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Tyler Perry Shares His Favorite Spiritual Principles

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Tyler Perry

I’d written a book, a collection of inspirational insights and lessons. Now I just needed the right title for it. Then a friend wanted to talk. He was feeling pretty down about his life, and I urged him to see all the good things God had in store for him: love, compassion, peace of mind. If only he’d step up and reach up. “Higher is waiting,” I said. That was it, both my advice and the title of the book.

We all have dreams deep inside of us. They just need to be pursued. Higher is waiting. It’s up to us to stay in the climb and claim it. Here are some of the spiritual principles I’ve come to trust.

God loves us all. I started out close to the bottom. We didn’t have much of anything, but I got plenty of love from Mamma and my Aunt Mae. I lived for our weekend jaunts out to Aunt Mae’s from our place in New Orleans. Mamma would pick me up from school in her ’69 powder-blue Cadillac Coupe de Ville. She would turn up the volume on the eight-track player in the car’s dashboard and belt out the blues in her unforgettable voice (more on that later).

As soon as our car pulled up, the screen door would snap open and Aunt Mae would appear with arms stretched wide like angel wings. “Lord,” she cried, “my children are here.”

In the mornings, I could hear her singing gospel hymns. I crept out of bed once and tiptoed into the kitchen to listen. “What are you doing, Aunt Mae?” I asked.

“Talking to Jesus, baby,” she said. “Did you say your prayers last night?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you were talking to Jesus too.”

In New Orleans, on my walk to school, there was a blind man named Mr. Butler, who sold his wife’s praline candy to make a living. I got in the habit of walking him across the busy intersection of Washington Avenue and LaSalle Street. One time, I approached him without saying a word. I just stood there. “I know you’re there, son,” he said, startling me. How did he know?

“I was listening for you,” he said. He might have been blind, but he still saw me. Aunt Mae and Mr. Butler made me feel as if I counted for something. I was noticed. I was somebody who was seen and loved by God.

Prayers get answered. No matter how bad things got, come Sunday morning, Mamma would take me to church. Her uncle DJ was our preacher, and although I wasn’t always in the mood to hear him, one sermon in particular touched my soul. “Children,” he bellowed from the pulpit, “God will answer your prayer. Just ask him. No matter what you’re going through, God will see you through it.”

That night, alone in my bedroom, I decided to put his claim to the test. While the moon cast shadows on the wall and the cicadas sang, I got on my knees, leaned my elbows on the bed, clasped my hands together and closed my eyes. “Let the people who are living inside our TV step out and talk to me and love me so I can love them back,” I prayed.

As a kid, I had a pretty creative imagination. I thought that the TV characters on my favorite shows, like Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, were real people, about four inches tall, living inside our TV. I didn’t have the nerve to go behind the TV set to tear it apart (my father would’ve killed me). I wanted those people to come into my life.

An impossible prayer to answer? It would seem so. But God understood my little boy’s yearning to love. A few days later, we learned that our neighbor across the street was moving and wouldn’t be able to take her parakeets, Fifi and Pierre—about four inches tall—with her. She asked if I would care for them. Would I ever! Fifi and Pierre were even better than little people stepping out from the TV. God’s answers are even more than we expect.

Forgive even when you can’t forget. On Fridays, my father, Emmitt, would come home from work, his week’s pay folded into the back pocket of his overalls. He’d take a long bath, put on his creased jeans and freshly laundered plaid shirt and yell at us to find his shoes, a hint of the storm to come. When he came home hours later, stinking of alcohol and cigarettes, there would be hell to pay. He’d stomp through the house, and if anyone got in his way, he would explode, his fists flying.

He beat my mother, he beat me, he beat all of us. Afterward he might beg for our forgiveness, but I prayed that somehow when I grew up I could take care of Mamma so she would be free of him. I promised her that one day she wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. As soon as I was old enough, I left home to try to launch my career. But the anger was still there. One day, when I was staying in a run-down, pay-by-the-week hotel in Atlanta, I finally had the strength to call up Emmitt and yell at him. “How could you have treated me so bad?” I screamed into the receiver.

There was a pause. “You don’t know what happened to me,” he said, then hung up. I put the receiver back in its cradle. Something in me began to lift, the darkness to dissolve. It was the beginning of forgiveness.

When you forgive someone, you do not need to let them off the hook. Emmitt did terrible things to us—and I remember all of it. But as I learned about the abuse he had suffered, I found it easier to forgive. It wasn’t something I could do on my own. It was God’s grace.

God’s timing is not yours. My dream was to write and perform. For five backbreaking years, I worked at producing my play I Know I’ve Been Changed. The first time I did it, I spent every cent I had. I rented a theater in Atlanta, hired actors, built scenery, got props. I figured opening night would be packed. You know how many people showed up? Thirty.

Did it stop me? No. This was my calling. I saved up the money to put on the play again, this time in New Orleans. I hired actors, put up flyers, sent out press releases. The same thing happened. The theater was half full. I tried again and again and again, working at dead-end jobs just to raise the money. Finally some guys coaxed me into doing it at the historic House of Blues in Atlanta. That night was one of the coldest on record, and the heat in the theater wasn’t even working. I sat in the dressing room—angry, empty and hopeless.

