Innehållsförteckning för April 2020 från Guideposts

Today I noticed a hammock slung between two barren trees. The day was gray, and the hillside was smeared with patches of grimy snow. Winter’s last stand. Had the hammock somehow survived the harsh Berkshire winter, or had some loony optimist battled the frozen mud and hung it in anticipation of spring? I wanted to believe in the optimist. Besides, is there a season more optimistic than spring? We published our first issue in the spring of 1945. What could be more optimistic than the vision Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and his wife, Ruth Stafford Peale, had for their little magazine to become a beacon of inspiration for countless millions? It’s a vision rooted in the belief that personal accounts of everyday faith by people from all walks of life…

CAN-DO SPIRIT My family lives by the Pacific Ocean, and my son, Ryan, has always loved marine animals. In 2012, when he was three, Ryan came to the recycling center with me. He had fun feeding cans and bottles into the machine, especially once he realized that the more we recycled, the less would end up as litter on the beach. When I let him keep the three bucks we got back for the returns, he was even more excited. The next day, Ryan announced he was starting a recycling business: Ryan’s Recycling. He and my wife delivered trash bags to each of the houses on our street and asked our neighbors to save their cans and bottles for him. The neighbors asked their friends to save theirs too. Ryan,…

Living Longer, Living Better Get TV journalist Joan Lunden’s (page 58) top tips for aging with grace, humor and health. guideposts.org/joanl Speaking Out Rachael Denhollander (page 30) shares how her faith empowered her to come forward against the doctor who abused her. guideposts.org/rachaeld In Recovery In our video, hear what Deborah Beddoe (page 62) wishes she’d known during her husband’s addiction recovery journey. guideposts.org/deborahb He Is Risen Celebrate this holiest of seasons with these prayers for Good Friday and Easter Sunday. guideposts.org/eighteasterprayers Keep Your Guideposts Coming We make it easy to renew your magazine or manage book series shipments. guideposts.org/ecares…

HAVE YOU ALWAYS DREAMED OF becoming a writer? Do you have a great story to tell? Do you want to inspire millions of people? Now’s your chance! Send your story to our Writers Workshop Contest. Don’t forget to tell us about yourself and your life and writing experience. If you have a blog, vlog or social media following, let us know. The workshop class of 2018 (shown at left) is already contributing to our publications and website. Make this the year you join them! Edwina Perkins: This is more than a contest; it’s a calling. Guideposts gives us writers the tools and opportunities we need to touch the lives of others through stories. Christy Johnson: It was like winning The Voice for writers. For five days, Guideposts editors poured a…

My tires spun in the snow. The car lurched but didn’t move. I eased off the gas. It was official: I was stuck. Why now? This was supposed to be my last trip before I retired the old car, a Renault Alliance. I was visiting a friend in Maine. I knew her house was around here somewhere, but I’d taken a wrong turn along the way and was now on a desolate, dead-end street. I tried to turn around… and ended up stuck in a snowbank. The sun was setting, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. My mechanic had been urging me to get a new car. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. This car was one of the last things I had left from my father.…

I WAS EXPECTING MY daughter’s call that morning, April 19, 1995. As I sat by the phone, my coffee cup rattled on the tabletop. The next instant, I heard a thunderous sound and the floor shook beneath my feet. I ran to the kitchen window. Blue sky, spring sunshine. A peaceful Oklahoma day. It was hard to imagine anything terrible happening on a bright Wednesday like that. I hadn’t put on my Texaco uniform that morning; I was meeting my 23-year-old daughter, Julie, for lunch. Proud of her? Everyone who came in for an oil change heard what a great kid I had. She’d caught me bragging on her just two days before. “Dad! People don’t want to hear all that!” Odd, that visit…Julie often stopped by my service station…

MY VIEWS ON AGING CHANGED forever on a trip to Morocco nearly 20 years ago with my three eldest daughters. Somewhere between riding camels in the Sahara and exploring the medina in Fez, we encountered a tribe of nomadic Bedouin sheepherders. We were invited to join them for mint tea and, as we entered one of their tents, were greeted warmly by an elderly tribeswoman. We talked through our translator, and I asked how old she was. The woman looked at me in confusion, then explained that Bedouins live by the changing of the seasons—no one knows their exact age. How old was she? It didn’t matter. That experience made me realize how much we limit and define ourselves by the date on our birth certificate. How old would you…

