Table of contents for December 2020 / January 2021 in Guideposts

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. I say that because this is our December/January issue, so it covers both holidays, both years, the alpha and omega as it were (though vice versa, I suppose), which always prompts the question: What date do we put on the issue? But to be serious, the nation has lived through one of the most difficult and painful years in memory. Hundreds of thousands are dead from Covid-19, millions without jobs, the future uncertain. Will a new year bring new hope? I must believe that it will. Hope is a torch we carry that scatters the darkness, both within us and without. I can’t imagine life without hope. Hope illuminates the future. We see signs of it all around us, even in…

MERRY MISSION Christmas is a time for family traditions, and I’m so proud of the one that my daughter, Holley, started five years ago. Holley wanted to teach her daughter, Bailey, then eight, how to show Jesus’ caring spirit. Holley and her husband, Casey, bought a bunch of five-dollar coffee gift cards. On Christmas night, the three of them got into the car and drove around, handing out the cards to people who were working. Gas station attendants. Firefighters. Pharmacy staff. Bailey learned to appreciate that essential workers sacrifice time with their families to keep things running on holidays. And the delight in the recipients’ eyes showed her that to give is also a gift. This year, my granddaughter turned 13 and she’s looking forward to carrying on her family’s…

Lori Durham is not the only person to discover that retirement is a far cry from what she’d envisioned. In fact, for many, the idea of retiring at age 65 and spending time golfing and visiting the grandchildren is a thing of the past. According to a 2017 Gallup poll, 74 percent of Americans say they plan to work, either part-time or full-time, past regular retirement age. Some, like Durham, find that circumstances have upended their plans; others realize they need more money or long for more meaning and social interaction in their lives. Here’s how to rethink retirement: Secure a flexible, fulfilling retirement job. Looking for a low-stress way to connect with others? Consider working as a retail salesperson; you can often find a store centered on your passions…

Muncie, Indiana REMEMBER THE TELEVISION show Quantum Leap? I was fascinated by it as a teenager. In every episode, the main character, a physicist, leaped back in time and into someone else’s body and fixed something that had gone wrong in their lives. The idea of being able to make things right from the past stuck with me well into adulthood. Until fairly recently, in fact. May 1, 2020. I’d seen my share of death and suffering in the two weeks I’d been deployed as an Army social worker at New York City’s Jacobi Medical Center. The Covid-19 crisis was unrelenting. My job was to sit with patients, a dozen or so visits a day, and listen. Offer comfort and hope. But was it too late for George Crouch, the…

ONLY ONE THING WAS MISSING that Christmas, but it was all that mattered. My three grown children, their spouses and their kids crowded around the tree in the family room, opening presents. Laughter, conversation and the occasional shriek of delight from a grandchild filled the room. Soon the floor was strewn with wrapping paper. Just like Christmases past. From my spot in the middle of the sofa, I gazed at my family. I was surrounded by people I loved, people who loved me. But without Shirley, my wife of 58 years, I felt empty. Joyless. She’d been my everything. There was part of me that couldn’t wait until everyone left and I was alone. Alone with my grief and my memories. It had been seven months since I’d lost Shirley,…

Country music superstar Carrie Underwood’s (Love’s Pure Light, page 24) first Christmas album, My Gift, had good timing. “Being able to get it started before Covid hit was such a blessing,” Carrie says. Her choice of producer, Greg Wells, also helped. “He can play so many instruments at home,” Carrie says. “Somehow it all worked out.” You can watch Carrie perform songs from the album with a live orchestra and choir on HBO Max. Want to read more about Carrie’s childhood? Her book, Find Your Path, includes some anecdotes we adapted for this issue, along with the fitness and nutrition advice Carrie relies on. “I want to be healthy and fit 52 weeks a year, but that doesn’t mean I have to be perfect every day,” she says. For more…

“This magazine, begun in 1945, coincided with the challenges of rebuilding lives at the end of World War II. Now, 75 years later, it is still here to provide faith, hope and inspiration to those affected by the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. I believe God had a plan for Guideposts then and still does today.” MAGGIE PEALE EVERETT daughter of Guideposts’ founders and chair of the Guideposts Foundation Board For more information on Guideposts’ outreach programs, visit guideposts.org/helping-others, write to GUIDEPOSTS FOUNDATION, 100 Reserve Road, Suite E200, Danbury, CT 06810 or e-mail us at outreach@guideposts.org.…