I got up and started pacing, speaking out loud to God, “You give me these dreams and then you don’t see me through. What’s going on?” God spoke right back: “I’ll tell you when it’s over. You don’t tell me. You will persevere! Now look out the window.” I went to the window and gazed outside. There were people lined up around the block. The performance was a huge success. After that, I could barely turn people away who wanted to book me in their theaters, big venues. What a lesson in persistence. Wait for God to say he’s done. Don’t you tell him.

Love stays with you. I was able to keep my promise to Mamma and take care of her for the last 12 years of her life. At the end, I wasn’t ready to let her go, even though she was in a lot of pain. I’m glad she has no more pain, but I miss her every single day.

I can still hear her singing in the church choir. I could pick out her voice in any crowd, and let me tell you she had a terrible voice, completely flat and off pitch, but it didn’t prevent her from shouting full-throttle about how good God is. I can still feel her hugging me tight, making me feel safe, protected and loved. When I was little, she’d hold my head on her belly and I would get a whiff of her Woolworth’s perfume. “I love you, Junior,” she would whisper, and that was enough for me.

When I moved out, Mamma and I spoke nearly every day. I would ask if she needed anything. She would say, “I need you to be happy.” I guess that’s one reason I never gave up on my dreams.

She loved Christmas, but she had her quirks. Every year, she took her Christmas tree out of its box and set it up but she never put ornaments or lights on it. It would just stand there like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. And when it came to giving, she would buy me the same thing every year: plaid flannel pj’s from Walmart. Admittedly I’m hard to buy presents for, but these pj’s never fit. They were way too small for me. And yet I’ve saved every pair. Because they came from her.

She died in early December, so starting at the holidays and going through February, her birthday month, all the way to Mother’s Day, I especially miss her. I didn’t know that grieving could last so long. Mamma’s been gone almost 10 years, but I still feel the ache. Ride the wave, I tell myself. Don’t let it drown you.

Not long ago, I was in the kitchen, thinking of an unfinished conversation we’d had, something we would both cry over. I put my dish in the sink and turned on the water. It came out too fast and splashed onto the counter and onto some family photographs there.

I looked over, and there was a drop of water on Mamma’s face, as if she were crying with me. She’s still in my heart. Love like that—love that nourishes your soul—always will be.

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Tyler Perry Finds Forgiveness…and Himself

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Nina Hämmerling Smith

Tyler Perry was ready to give up on his dream. For years, he had poured his passion and money into performances of his first play, I Know I’ve Been Changed, always hoping that this would be the one that drew a crowd.

But “every time I would go out to do the show, it would fail,” says Perry, 39, the now highly successful author, director, producer and actor.

“I would go to my boss and say, ‘I need time off to do the show.’ And they’d say no. I’d go to my desk, I’d sit and I’d pray. God would say, ‘Leave. Quit.’ I’d hear the voice as clear as day. I would leave, do the shows, and they would not work. I’d pray again: ‘God, where are you? You told me to leave.’ And I wouldn’t hear a thing.”

But he stuck with the play because he knew he was on to something. “The work was about adult survivors of child abuse and how one character confronted their abuser and went on to have a better life,” says Perry.

As a child, he himself had endured years of physical and emotional abuse by his father, who was prone to violent outbursts, especially when he drank. But unlike his onstage character, Perry had not yet confronted his own abuser. The message of being changed by forgiveness was there, but the play failed because the man reciting the lines had not yet felt it himself.

It took a few years for him to get there. Back in 1992, Perry saw an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in which she recommended writing as a form of healing. At that point in his life, he had never written about his abuse but decided to give it a try.

He wrote a series of letters—using “different characters’ names, because if anyone found it, I didn’t want them to know it was me.” Those letters eventually became I Know I’ve Been Changed. For the next six years, he performed the play, but it didn’t become a success until after he—like his character—confronted his abuser.

In 1998 “I had an argument with my father,” explains Perry, “I was screaming and yelling and using every four-letter word in the book; I was 28 years old and as profane as I could be. But I got an opportunity to have my catharsis on the phone.

“After it was over, I was empty, and I went on this journey to find out what was ripped away. And of course any journey for me is going to begin with faith, begin with God. I didn’t pray immediately, because I was angry with God, angry with everybody. But remembering everything I had learned in church really helped me to get through that anger.

“No matter how far I would stray, no matter what the sin, I would always come back because He would never let me get too far. There would always be something that would happen that would make me pray.”

When Perry went onstage for that last-gasp production, something profound had changed. “I had accepted the words I had written; I had forgiven my father. The show wasn’t hypocritical anymore. It was coming from a very real place. And it started to resonate with people on a different level.”

Perry had discovered that forgiveness “wasn’t for the other person; it belonged to me, it freed me. So many people remain bitter all of their lives. You have to tell yourself, ‘I need to forgive this person for me, so that I can go on. Not for them.’ “

From that moment on, his life—like his show—was Changed. Crowds started showing up to see his performances.

It led to another play and then another, each one expanding his fan base; he developed his signature character, the gun-toting, sharp-tongued, so-bad-she’s-good Madea (whose name comes from a common Southern conflation of “mother dear”), and went on to produce hit movies, television series and a best-selling book.

