Innehållsförteckning för February 2017 från Guideposts

This note is for dog lovers. Last month I mentioned a new book I’ve written called Always By My Side: Life Lessons From Millie and All the Dogs I’ve Loved. It’s a book I wrote because of all you dog lovers out there who said prayers and sent words of encouragement when Millie got sick, and grieved with Julee and me when she passed. It was one of the most heartbreaking times of my life. I couldn’t have gotten though it without you. You understood. That got me thinking about the other dogs in my life, each one brought to me at just the right moment. There was Sparky, a perpetual runaway who was my first experience with loss. There was Pete the poodle, who stayed by me through a…

I’d never been in a pawnshop before. But the price of gold was at an alltime high, and this place was featured on the evening news. Why not see what a few old necklaces and bracelets were worth? I gave them to the man behind the counter, showed ID, and got fingerprinted to make sure I wasn’t a thief. While I waited for the appraisal, I browsed the jewelry case. I felt a pang of sadness. Clearly, many of these pieces had once been someone’s cherished possessions. I knew what it felt like to lose something precious. My husband, Donnie, and I had been your typical newlywed college sweethearts, starting out on a shoestring. Donnie regretted that he couldn’t afford a bigger ring. I told him it didn’t matter. But…

QUOTES FROM TODAY’S POSITIVE THINKERS “What would our lives look like if we really did live with our life’s brevity at the forefront of our mind? Would we pursue the temporary, or would we pursue the eternal?” from My Heart: Every Beat Surrendered to Our Unchanging God, by JULIE MANNING “To increase your happiness… randomly wish for somebody else to be happy.” CHADE-MENG TAN, from Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within “Life isn’t always about finding yourself. More often than not, it’s about discovering who God created you to be.” DAVID A. R. WHITE, movie producer, from Between Heaven and Hollywood: Chasing Your God-Given Dream “I can’t think of any better representation of beauty than someone who is unafraid to be herself.” actress EMMA STONE “Faith…

I AM NO MATHEMATICIAN. that you can count on. I actually flunked math in college when, in a misguided effort to become someone I was not, I declared electrical engineering as my major. Me, an engineer? What was I thinking? But that failure led me to pursue my real calling, acting, and because of it I appear as a brilliant mathematician in the film Hidden Figures. I play one of the masterminds behind the early Mercury and Apollo space flights, an extraordinary woman at an extraordinary time. But before I get to her, a little about me. I grew up in southeast Washington, D.C., in a rough neighborhood. It was me and my mom against the world, and what a tough world it was. She worked long days at a…

MIKE IN HAND, I LOOKED out at the thousands of people standing on their feet, singing at the top of their lungs. I’m the lead singer for Casting Crowns, and the feeling of that many people singing my songs never gets old. That Saturday night, February 28, 2015, we were playing the Carson Center in Paducah, Kentucky, our last show before heading home to Georgia and church the next day. Almost all of the songs I’ve written over the years have a story behind them, a real-life person or experience, often from leading the youth group at my home church. That night, the opening chords of our song “Voice of Truth” rang out and the crowd responded. I sang, “Oh, what I would do to have the kind of faith…

T. Morgan Dixon and the women of GirlTrek are onto something, walking their way to well-being. Not only is walking an excellent lowimpact exercise, it can help you feel good in more ways than just physically. Here’s how to turn walking into an activity that boosts your mental, emotional, social and spiritual well-being. Walk more mindfully. “It isn’t a matter of how far you go,” says the Good Samaritan Society’s Bill Kubat, “but that you walk with awareness that we are all mind, body and soul all of the time.” Kubat has walked the pilgrimage route Camino de Santiago, which leads to the Spanish town of Compostela. Be aware of each step, each breath, as you walk, he advises. Notice the sights and sounds around you. Notice how you feel—are…

