Table of contents for Feb/Mar 2024 in Guideposts

Last fall, I released my latest book, A Journey of Faith: A Mother’s Alzheimer’s, a Son’s Love and His Search for Answers. I must thank you for your response to my story. I worried that a book about my family’s experience with Alzheimer’s and my own fear of the disease would not deliver the hope you expect from Guideposts, but I was wrong. As one reader said, “This isn’t really a book about Alzheimer’s. It’s a book about love.” A mother’s inescapable love. Maybe that’s why I can find her love in so many of the stories in this issue. In our cover story, Bill Courtney extols the power of everyday people to do good things. Each of us has a talent that can lift others up, he says. Mom…

MESSAGES WITH HEART Last February, I came across some heart-shaped sticky notes in fun colors on clearance. With Valentine’s Day only two weeks away, I bought them, knowing I’d find a good use for them. That night, one of my roommates made us a delicious dinner. Before bed, I wrote, “Thanks for dinner! You’re a great cook!” on a note and stuck it to her bedroom door. I wrote a second note to my other roommate, saying how much I’d liked the dessert she made. The next morning, both of my friends were so thrilled, I decided to keep writing notes. Each day until Valentine’s Day, I decorated their bedroom doors with a sticky note that described something I appreciated about them. “You’re such a great friend,” one note said.…

When I was five years old, my ears were pierced with golden wire in a small ceremony, as was customary in my native India. At that time, my family lived in Agra, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, in a house with no windows or central heating. The seven of us all slept together in one room. After dinner, we would sit on our beds beneath the mosquito netting and pray the rosary. We were among the less than three percent of Indians who were Christians. One chilly winter night, my mother brought the portable coal stove inside to warm the house. My siblings and I chatted until we fell asleep. A couple hours later, I awoke with a start and screamed out in pain—one of my earrings had…

Everyone at the office was getting Valentine’s Day roses from their sweetheart. Not me. It had been seven years since my husband, John, died. I still missed him. This year, I felt his absence more than usual. John could make any day special. Stopping at the grocery store on my way home from work, I found myself thinking about our first Valentine’s Day. We’d spent the day in Princeton, New Jersey. Wandered around the university campus, hand in hand. Lingered in the art museum. Explored bookshops. I’d thought John would take me to dinner, but he had a surprise. “I’m going to make you spaghetti aglio e olio,” he said. “My grandfather’s recipe.” John’s kitchen smelled heavenly as he toasted garlic in olive oil until golden, then combined the sauce…

One Sunday, my motherin-law, Lilly, and I sat side by side in a pair of gold-upholstered La-Z-Boys in her living room. Out of the blue, Lilly asked, “Is there anything in my house that you would want someday?” Lilly was nearing 80, so the question wasn’t entirely unexpected. Still, I should have suspected a trap. Lilly, the mother of my husband, Dave, was Gramma to our teenage daughters, Katie and Emily. To strangers, she projected the image of a sweet, doting grandmother. To me, she was a relentless force to be feared and guarded against. Simply put, Lilly was mean. She insulted her closest relatives. She took delight in making impossible demands and tripping people up. She got her way by bullying and threatening anyone who dared to go against…

“Don’t let anyone interrupt your faith. The people who say, ‘But what if…?’ Don’t listen. When people discourage your dream, it’s only because they don’t dream as big as you do.”JENNIFER HUDSON, actor and singer, on advice she’d give her younger self “Prayer cuts through all our superficiality, right down to the heart of getting real about our need for God. This is where grace abounds.”REV. ADRIAN DANNHAUSER, who stands outside her New York City church weekly with a sign: “Ask me for a blessing. God’s grace is meant to be shared.” “Sometimes the thing that makes you feel the most self-conscious turns out to be your greatest asset.”CINDY CRAWFORD, supermodel, who once wanted to remove her distinctive beauty mark “If you can find something to be grateful for, then…

Four Eyes. Blind Berry. The day I walked into my sixth-grade class with new glasses on, those became my new nicknames. It was 1953, but it still feels like it was yesterday. “I’m never going back to school,” I told Mama when I got home after another day of teasing. “I can’t abide it.” Mama sighed. She knew how much I hated my new glasses. But when I couldn’t see the board at school, she took me to an optometrist. “This boy’s blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other,” he said when I completed my eye test. So it was four eyes for me. “People just need time to get used to them,” Mama assured me. “Pretty soon those glasses will be old hat and things…