But that doesn’t mean his road was an easy one; he had held on to his anger toward his father for so long that reconciling with him was “scary,” says Perry.

“If the energy in being angry at a person is your fuel source, you’re afraid to give it up. But once you give it up, it’s like having a car that used to run on unleaded fuel and you switch to diesel; if God is diesel and the anger was your unleaded fuel, you have to learn to reprogram everything in the car to work off that diesel.”

Most everyone finds God by the end of Perry’s plays, with one notable exception. “Madea is a necessary tool to draw people in to hear from the righteous,” says Perry. “That’s what I think of her. She should never be saved. If she was, that wouldn’t show the differences in us.”

For Perry, being an entertainment power player gives him an opportunity to share his message of forgiveness and faith to the world.

“So many people use their films for self-gratification, but for me it’s about uplifting and inspiring people,” says Perry. “It’s been that faith in God, that belief in Christ that has helped me through the toughest times in my life.”

Two-Time Cancer Survivor’s Amazing Mt. Everest Climb

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Jessica Toomer

In 2002, Sean Swarner became one of small group of people to successfully climb Mount Everest. More astonishing than that: Swarner scaled the tallest peak in the world with only one lung.

Though Everest is an obstacle course that could bring any climber to their breaking point—– freezing temperatures, risk of frostbite, avalanches, high winds and low levels of oxygen—28-year-old Swarner had already survived another beast—cancer—twice, before he’d even reached 18 years old. Being the first cancer survivor to stand at the “top of the world,” made his victory that much sweeter. Swarner’s survival story begins when he was 13. He injured his knee playing basketball with some friends and hours later every joint in his body was swollen. His parents rushed him to the hospital. Days passed, the swelling only got worse. After multiple blood tests and visits with an oncologist, Swarner was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, a cancer of the lymph system.

His body riddled with cancer, Swarner had to undergo a year of chemotherapy — two to three treatments a week — that left him in a constant state of nausea, and caused him to lose his hair and gain weight.

“If the cancer wasn’t going to kill me the treatments were,” Swarner tells Guideposts.org.

Miraculously, Swarner went into remission. But that, unfortunately, was not the end of his teenage cancer battle.

When he was 16, Swarner faced an even bigger challenge. Doctors told him he had something called Askin’s Sarcoma after a routine exam showed a tumor in his lung. A rare cancer – only three out of a million people are diagnosed each year – this one was even more deadly than Hodgkins Disease, with a survival rate of just six percent.

The aggressive disease called for aggressive treatment. Swarner would face four day radiation cycles where he would undergo treatment, recover and then begin the process again. It took such a toll on his body that doctors put him in a medically induced coma for those days, so that he didn’t remember the devastating side effects of the chemo. This went on for a year and a half.

“I barely remember being 16,” he admits. “I’ll go visit a hospital now and I’ll smell something that brings back a flood of memories I didn’t know I had. It’s really scary sometimes.”

Facing death not once but twice would cause most people feelings of anger, frustration, even depression. Swarner said he felt all of that, but one emotion trumped them all.

“The way I saw it was I only have two choices: fight for my life or give up and die,” he says. “What’s the logical choice? Well, for me at least, I’m not going to just sit there and tap on my chest and say ‘All right, I’m done.’”

Swarner beat his second bout with cancer, though the treatments and the tumor cost him a lung – if you’ve ever watched the movie Finding Nemo, you’ll laugh when he explains why he calls it his “lucky lung.”

With cancer behind him, Swarner wanted to use his life to inspire others facing the same battles he’d gone through. An eye-opening trip to Guatemala climbing El Volacano de Agua gave him an idea.

“I wanted to do something that no survivor had ever done before,” he explains. “I kept doing research and it was like, ‘Well, why don’t I use the highest platform in the world to scream hope?’”

That’s where Everest came in. An athlete, Swarner was used to logging mile-long runs and rock-climbing with friends, but to reach the tallest point in the world, he had to prepare another part of his body: his mind.

“If you look at it as one big gigantic mountain you are going to freak out,” Swarner says. “If you break it down into smaller chunks, you can do it.”

Of standing atop Everest, he says:

“It’s like taking every motion you’ve ever had in your entire life, putting it into one of those little tiny bouncing balls, squeezing it down to that size and exploding it all at once.”

But reaching Everest’s summit wasn’t the end of Swarner’s journey either. He admittedly got the “climbing bug” and went on to complete the 7-Summits, scaling peaks in Africa, Europe, South America, Australia, Antarctica, and North America.

“I wanted to hit a hospital on every continent and tell those patients ‘Hey, I was in your shoes. My first goal was to go from the hospital bed to the bathroom,’” Swarner says.

Now Swarner is a motivational speaker, giving talks across the globe, an author (his new inspirational eBook series 7 Summits To Success was released earlier this year) and the founder of the nonprofit The Cancer Climber Association, whose mission is to help those impacted by cancer to live an active, healthy lifestyle.

He hopes to set up a mobile camp, touring hospitals across the country and inspiring kids and young adults facing cancer to continue the fight. On a grander scale, he wants his story to teach others that, no matter what mountain they’re facing, they can overcome it.