I was eight years old that Christmas, and I wanted to get something special for my mom and my older sister, Tanya. We were living in an apartment in Spanish Harlem, in Manhattan, close enough to school that I could walk there with my friends—Tanya keeping an eye out for me—while Mom went to work. Every year, I couldn’t wait for the holidays to arrive. We’d make a big batch of Orville Redenbacher popcorn and take out Mom’s sewing kit. We’d push needle and thread through each popped kernel, making a long string to loop around our Christmas tree. Whatever we didn’t hang on the tree branches, we popped into our mouths. Soon there would be a pile of presents under those branches, many of them for me. Mom had…

There’s a reason I always buckle up when I’m behind the wheel—and not just because that’s what the law says. It’s because of my father and the dream he once had. Dad was a young man in 1961. He’d just enlisted in the Air Force and been ordered to report to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. He planned to pack his things and drive cross-country from his parents’ house in Michigan. He was looking forward to the road trip. Then, a few nights before setting out, he had the dream. He was in his car, a used Volvo, driving across the desert at dusk. He had never seen a desert before, but this seemed so real. The sky was bruised purple by the sunset, casting an eerie light on…

A FOOD PANTRY MIRACLE Lines at the food pantry I coordinate had gotten longer as the weather grew colder, but we were determined to fulfill our clients’ needs. That included Christmas wish lists—everyone should have a gift to open Christmas morning. One by one, we collected gifts for all our requests. “Now we just have to hope the food doesn’t run out,” I said to a coworker the week before Christmas. We planned to hand out all the gifts in one day, but a bad snowstorm forced us to close. “We’ll stay open a few extra days next week,” I told the staff. “Clients can make appointments to come in for their gifts.” By December 23, all of our clients had collected their gifts. All of them except one. “Has…

A BRIGHTER FUTURE My husband and I are full-time RVers. This past summer, I read back issues of Guideposts while on the road. Becca Stevens’s story, Love Heals Every Body, in the November 2018 issue, touched my heart. Becca had been sexually abused as a child and confronted her abuser as an adult. Her experience led her to found Thistle Farms, a nonprofit residential treatment center for women recovering from addiction and sex trafficking. Thistle Farms is headquartered in Nashville, which is where we were when I read the story. My husband and I are always downsizing (there isn’t a lot of room in an RV), so I was able to donate clothing, purses and jewelry. I thought Thistle Farms residents might be able to use them as they move…

“I’m a big believer in prayer. One of my favorite passages is Matthew 6:27: ‘Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?’ That has given me a lot of peace.”actor RITA WILSON, breast cancer and Covid-19 survivor “Everyone has a vocation. I mean, the most fundamental vocation is to become the person whom God created. And it’s both the person you already are and the person that God calls you to be.”FATHER JAMES MARTIN, Jesuit writer and teacher “Nothing ever seems too bad, too hard or too sad when you’ve got a Christmas tree in the living room.” NORA ROBERTS, author “If I’m not willing to be upset and rearranged and taken apart, then how willing am I really to be redeemed?” BARBARA BROWN…

IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY FAVORITE carols—“Little Drummer Boy.” You know the story. He wants to bring a gift to baby Jesus, but he’s poor. He doesn’t have shiny, pretty, special things as the wise men do, with their gold, frankincense and myrrh. What can he give the newborn king? He turns to the one thing he knows he can do, the thing he does best. Play his drum. That’s the gift he gives to Jesus. The gift of music. I’ve had that gift as far back as I can remember, bursting into song at the drop of a hat, something that made me happy and others too. Like lots of kids. My kids, for instance. Our older son, Isaiah, was only a toddler when I’d sing to him,…

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.—GALATIANS 3:28 (NIV) RECENTLY MY HUSBAND BEGAN coleading community discussions on racial unity in our city. At the end of one discussion, my husband’s coleader invited audience members to share their personal experiences with race. After listening to a few testimonies, I walked to the podium. With hands shaking, I shared my family’s story as minorities in a largely homogeneous city. I spoke of vandalism at my son’s middle school, with racially offensive words written in the bathroom. I shared the day my husband and I discovered similar offensive words painted on utility boxes on our lawn in a neighborhood where we were the only African-American family.…