GETTING THE MESSAGE “Danny’s not home right now,” his mother told me. “I don’t know where he went.” “Just tell him I called,” I said, hanging up the pay phone. What was the point in leaving him a message? Nothing I said got through to him. We had been seeing each other for years, me a nurse in Chicago, Danny living and working in Massachusetts. I didn’t realize a longdistance relationship would be this hard. I walked back across the street to the hospital. Danny knew I was going to call during my break. Why didn’t he make sure to be home? Letters were no better. When I asked questions about his feelings, plans for the future, things going on in his life, he didn’t answer them—even when I underlined…

NEW FINDS IN BACK ISSUES I like to pick up back issues of Guideposts at the library. The stories are timeless, and any I haven’t read before are new to me. Last April, I was looking for a Scripture for my church’s annual spring salad supper. I found the perfect verse in an unexpected source—Room for More, by Mary Sharon Smith (no relation) in the January 2014 issue. She had a new refrigerator on the way and had to take two decades of mementos off the old one. One slip of paper she took off had I Corinthians 10:31 on it: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” A perfect verse for the kitchen—and my church supper. ELAINE MAY SMITH Selah,…

I’D KNOWN THIS DAY WAS COMING. Ever since she brought up the idea. Ever since she started college, even though she lived at home and commuted to campus. Ever since she began filling out college applications and trying on a bazillion prom dresses her senior year of high school. Maybe deep down, I’d known ever since the day she was born, when I reached out to touch her tiny hand and she grabbed my finger and held on tight. I was just a kid myself then, totally clueless about parenthood. But from the moment my beautiful black-haired baby girl first held on to me, I knew I loved her more than words could say and that I never wanted to let her go. Except today I was going to have…

NOTHING WAS THE SAME without him. Not holidays or birthdays. Not my everyday routine. I’d thought getting back into my usual rhythm would bring the comfort of the familiar. I’d attend early services Sunday morning, listening to Father Brian’s homily for a message I could take into the week. I’d head home to change into a suit for my job at an addiction-treatment center, where I worked the second shift every Sunday through Thursday. But every night after work I’d sit in the quiet living room and cry. My husband, John, had died early one Friday morning in June of what the ER doctor termed a sudden cardiac event. Everything I’d heard, everything I’d read, said that grief would ease with time. Now it was February, the dark of winter.…

I SLIPPED THE BOOK INTO AN ENVELOPE and put it in the mail, mostly as a courtesy. The book, Comes a Soldier’s Whisper, was a collection of my father’s World War II letters. He was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne and saw combat on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge. Mom saved every one of his letters home and gave them to me after Dad died. I’d never read them before. I decided to self-publish them as an act of love and a record for Dad’s grandchildren and their children. The copy I put into the mail was for my ex-husband, Jim, a Vietnam veteran and the father of our two children. He had loved my dad and I figured he’d appreciate the letters. Walking back to…

I HAD PROMISED MY WORRIED daughters that I would never, ever, on any account, go down the basement stairs of my house on my own. They were treacherous— steep, narrow and made of a slippery concrete. But that day I was cleaning up the kitchen and I kept almost tripping over a box sitting next to the refrigerator. Not again! I thought, glaring at the box. If I could just get it out of the way. All it held were papers and files for the spring art contest sponsored by my old sorority. I wouldn’t need those for some months. Better to store the box down in the basement. For a brief moment I thought of calling one of my kids and asking for help, but goodness knows, they are…

Thank you, God, for your love today. Help me to bless others by what I do and say. 3 tablespoons Grade B maple syrup 1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses 1½ teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil ¼ teaspoon sea salt Freshly ground black pepper 2 cups strawberries, hulled 2 teaspoons very thinly sliced fresh basil Roasted Strawberries With Pomegranate Molasses Antioxidant-packed sweets for a sweet time of year Preheat oven to 250°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk maple syrup, pomegranate molasses, olive oil, salt and a few grinds of pepper in large bowl. Add berries and stir gently until coated. Spread mixture on baking sheet in a single layer (save any leftover juices). Bake 90 minutes or until berries are about half their original size, stirring halfway through baking time.…