“You always have a choice in how you want to see things,” Swarner says. “Every day you wake up, the person you see in the mirror is making that choice. Abe Lincoln said ‘Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.’ That’s how you have to see goals. That’s how you have to see life.”

Two Friends Start a Nationwide March to Better Health

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by T. Morgan Dixon

God, guide my steps. I say that prayer nearly every day, as I lead groups of women on hikes through the Rockies, address policymakers at the White House, or give interviews on radio or television. I’m a cofounder of GirlTrek, the largest health nonprofit in the country for Black women and girls.

Our national grassroots movement inspires Black women to live their healthiest, most fulfilled lives. I ask God to guide my steps because he’s brought me so far.

From the outside, it must have seemed like I was at a high point back in 2009. I was in my late twenties, a first-generation college graduate, a Teach for America alum who’d moved up to a leadership position for a large charter-school network.

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I was doing work that mattered—serving as a history teacher and administrator at a middle school in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the student body was more than 90 percent Black and Latino, and coaching other administrators in the network—and making more money than anyone in my family had ever made.

My grandparents were sharecroppers; my mom desegregated her high school in Oklahoma and worked hard her entire life. They were all proud of me, my ambition and my success.

What my family—what most people—didn’t realize was that I was miserable. I was working with kids I loved, helping turn around failing schools, yet I felt trapped, like I was taking on too much and putting in crazy hours to achieve someone else’s dreams and goals, not my own. Did my only worth come through what I did for others?

The one person who understood was my best friend, Vanessa Garrison. We’d met working at the same investment bank to pay our way through college. We bonded over holding down full-time jobs while being full-time students—Vanessa at UCLA, me at USC.

Even though we were in different cities now—after eight years at Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta, Vanessa was working at a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.—we stayed close by phone. I called her one night after work and unloaded everything that had been troubling me.

“I’m tired all the time. Ain’t no sunshine in Connecticut. I’m depressed. But I can’t just quit my job and be free to travel the world. Who’s going to pay my bills?” My laugh was brittle. “I feel so stuck.” I’d grown up poor and committed myself to making the world a better place. I couldn’t turn my back on that commitment.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “My grandmother sacrificed her own health and happiness to raise me and my cousins, and now we’re going down that same path, doing too much, taking care of everyone except ourselves.”

Because her female relatives struggled with chronic disease, she’d been looking into the health problems of Black women. The statistics were sobering.

In the United States, 82 percent of Black women are over a healthy weight, and 67 percent engage in no leisure-time physical activity. We die younger and at higher rates than any other group of American women, from preventable diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke.

“If we don’t want that to become our future…” Vanessa said.

“…We can’t keep on living like this, I know,” I said. “Stopping doesn’t feel like an option. The work I do feels urgent, revolutionary.” I gave it some more thought. “Well, James Baldwin said, ‘Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them!’”

“Exactly! We need to make self-care our revolution!” she said. “Whenever we see something inspiring, we’ll share it with each other. Let’s make it our mission to be happy, to not be stressed, to try to find balance in our lives.”

I was in. Exercise and a healthy diet would help, but what we were facing was as much a mental, emotional and spiritual burden as it was a physical one. It would take God! As the Bible says, “Where two or three are gathered….” Little did we know, our two would become 100,000.

From that day forward, Vanessa and I texted, e-mailed and called each other with anything that inspired us. Poetry. Music. Scripture. Stories of women making a difference.

If history is repeating itself, why not look to our history for change-makers? Freedom fighters! I thought, sending Vanessa links to articles about civil-rights activists like Ella Baker and Septima Clark. The history teacher in me really got into that.

One woman we kept coming back to was Harriet Tubman. Harriet grew up as a slave on a plantation in Maryland, but she escaped in 1849. She became a conductor on the Underground Railroad, making many trips back to Maryland to guide hundreds to freedom.

I was so moved by Harriet’s courage that one cloudy Saturday I drove down to Bucktown, Maryland, to the Brodas plantation, where she was born. I parked my car, stepped out and looked around.

On one side of the road were the fields where she had labored. More than 150 years later, a descendant of the Brodas family sat upon a tractor working the land. On the other side stood a tiny information kiosk.

Nearby was the yellow-and-white Bucktown General Store, where a 12-year-old Harriet refused to help an overseer stop an enslaved man from escaping. It was her first recorded act of rebellion.

The overseer threw a two-pound weight that hit her in the head, causing her lifelong headaches and seizures, along with powerful visions that she believed were revelations from God. I had to get inside that store! But there was a padlock on the front door. I saw a woman nearby and called out to her, “Excuse me, ma’am, could you let me inside?”

It turned out she was the wife of the great-great-great-grandson of the original plantation owners. She took off the padlock and opened the door. I was immediately transported to the nineteenth century. From the items that lined the shelves to the potbellied stove in the center of the room, everything looked the way it had in Harriet’s day.

I moved from the doorway to the counter, ran my fingers along the dusty glass of a display case. Harriet Tubman stood here, I thought. Right where I’m standing.

