Inhoudsopgave van April 2021 - Guideposts

Hello, my friends. I often use this page to share a personal story or to preview the issue you are about to enjoy. I love being able to talk directly—and honestly—with you. This month, I have important news to share that will help keep GUIDEPOSTS magazine vital for years to come. Starting with the June/July issue, GUIDEPOSTS will be published bimonthly, meaning you will receive six issues a year rather than 10. But your magazine will be bigger and better: * Each issue will be a minimum of 100 pages—some 30 pages more than the current magazine—with no appreciable increase in ad pages, which means more great storytelling. * Your magazine will be beautifully redesigned and printed on better quality paper, including the cover. * It will still have the…

EGGING EACH OTHER ON I cleaned out a closet last April and found a bag of plastic Easter eggs. I showed them to my four children, who had been bored and lonely ever since the Covid pandemic shut down their school and activities. “Let’s ‘egg’ your friends!” I said. My kids wrote little notes like “You are an egg-cellent friend” and “I’m so egg-cited to see you” to put inside the eggs. We included some candy and other surprises. That evening, I texted their friends’ mom to let her know what we were up to, then dropped off the eggs at their house. In the morning, there was a fun surprise waiting for my kids’ friends. The friends loved it and “egged” another family that night. The eggs traveled through…

My husband, Don, glanced up from his computer, which he’d set up in our kitchen. “That’s not how I’d do it,” he said. I stuck my cereal bowl in the dishwasher, using perhaps a little more force than strictly necessary. “Didn’t realize I’d been loading it wrong all these years,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.” If looks could kill, I would’ve spent the rest of my day burying Don in the backyard. And this was only Week Two of the Covid lockdown. I beat a hasty retreat to my home office. Lord, I prayed, now it’s the dishwasher! Please make Don lighten up or we’ll never get through quarantine. Don’t get me wrong, Don and I have been married for 38 years—happily. But we’re polar opposites. A Marine…

THAT MEANS A LATTE Life during Covid-19 has made a lot of people short-tempered. I try to focus on the positives, such as the latte I buy myself as a little treat every day and Shea, the friendly barista who makes it just the way I like. So I was horrified when I saw the man ahead of me at the drive-through window berating her. “I’ll be contacting your boss about this!” he shouted. “You’re incompetent!” I’d been on the receiving end of a similar rant just days earlier. As I was standing in the grocery checkout line, minding my own business, the man in front of me whirled around and started yelling at me about some imagined offense. I didn’t want to remember the words he used—certainly not the…

Veteran Christian Jeremiah Braudrick (page 20) returned from combat to a broken marriage and a broken faith. In our video, he tells how the writings of C. S. Lewis helped restore his soul. guideposts.org/jeremiahb Running for Good Did you know that exercise can enhance your spiritual well-being? Jocelyn Wof-ford (page 56) gives advice on making running a part of your spiritual practice. guideposts.org/jocelynw The Healing Garden science proves what green thumbs have long known: Gardening is good for you. See our six tips on tapping into its restor-ative power. guideposts.org/gardening Get Your Laughs In find wholesome humor and rib-tickling stories in Guideposts’ new book Laughter Is the Spice of Life. guideposts.org/laughter Keep Your GUIDEPOSTS Coming We make it easy to renew your magazine or manage book series shipments. guideposts.org/ecares…

It is spring—the world around me slowly reawakening, blushing with early blooming azaleas—but I don’t feel its promise. As I drive through my neighborhood on my way to perform in my church’s Easter production, I feel only the darkness that has been hovering over me for weeks, that has threatened to overwhelm me every spring since I lost my six-year-old son, Jeremy. It was spring when he died, hit by a car as he was riding his bike just a few blocks from home. Six years have passed, and most of the time I am able to drive down the street where he was killed and not think about what happened. But now I can’t help remembering how the sunlight filtered through the unfurling leaves that afternoon in 1992 when…

Farmersburg, Indiana I’d been imagining this moment for months. Finally it was here. The big reveal. “Dad, you are going to love this,” I said, swinging open the door to the in-law suite we had spent the winter building off our garage. “Surprise!” My husband, Jeff, had put down new carpet in the sitting area. The walls gleamed with fresh paint. My college-age daughter, Jess, had added some big potted houseplants. There was a desk for Dad to write at and a comfy leather armchair and matching footstool where he could read his Bible. Perfect! It was March 2019, and I’d flown to Florida days earlier to help Dad drive home to Indiana after his two-month winter vacation. At 93, he wasn’t as comfortable driving long distances anymore, and I…

Julie Goodblessing Corcoran (The Hammock, page 42) turned to art to cope with the breast cancer diagnosis she received in July 2020. “Art is such an integral part of me that any change in my life would be re? ected in my work,” Julie says. After more than 30 years of working with fabric as a patternmaker, designer and fiber artist, she took up a new medium: metal. She refers to her new art form as her “signature madness,” an outgrowth of the loneliness she felt after her diagnosis. “This was new territory for me—I didn’t know anyone who had breast cancer,” Julie says. “I found a courage I didn’t know I had. I believe my transition to working with metal is an outward representation of this newfound bravery.” The…

“God is real. God loves you. God wants the best for you. Believe that. I do.”CHRIS PRATT, actor “Joy is a choice before it becomes a feeling.”FAITH BROUSSARD CADE, mental health therapist and wellness advocate “Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.”from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, by SARAH BAN BREATHNACH “I’m going to realize my life is a path to walk on and not a box to live in.”JORDAN LEE DOOLEY, entrepreneur “Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of tiny, almost imperceptible, steps we take along the way.”LORI GOTTLIEB, therapist and author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone “The only person you…

My two-year-old son, Nathan, and I were walking home from the park when we heard a roar overhead. Four sleek F-16 fighter jets streaked across the sky in tight formation. “It’s the Thunderbirds!” I shouted. “They’re training today.” My husband, Michael, was the Air Force demonstration suadron’s chaplain. The jets were a familiar sight at Arizona’s Luke Air Force Base. Nathan and I watched until the jets flew out of sight. Then I pushed his stroller home. It was almost noon. I made lunch. The Thunderbirds would have reached the training area by now; it was only a few minutes’ fiight from our house. We sat down at the table. Nathan grabbed my hand. “Pray!” he said. I blinked, surprised. It was the first time he’d said that word. “That’s…

One of the first things my wife, Peg, said when I retired was “Good news! Now you’ll have time to clean the garage!” Not exactly good news—it was the one task I’d been putting off. I pushed at the garage’s wooden doors, but they were as stubbornly stuck as I felt in this new stage of my life. This detached garage—along with our house—was more than a hundred years old. I finally got the doors open and stepped onto the wide plank floor. Inside were gaps so big you could see all the way down to the ground. We’d even discovered a family of foxes denning underneath last spring. Not that it was safe for parking, but there was no way to squeeze a car inside anyway, with all the…

ONGOING MIRACLE After suffering chest pain and shortness of breath for more than a year, I was diagnosed with lupus last fall. Despite trying two medication regimens, I wasn’t able to return to my job as an emergency room physician assistant. I was at my lowest point and feeling as if nothing in my life would ever be the same. Then I read Cliff Shiepe’s story Miracle on Hold, in the October 2020 issue of GUIDEPOSTS. His line “Miracles are not onetime but living things” jumped out at me. It reminded me that the God who sustained me through a painful divorce, bankruptcy and single motherhood is the same God who will sustain me through my present trials. I have good days and bad with lupus, but I’ve learned to…