you heard from Michael and Melissa yet?” she finally asked. I shook my head. My two younger siblings, who’d struggled for years with…

Nashville, Tennessee I’M THE FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF Thistle Farms, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Nashville that helps women heal from sex trafficking and drug and alcohol addiction. Thistle Farms owns five houses in Nashville where women seeking freedom from the sex trade, prison and addiction live rent-free for up to two years with access to free medical care, counseling, education and job training. More than two thirds of residents have remained clean and sober for at least two and a half years after moving in. We have helped open more than 30 similar homes around the country. Thistle Farms also operates several social justice enterprises that make and sell clothes and all-natural home and body-care products, run a cafe, operate a retail store and manage more than 25 global…

SUSTAINING GIFT My husband, Keith, suffered a series of health problems. Our mail carrier, Betsy, always tried to keep him in good spirits, often stopping by his workshop to say hello. After Keith passed away in 2014, I fell into a deep depression. Betsy showed up again. She gave me my first Daily Guideposts for Christmas. Reading the devotions each day reminded me to give my troubles to God. I’ve ordered Daily Guideposts every year since. In the 2017 edition, Rhoda Blecker wrote a series on “Overcoming Loss,” about mourning her husband, also named Keith. I saw that she was able to pull herself out of grief, and I didn’t feel as alone. Digging deeper into God’s word with the devotion writers gave me the strength to go forward and…

“Being male is a matter of birth. Being a man is a matter of age. But being a gentleman is a matter of choice.” VIN DIESEL, actor “If you love only the people who are like you—who have the same values, the same economic and educational background—you’re not really doing much except loving yourself.” REV. RICK REYNOLDS, executive director of Operation Nightwatch, a Seattle street ministry “Knowledge is proud because she knows so much. Wisdom is humble because she knows so little.” submitted by Guideposts reader ELAINE DALTON, of Springfield, Missouri “Never stop doing things for others. Sometimes those little things occupy the biggest part of their hearts.” via the Positively Positive Facebook page “Go where your best prayers take you.” FREDERICK BUECHNER, theologian “We all know those people who…

—1 CORINTHIANS 9:24 (NLT) I SAT ON THE BLEACHERS at the indoor soccer arena while my daughter, Micah, had her third private session. At twenty dollars an hour, we were lucky to find Coach Thomas. Others charged twice that. Fee structure wasn’t the only thing that set him apart. Instead of starting a stop-watch and promptly ending when Micah’s hour was up, Thomas had a list of skills he wanted her to master at each session. He practiced alongside her rather than standing and instructing. He exuded passion, intensity and love for the game. After each lesson, Micah handed him the payment, then met me outside the Plexiglas. Instead of flushed cheeks today, she had tears in her eyes. “He won’t take the money,” she said, sniffling. “He said he…

It was a bright, sunny Saturday. My daughter Alexis would likely go off on one of her miles-long bike rides. I was so proud of Alexis and her health-conscious lifestyle. She’d been 75 pounds overweight as a teen but had taken up biking and hiking while in college. Now 27, she was happy, fit and active. I was glad that she’d found ways to stay healthy, but I worried about her. The extensive biking trails in Portland went through some sketchy parts of town, and she was living on her own. I went about my day, doing some weekend chores. Alexis was still on my mind, so at one point, I felt compelled to say a quick prayer: “God, please keep my daughter safe.” A few hours later, I got…

For families affected by substance misuse and addiction, Thanksgiving and Christmas can be the hardest times of the year. The holidays often come with high expectations and stress that can magnify family problems, especially when alcohol or other drug use is involved. And if any family member is struggling with addiction, there may be particularly complex layers of unpredictability, guilt and uncertainty about how to interact with them. The best approach to the holidays for families affected by addiction is the same approach that is recommended year-round. Remember that you didn’t cause your loved one’s addiction, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it. What you can do is detach from the illness while still loving the person who is sick. Set healthy boundaries and encourage any efforts to…

“DR. RAGIN?” ONE OF THE CHURCH’S stewards asked. “There’s someone here I think you should talk to,” he said. It was a late Sunday afternoon, the October sky already growing dark. The service had long since ended. Normally I’d have been home by then. But for some reason, I was still in my office at St. Luke AME Church, lost in thought. Am I even making a difference? A question I asked myself again and again. “Send them in,” I told the steward. I had worked as a nurse for 30 years before retiring in 2010 and enrolling in seminary. But no amount of schooling could prepare me for the challenge of being a minister. Yes, I was still helping people—but not in the same way. As a nurse, I’d…

DIVINE RX Pain shot through my wrist when the doctor grabbed my hand. “Ouch!” I cried. “A little discomfort is to be expected,” he said. I was already nervous about my upcoming surgery. My doctor’s attitude just made it worse. God, can you do something to soften his heart? I asked on my way home. God’s answer surprised me. Pray with him, God seemed to say. Pray with him and for him. I wasn’t sure I was bold enough. I couldn’t imagine my doctor agreeing to pray with me. He might even be offended. But I trusted God. On my next pre-op visit, I mustered my courage. “I’d like to pray with you before you examine my wrist,” I said. The doctor looked surprised—stunned, even. But he nodded. I took…