That was when it struck me: Though incredibly heroic and righteous in the face of oppression, Harriet Tubman wasn’t some mythic being. She was a flesh-and-blood human being, an ordinary woman who, one step at a time, walked her way to freedom. That was it! If Harriet could do that, I could walk my way to health and well-being, couldn’t I?

Vanessa and I came to a decision. We would walk to heal ourselves. To free ourselves from suffering depression, disease and early death.

I did more research on the health issues facing Black women. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that unless their diet and activity levels changed, African-American girls born in the 2000s have a 55-percent chance of getting Type 2 diabetes. I was shocked. These were the girls I was teaching!

Of course I needed to teach them about the Civil War and Reconstruction, but that didn’t seem as urgent to me as modeling healthy behavior for them, teaching them habits that they could carry through their whole lives.

I started by going hiking every Saturday morning and taking 20 of my middle-school girls with me. Sometimes parents and other teachers would come, and we would do lessons on health and well-being while walking in the woods.

I admit, at first I was as ambitious as usual. I thought I’d start by walking, then work my way up to running a 5K. But something happened when I got outside and walked. The pace of the world slowed down.

I became more aware of my body, of the vibrant world around me—a new bird’s nest, asters poking up through the ground, the breeze whispering in the trees. More aware of God’s abundant grace. It felt like I was breathing it in with each breath of fresh air, letting it heal the damage that my belief in the superwoman myth had done to my soul.

I remembered the passage in Psalms, “For you formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well.”

Vanessa told me that she too was feeling a new lightness and joy from walking. “Now we need to bring other women along with us,” she said one day. “Show them how good it feels to take care of themselves.”

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“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I said. “The girls on my hikes are going home and talking with their mothers about health. But it should be the other way around, the moms teaching the next generation by example. Healthy living should really start at home and be reinforced at school.”

Vanessa had an idea. “Okay, what if we could rally their mothers to walk for change? First for their own health and well-being, then for their daughters’, then for the whole community?”

I took it even further. “What if we could rally a million Black women to walk?”

Vanessa laughed in delight. “Let’s do it!”

We started out small. In 2010 we e-mailed the women in our families and our circle of friends and colleagues and invited them to join us in walking 30 minutes every day for 10 weeks, either solo or in groups, in their own neighborhoods. We asked them to forward the e-mail.

Before we knew it, we had 500 women walking. Not just walking but talking about it. About getting healthier physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. About reconnecting with themselves, with other women in their community and with God.

They were so fired up that the following year, they inspired us to issue a national call to action. Vanessa and I knew we were on to something. Walking for change isn’t anything new for Black women. Think about Harriet Tubman. And the women in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and ’56. We were tapping into something culturally and historically significant.

In 2012, Vanessa and I founded the nonprofit organization GirlTrek (the name came from those weekend hikes I took with my middle-school students) to inspire Black women to lace up their sneakers and walk 30 minutes a day.

Tens of thousands of women in cities across the country have taken the GirlTrek pledge to develop the habit of daily walking, to prioritize self-care and to be the change-makers in their own lives and communities. Our neighborhood walking groups are led by volunteers, and we like to say, “We go hard like Harriet!”

We encourage one another to treat walking as a spiritual practice, giving thanks for life every day. Or, as my mom used to sing all the time when I was growing up, “Walk With Me, Lord.”

Vanessa and I never expected to start a health movement by helping each other get unstuck, but now we expect GirlTrek to reach a million members by 2018. I’ve left the front lines of education reform to focus on GirlTrek fulltime. My salary has been cut in half, yet I’ve never felt more alive or had more of an impact on the world.

Being a source of love for my community had to begin with a love for myself. At last I’m finding a balance between caring for myself and serving others. And every day, I ask God to guide my steps.

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Two Caregivers Find Comfort in This Hymn

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Diana Duncan-Fletcher

In this world is darkness, so let us shine—You in your small corner and I in mine.

I wasn’t totally surprised the lyrics to my favorite hymn, “Jesus Bids Us Shine,” popped into my head at that particular moment. They often ran through my mind. No, what surprised me was that I wasn’t just thinking the words. I was singing them out loud. Even stranger, I was singing them out loud on the phone to a man I’d never actually met.

It was the spring of 1989. I was working for the vice president of an engineering company in Scarborough, Ontario. Part of my job was communicating with our suppliers, and I got to know some of them quite well through our phone conversations. My favorite calls came from a guy named Thurman.

He phoned once a week from Houston. I always knew it was him because of his Texas twang. We joked about the differences in weather between Texas and Ontario. He asked me about my job, and I asked him about his elderly mother. We were more than 1,500 miles apart, but I felt close to him somehow. Our conversations left me feeling upbeat and recharged.

When he called on that warm spring morning, I could tell business wasn’t the first thing on his mind.

“How’s your mother doing?” I asked, following a hunch.

“Not so well.” He sounded so downhearted. He said he was going out of town on business and worried about leaving her.

“Why don’t you bring her with you?” I said.

Dead silence. Now I’d done it, poking my nose in where it didn’t belong.

“You know what,” he said, “that might be just the thing she needs. It could really lift her spirits.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Maybe you two could visit Ontario someday. It’s lovely in the spring.”

I have no idea what got into me, but that’s when I started singing the first verse of “Jesus Bids Us Shine.” I finished and Thurman didn’t say anything. I never talked about my faith at work.