I SAW THE SIGN I spent my first two years of college in California. But Los Angeles ended up being just too far away from my family in Maryland, so I came home. Now I was ready to return to school. Specifically, to The New School, in New York City. That university wasn’t as far away as L.A., but still…. Was I about to make the same mistake? “I need a sign, God,” I said, looking at the university’s website for the umpteenth time since I’d been accepted. Then I thought, Did I actually say that? You see, I’ve never been a person to ask God for signs. The whole idea of asking for one struck me as lazy. It felt like expecting God to do all the work without…

“Grandmother Peale believed deeply in the power of prayer. I know how proud she would be of the millions of lives touched—both those prayed for and those doing the praying—since the Good Friday Day of Prayer was founded 50 years ago.”KATHERYN (KATIE) ALLEN BERLANDI clinical social worker and granddaughter of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and Ruth Stafford Peale, Sherman, Connecticut To send a prayer request and to pray for others, visit ourprayergoodfriday.org. For more information on outreach programs, visit guideposts.org/helpingothers. To let us know about the impact we have had on you, e-mail us at impact@guideposts.org…

LOVING HARRIET Thank you for the October 2019 cover story, Being Harriet, by actress Cynthia Erivo. Cynthia’s depiction of the Underground Railroad was so vivid that I had to go see the film Harriet when it opened. Watching how Harriet Tubman risked her life to lead so many enslaved people to freedom lifted my heart. Cynthia was outstanding, bringing her very being into the role. We were all with her, sharing Harriet’s hurt, fear, anger, triumph, joy, and—most of all—faith in a God who led her where he would have her go. What a blessing both the Guideposts story and the movie have been to my soul. To know that people are willing to stand up to evil and act for those in need is such an inspiration. JUDY FLOISTADAmherst,…

“Health might start in the body, but it extends way beyond the physical—it’s about your connections to the world and people around you and your ability to serve and give.”singer TIM McGRAW from Grit & Grace “Want nothing + Do anything = Have everything.”NEIL PASRICHA, author of The Happiness Equation “What’s wrong with being 72 or 82 or 92? If God is good enough to give you those years, flaunt them.”IRIS APFEL, 96, businesswoman, interior designer and fashion icon “When I’m looking in the mirror, I’m looking at the problem and I’m also looking at the solution, and the buck stops with me.”actress JAMIE LEE CURTIS on her more than 20 years in recovery from addiction to painkillers “Blessed are those who make people feel blessed.”PAULO COELHO, author “If you…

Wilsonville, Oregon MY HUSBAND, JIM, ADDED AN other pill to the pile of meds on the kitchen counter. Ever since my release from the hospital two days earlier, he’d kept careful track of which ones I needed to take and when. It was overwhelming, everything I would need to do to recover. And most of it was on me. It’s not as if Jim or anyone else could breathe for me. This is hopeless, I thought. I’m never going to be able to do this. Just then, my youngest son, Jeremey, walked into our apartment. “What did the doctor say?” he asked. Jim had taken me to a follow-up pulmonologist appointment earlier that morning. “He wants me to go to pulmonary rehabilitation,” I said, trying to sound more positive than…

I OPENED MY LAPTOP TO CHECK my grocery list. My two older children were running around downstairs. My baby daughter was with me. My husband, Jacob, a carpenter and a Southern Seminary graduate student, had already left. My gaze went to a Facebook trending story: “A Blind Eye to Sex Abuse: How USA Gymnastics Failed to Report Cases,” from The Indianapolis Star. No. The article outlined how USA Gymnastics had systematically buried reports of sexual misconduct in a filing cabinet—complaints about 54 member coaches over 10 years. I felt sick. An institution responsible for the mental and physical well-being of thousands of girls protected the coaches who had abused them. I thought of the human cost of such a betrayal, the darkness that would follow those little girls. I wanted…

“On her high school picture, Aki wrote, ‘When it’s God’s will… we will come to meet.’” LONELY AFTER MY HUSBAND DIED IN 1992, I FOUND myself longing to get in touch with my childhood pen pal, Akiko Toyama. In 1944, when I was 10, my mother read about the Heart Mountain Japanese internment camp in Wyoming and suggested that our Omaha, Nebraska, church mail Christmas gifts to families there. Aki, a girl my age, sent a thank-you note. Soon we were writing every month, stories about school and friends and Aki’s life in the camp. Unjust as the camps were, Aki was always upbeat. At the end of World War II, her family returned to Los Angeles, then moved to Hawaii. Our correspondence continued. On her high school picture, Aki…