I loved living in rural Paris, Illinois, where my pastor husband, Kevin, and I moved from Los Angeles more than 20 years ago. All I needed to make my life complete was my own house. I prayed the same prayer every day: “Lord, I need a home. Not just a house the church provides for the pastor, which I appreciate. But a piece of property that Kevin and I own.” I even detailed how I wanted to live in the country, with trees and critters of every kind surrounding me. But I worried that time was running out. “Honey,” I said one Saturday morning four years ago as we sat down to breakfast, “the longer we wait to buy a house, the less likely that a bank will give us…

AMAZING GRACE ‘‘Thank you, God, for our family, friends and food. Thank you for our mamaws, papaws, aunts, uncles, our cousins, our dogs…” With our children in charge of the prayer before dinner, grace could take a long time in our house. Whether Jarrod was thanking God for his basketball team’s victory or Jordan was giving thanks for a good grade on her math test, nothing was too small to add to their graces. We’re finishing dinner a lot earlier these days, I thought one evening as my husband, Chris, and I sat down to the table. Our children were grown. They’d graduated college and moved away. The two of us empty nesters took turns saying grace now. “Thank you, God, for our family, friends and food…” Chris said, automatically…

The hygienist greeted my 14-year-old son, Nathan, as he settled into the dentist chair. “I knew you when you were a little guy,” she said. Nathan grinned. “I’m better behaved now,” he said. She waved a hand. “Hey, all kids act out at the dentist,” she said, adjusting his paper bib and easing back the chair. Nathan’s face grew serious. “No, I was a really bad kid,” he insisted. “Like when I was four, I had a huge tantrum at the grocery just because Mom wouldn’t let me have a Matchbox car. People stared, but I kept screaming. Mom got right in my face. ‘You’d better stop it right now,’ she said. ‘Or else.’” I sat in a chair in the corner, taken aback. The tantrum had happened years ago,…

Michael Thompson’s (Three’s Company, page 28) grandmother Mam Ma has lived with him and his wife, Stephanie, for two years now, an arrangement that offers everyone independence and togetherness. Michael and Stephanie report their marriage is stronger than ever. This past September, the two spent a week at Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival in Florida, continuing a tradition of romantic getaways at least once a year. At home in Oklahoma, Mam Ma likes to play hymns on the baby grand piano that she and her husband had given Michael’s mom decades before. She also enjoys the backyard oasis Michael created for her—with flower beds, potted plants, a birdbath and bird feeders. Michael puts deer corn beyond the fence, and Mam Ma has watched spotted fawns alongside their mamas for…

‘‘He’s gone.” The text, from my mother, was the news we’d been dreading. The news I couldn’t believe was true. My older brother, Tyrone, had just died from Covid-19. It was one in the morning on April 13, 2020, the day after Easter. My husband, Kenny, and I were huddled in the living room with our daughters, Kennedi and Kassadi. Tyrone was in an isolation unit at the hospital, cut off from us. Lockdown orders had been issued, and no visitors were allowed inside the hospital. Mom and Dad were at their house across town. Mom was the designated family member in communication with Tyrone’s medical team. My brother had died the worst death imaginable. Alone. With no one there to hold his hand or tell him how much we…

God and music go hand in hand for me. I love to sing for the Lord. Even if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, go ahead and sing anyway! God loves a joyful noise. Here are 10 of my favorite prayerful songs to get you started. • Jesus Loves Me This is one of the first gospel songs I ever learned from my grandma Reba Estelle Smith, Mama’s mama. I also sang this as a kid in the Edwards Hotel lobby in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the late 1950s and earned a nickel for it. The first time I ever got paid for singing! • Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone I sang the updated version of this classic on the My Chains Are Gone album. Singing it gives me the…

STILL CONNECTED I deeply related to Jo Ann Morgan’s Feb/Mar 2023 Continued story about the comfort she found in reading her husband’s old copies of Daily Guideposts (now Walking in Grace) after he died. For a long time, my parents have shared GUIDEPOSTS publications with me—each of us indicating we’ve read an issue by initialing the cover. My father passed away suddenly in 2019. When I pick up GUIDEPOSTS issues with his D (for Dad) on the cover, I feel connected to him, knowing his massive, hardworking hands turned those very pages. I’m grateful for the comfort of those magazines. ELIZABETH RICHWINE Carlisle, Pennsylvania A NEW VISION I struggled with vision issues as a kid. When I was 12, I spent many afternoons at the eye doctor. People snickered and…