“Thank you,” he finally said.

That was my last phone call to Thurman. Shortly afterward I left the engineering company and moved to another city to look after my father, who had become incapacitated. I thought about Thurman every so often, wondering if he ever did take that trip with his mother. I was beginning to appreciate what a caregiver goes through.

Two years later, I went back to Scarborough for a wedding. I stayed with a friend. We went to the grocery store to buy a few things. A familiar voice stopped me in my tracks.

That Texas twang… I listened for a moment, then followed the voice around the corner to the next aisle. An elderly woman walked beside a tall man pushing a cart. She reached for something on a shelf and several cans tumbled to the floor. One rolled all the way down the aisle and up against my foot. I picked it up and walked over to hand it to the man.

“Here you go.”

“Thank you,” he said. He seemed a bit flustered, and I helped him pick up the other fallen cans.

“Thurman?” I asked.

He paused. His face broke out in a smile and he burst into song. “You in your small corner and I in mine…”

I laughed and joined him on the last note. “You have a beautiful voice!” I said.

Thurman’s mother spoke up. “He used to sing in the church choir, but I hadn’t heard a note from him in years, not since some bad breaks and setbacks. Then one day he came home from work singing that song. A few weeks after that, he started coming back to church and it’s made all the difference.”

Thurman nodded and talked a bit about the past two years. He and his mother had started traveling together and eventually made their way to Toronto. He’d stopped by Scarborough to see colleagues and was disappointed to hear I’d moved away.

“I wanted to tell you I took your advice, but I couldn’t find you!”

“Someone made sure you did,” I said. The same one, on a spring day, who put that song in my heart.

This story first appeared in the April/May 2017 issue of Mysterious Ways magazine.

Turn to the Bible to Deepen Your Faith

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Norman Vincent Peale

Establish a relationship with the most popular book of all time. Here are easy ways to spend time with the Good Book and allow it to pour out its riches upon you.

1. Buy a beautiful Bible.

Learn to love the book itself. An attractive copy will feel good in your hands. Using a Bible that has sentimental value–one given you by your mother, father, pastor or Sunday school teacher–will make you want to spend time with it.

2. Pick it up, open it and read it.

It will never do you any good standing on a shelf.

3. Read through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Read one chapter a day, preferably before bed. This will allow you to go to sleep with healthy, happy positive thoughts soaking into your thought patterns for the next day.

By reading a chapter a day, you will complete these four books in 89 days–okay, a little longer, but most of the great principles of Jesus are found in these books. Master them and you will have His rare secret of great living. Then, when you have read them through twice, read them a third time.

4. On the second reading, underline passages that appeal to you.

And on the third reading, memorize one passage every day. The more passages you commit to memory, the more completely you will be carrying the Bible around in your mind. Say the words over to yourself in spare minutes. These passages will serve as logs to cling to when you find yourself adrift on the sea of life.

5. Take your Bible in your hand, close your eyes and pray that God will give you just the message you need.

We are all afflicted by moods. Sometimes we are fearful and worried, at other times we are angry and resentful; sometimes our loved ones are ill and at times we feel very lonely.

But there is an answer in the Bible to every mood. All you need to do is open your Bible. The first statement you see may not be your answer, for God does not work in such a mechanical manner.

Continue reading and you will come to what He wants to say to you. You will recognize it when you see it. Incidentally, this will help you to become familiar with the entire Bible. In time, this familiarity will enable you to know where to look for help in specific situations.

6. Read the entire Book of Psalms without stopping.

When you have an entire evening in which you can read, devote that time to the psalms. When you finish reading them, you will have such an overwhelming sense of the victory of faith over all the troubles of life that you will want to shout for joy.

In cases of grief and disappointment, I have known this practice to revolutionize a person’s entire outlook. It gives one the whole panorama of human suffering and spiritual victory in one dose.

7. Expand your biblical knowledge.

Perhaps when you’ve worked your way through my suggestions, you’ll have become so interested in the Bible that you’ll want to know the entire book as a spiritual scholar. If so, ask your minister for suggested study books to guide you in your search.

Turning to God Helped Her Kick Her Gambling and Drug Addictions

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Melissa L. Dale

The Prairie Meadows Casino in Altoona, Iowa, has more than 1,700 slot machines. The machines are in an 85,000-plus-square-foot gambling hall that looks and sounds like something out of Vegas. The action is 24 hours a day. No matter when you go, you’ll find people hunched in front of screens, punching buttons with a hungry look in their eyes.

I used to be one of those people. The first time I went to Prairie Meadows, I was young and carefree, out for a good time with my husband and some friends. The last time I went, I was a forty-something gambling and methamphetamine addict, who sold drugs to support my addictions. I’d lost jobs and mortgaged my house and my father-in-law’s house to pay gambling and drug debts. I’d been arrested for dealing and had thoughts about killing myself. Now I was on probation and my driver’s license had been suspended.

Late one night, I was running low on meth. I drove to the edge of the city where one of my dealers lived.

I was on an unlit back road, driven by the same bottomless need I always felt. The need for more drugs, more money, more something to fill the emptiness.

