Inhoudsopgave van December 2015 - Guideposts

IF OPPOSITES ATTRACT THEN MY wife, Tracy, and I were a perfect match. She was organized, disciplined, took care of her health. Me? I was a jazz drummer, a big guy. I worked nights mostly, and took it easy during the day, though I cooked breakfast for Tracy every morning—organic oatmeal and fresh fruit—before she headed off to her gig as a special-ed teacher. Organic oatmeal wasn’t my thing. Doughnuts, sweet rolls, that was more like it. Probably why one of the first presents Tracy ever gave me was a bottle of vitamins. Maybe not the most romantic gift but surely a loving one. This particular morning I wasn’t feeling much like eating. Tracy will tell you that I’m always doing something musical—humming, going over drum charts, tapping out double-four…

I HAD BEEN STANDING IN THE card aisle at the store for almost half an hour, looking for the right one to send my mother, Loretta, for Mother’s Day. Every year it was a struggle. I thumbed through the cards. A little girl and her mom making a cake, a mother embracing a child, a mom and daughter twirling around—none of those pictures fit our relationship. There. Just flowers on the front. Generic. Maybe that would work. I pulled the card out of the rack. “Your encouragement, support and love shaped me,” read the message inside. “Thank you for always being there when I needed you.” That was even further off the mark. I shoved the card back in the rack. I’d promised my grandmother that I would try to…

CATS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN welcome at Old Mission San Juan Bautista, one of 21 missions in California built by Franciscan monks in the 1800s. There’s even a cat door carved into the side door of the chapel. Back then they were valued for their mousing abilities. So it’s only the visitors who are surprised to see Sula, the latest cat to take up residence at the mission, padding down the aisle during Mass. All white, except for gray bangs and a gray tail, she never misses a service. She sits at the end of a pew or occasionally sidles up to our priest while he delivers the homily. Often she curls up in the lap of a parishioner. Always someone different. As if she’s singled out this one person from…

AT SIX O’ CLOCK SHARP THE CURTAIN rises. Two hundred audience members, including the mayor of Reno, Nevada, look to the stage. Dozens of talented, elaborately costumed actors break out into the first number of The Lion King. But this is not your typical production. The gifted cast is made up of homeless children living at the Volunteers of America family shelter in Reno. Children who’ve been given a chance to escape their problems and live their dreams onstage, thanks to volunteer acting coach Nasya Mancini. “I see so much of myself in these kids,” says Nasya. “I tell them their current circumstance doesn’t have to be their destiny. If they are determined they can do anything they want.” Determination is something Nasya knows all about. She and a twin…

KID PRESIDENT! HAVE YOU HEARD OF him? He’s the cute little boy in a suit who gives inspirational talks from a cardboard Oval Office. His YouTube videos have inspired millions with his positive messages. But to me he’s Robby, my sweet son, who has been an inspiration to my family since before he could walk. The week before Christmas 2003, I got a call from a children’s services case manager asking if we could take in a 17-month-old girl and, eventually, her two-month-old brother. My husband, David, and I had already been parents to 10 foster children and we were almost finished raising three of our own. I used to run a day care in our home. Then I felt called to a new path, to help children who had…

‘‘ I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL THIS IS OVER.” Lately I’d noticed my husband, Mark, and me saying this to each other a lot. It was our mantra all through the long, bitter Ohio winter, one we felt acutely in our drafty new home. The house was a gorgeous pistachio- colored century-old Queen Anne Victorian in Ada, a village about two hours south of Cleveland, where I’d grown up in the suburbs and where my parents still lived. My sister’s house was down the street from us. Four months earlier, I had quit my high-profile job as a public-radio journalist in New York City. My husband had retired early from his own successful radio career and we had moved to Ada to reconnect with our families, step back from our relentless…

Laurie Novak (The Path to Awesome! page 40) is glad she and her husband, David, tried a second trip to the beach while fostering their son Robby and daughter Lexi, who both have osteogenesis imperfecta (OI). Laurie met a woman named Carol at a flea market on the way to the beach. “She was unusually small, and in a wheelchair, and I had a feeling she had OI,” Laurie says. They started talking—Carol did have OI, as did her son. Carol gave Laurie unexpected encouragement. “She said she’d adapted to the broken bones, and she thought we had what it took to take care of the kids.” Now Robby’s the one giving encouragement. In September, Kid President’s video Pep Talk to the World was shown to the United Nations before…

AFFIRMATIVE I sometimes write three letters a day, letting people know they’re appreciated. I write to family and friends, but I’ve also sent compliments to postal workers and store clerks. Why am I so passionate about affirming letters? I know they can change a recipient’s life. My father grew up in a working-class family and thought he was destined for a job as a manual laborer until his high school chemistry teacher gave him a card that read, “A remembrance for my chief chemist of last year. I hope you will try hard to get on to college somewhere.” Not only did Dad go to college, he earned a Ph.D. and became a professor and later a dean at the Naval Academy People told me they liked the idea of…

IT HAPPENED THREE WEEKS BEfore Christmas. My wife, Joanne, and I had just decorated the house. The family down the street had an inflatable Santa Claus. Our next-door neighbors had icicle lights. Us? Three big wooden signs strategically placed and illuminated with spotlights: Love, Joy and Peace, they read. The gifts of the Holy Spirit. What can I say? I’m a pastor. My decorations had to mean something! People loved our display, a tradition since 1982. We were known as the Love, Joy and Peace House. Strangers would drive by all month to take pictures. Some would even leave us thank-you notes. So I couldn’t believe it when I opened the front door one morning and discovered that the Joy sign was gone. The wires attaching it to the eaves…

I PULLED INTO THE GROCERY STORE parking lot and sat in the car, trying to muster my nerve. It took all my emotional strength just to open the door, cross the lot and enter the store. In the produce aisle, I froze. Should I buy red, green or yellow apples? I couldn’t decide. I stared at the apples, blinking back tears. Was I really going to cry right here in the middle of the grocery store? I had to leave. I grabbed the basics—milk and butter— hurried back to the car and fled for home. There was no question now. The depression I’d fought off successfully for years— almost two decades!—was back. With a vengeance. I couldn’t hide it anymore. Rick, my husband, already knew. My mother probably suspected. How…