Tonight I felt a new need. I wanted out of this dead-end life. To be clean. Free from those hypnotizing slots and the financial chaos they caused. Free from debt, addiction, crime and shame.

Out of nowhere, I spoke a prayer into the night sky. “God, I can’t go on like this. I need help.”

I was not a praying woman. Why should I be? My mom was an alcoholic when I was kid, then died of emphysema soon after she sobered up. My dad left our family when I was four. I reconnected with him as an adult, and we grew close. Then he died of cancer. I loved my husband, but drugs became a bigger priority for him than I was.

Everything and everyone I cared about got taken away. No reason for God to start listening to my prayers now.

Headlights appeared on the road ahead. Some instinct warned me it could be a cop. Sure enough, a sheriff’s patrol car came into view.

Now I was praying it would pass me by. Meth makes you paranoid. The half gram of meth in my car might as well have flashed a beacon out the window.

The sheriff’s car rolled past. Just play it cool, I told myself. Keep driving. I looked in the mirror. Brake lights came on. The sheriff slowed, turned around and began following me. He sped up. He’d be on my bumper any minute. How did I sink so low? When I was a kid, I swore I’d never drink or do drugs. I wanted to be like my mom—when she was sober. Mom was a hard worker who’d served in the Korean War. She had a small gold cross necklace, a catechism gift. She loved that necklace. I think she fell into drinking with my dad, who was in the Army National Guard.

She always had a job, and we were never destitute. But I used to find her passed out. And alcohol fueled bad choices, such as cheating on my dad. It’s my dad’s name on my birth certificate, but Mom later told me he might not have been my biological father. She didn’t tell me who the other man was, and I never asked.

Dad cheated too. When they divorced, Mom told him he wasn’t my father. He broke off contact with me, even though he kept in touch with my siblings. The pain of rejection was unbearable.

Despite my vow not to become an alcoholic, I partied a lot in high school, especially with friends I met on a stock car pit crew. I’m a gearhead, and pretty soon I was drawn to a crew member whose marriage was heading toward divorce. We began dating after the divorce went through.

My first gram of cocaine was a graduation gift from my boyfriend. We married and fell into a life of working hard and partying harder.

We went to Prairie Meadows soon after it opened in 1989. It was a horse racetrack then, but later the county—which owns the facility—got permission from the state to install slot machines.

I was intoxicated by those slots. The gambling hall sucked me in with lights and music and seemingly endless rows of blinking, pinging machines. People shrieked when they hit the jackpot. I lived for that moment. What if?

When does partying and playing the slots turn into addiction? One day I woke up and realized I cared about only two things: getting high and returning to the casino, so I could win back everything I’d lost the night before.

I graduated from coke to meth—cheaper and easier to get—but gambling was a beast all its own. Gambling makes you think you’re a spin away from solving all your problems. Early in my gambling days, I put in my last five dollars and out came 200 bucks. That memory alone cost me thousands of dollars in failed attempts to do it again.

Another time, my husband and I had a lucky run and netted $23,000, which we used to pay off massive credit card debt. Then we went back and lost that much and a whole lot more.

My work performance suffered, and eventually I quit. We mortgaged our house, then my father-in-law’s house. I cashed in my retirement and even gave up my beloved white Camaro Z28 to pay off a drug debt.

I needed money and drugs, so I started dealing. I cheated on my husband with a guy who sold meth for a network of dealers. I became a low-level dealer and promptly got arrested for selling to a state narcotics agent.

It was my first violation. I got off with just probation.

I went right back to dealing. What else could I do? For so many years, I’d felt rejected and battered by life. Drugs and gambling numbed my pain and kept me functioning. The slots especially gave me a momentary hit of euphoria and the illusion of control.

You can’t stay numb forever. Especially not when a sheriff’s deputy spots you driving late at night on an unlit back road.

I turned into a convenience store parking lot, hoping the sheriff would keep going. He turned into the parking lot too, then followed me when I left and turned on his flashing lights.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car,” he said. He’d run my license plate and seen I was on probation with a suspended license. It didn’t take him long to find the meth I’d hidden under the gear shifter. I was arrested.

This was my answer to prayer?

My lawyer persuaded the judge to place me in an in-jail drug treatment program. I spent the first three days on suicide watch and the next two weeks detoxing, practically out of my mind. We were allowed to go to a Bible study. I would go anywhere to get out of my cell, so I went and began reading a Gideon Bible with a gold cover.

I hadn’t read the Bible much before. I can’t say I understood a lot at first. I just liked the way it made me feel. As if there was something large and good out there that cared about me.

After detoxing, I had to pass an evaluation to be admitted to the drug treatment program. I fell to my knees the night before the evaluation. Alone in my dark cell, I raised my hands to a God I barely knew and asked him to take control of my life. I had no idea what would happen. Anything would be better than where I’d come from.

The first thing I noticed when the evaluator walked in was his necklace. It had a small gold cross, exactly like my mom’s. He sat in front of a window. The sunlight made it hard to see his face. All I saw was the cross.

That was the moment I knew I would be okay. I knew God was real and had a plan for me that did not include getting high or gambling. I passed the evaluation, completed the treatment program and was released from jail five months later.

I wish I could say healing from addiction, especially gambling addiction, is as easy as completing a treatment program. I struggled for months after getting out of jail, especially since my husband refused treatment and continued using. Eventually we divorced.

My sister invited me to her Lutheran church, and I joined something called an Alpha course, designed to introduce people to Christianity. The more I learned about God, the more God I wanted. Without God, I was powerless over my addictions.

There were so many times I could have relapsed, especially after creditors started hounding me. At one point, I all but decided to give up and get high with my husband.

Something told me to go to church instead, where my Alpha group was holding a retreat. When I got there, a woman from the group ran out of the sanctuary, shouting, “Melissa! You’re here! We were just praying for you a few minutes ago. We knew you’ve been struggling, and we prayed you’d be safe and find your way back. Here you are!”

I’m still there. Today I work as a full-time minister at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, leading the Celebrate Recovery program. I tell my story—even in testimony to the Iowa state legislature years ago, when the state debated allowing slot machines in grocery stores—in hopes that others can avoid the addictions that nearly killed me.

I still struggle with thoughts of gambling. It’s everywhere these days, and I’m often tempted to buy a lottery ticket or slip a few dollars into a slot machine. What could it hurt? It’s legal!

I have to remind myself there’s only one sure bet in this life. God is always there, always true. Knowing that, I don’t have to gamble on anything.

True Friends

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Brock Hibbs

I have a seizure disorder, ADHD and a hearing impairment—all of which made me a prime target for bullies.

Kids loved to make fun of me. Finally my mom had enough, and enrolled me in a new school, Peaster Independent, Peaster, Texas, in eighth grade.

That first day at Peaster, I was nervous. Scared. I walked into homeroom and stood in the back. Suddenly two guys walked up. Here it comes, I thought.

“Hi, my name’s Jon,” one of the boys said. “I’m Tommie,” said the other. Soon we were talking about sports, favorite subjects in school, even girls.

Jon and Tommie stuck by me over the years. They supported me when I joined the prom committee, asked me to be the manager for our high school baseball team, even helped me meet the girl I liked.

“You can do anything you want,” Jon would say.

He was right. I overcame the odds, graduating from Peaster High in 1998. Now I’m in my last semester of college, pursuing a degree in early childhood education.

I hope to pass the courage my two best friends gave me to kids who have struggles like mine. I want them to know they too can succeed.

Trouble Reaching Your Goals? Try ‘Lighthouse Planning’

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Setting goals is an important part of staying motivated, focused and excited about the future. Having goals, and feeling consistent progress toward those goals, is part of walking a positive path.

Some goals are linear, with easily-measured steps to check off along the way. If my goal is to knit five blankets this year, or to go to the gym twice each week for six months, or to make a homemade dinner every Sunday, I can make a plan that will get me there. I’ll create list of supplies to purchase, I’ll set aside time in my calendar, and I’ll feel gratified by my progress each time I cast off my knitting, shower after a workout, or sit down to a tasty dinner.

But not all goals are quite so clean (and, lest anyone be feeling guilty about struggling with a goal, not all “clean” goals are easy!).

For the bigger, messier, less tangible goals of life, I love the idea of “lighthouse planning.” In this technique, which is often used by life coaches and entrepreneurs, we reach a goal by imagining it as a lighthouse in the distance. It’s dark as we get in our boats—we don’t know exactly how we’re going to get to that luminous destination. But our lighthouse never stops flashing along the horizon, it never is entirely out of sight. So we climb aboard, and we start rowing in the direction of the light.

Identify Your Lighthouse

A lighthouse-like goal is something broader than a specific project. Instead of aiming to make a particular craft, for example, you might set your goal as, “I want to be more creative.” Identifying your lighthouse is a way to launch your journey with purpose. From there, you can take your time navigating the waters between you and your destination.

Redirect When Necessary

The good news about a journey toward a lighthouse is that there are myriad ways to get there. Remember, in this metaphor, you’re on the water, not constrained by roads on a map. If you look around and realize that your lighthouse is getting farther away rather than closer, re-set, re-direct and re-launch. You can embrace the idea that even the “wrong way” is part of the experience of pursuing your goal.

Don’t Tire Yourself Out

If you’ve ever rowed a boat, you know that there are many variables involved. A headwind, a shifting tide or a passing storm can make the waters harder to traverse. Feeling tired, distracted or upset can drain the power from your arms and shoulders. Try to take each stroke of your paddle as it comes. Make small strokes. Take your time. Focus on getting to the next spot on the horizon, not on powering through all the way to the end. A moderate pace will leave you feeling accomplished during the journey, not only at your destination.

What is your lighthouse? What can you do today to draw yourself closer to it?

Tribute to a Positive Thinker

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Dr. Arthur Caliandro

Fifth Avenue, lined with churches, museums and skyscrapers, runs down the spine of Manhattan. Marking the way are some historic statues, from a bronze William Seward in Madison Square Park to General Sherman astride his golden horse at 59 Street. To add to this impressive lineup, we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Norman Vincent Peale’s birth on May 31, 1998, by erecting a statue of him outside the Fifth Avenue church where he pastored for 52 years.

When he first came to Marble Collegiate in 1932, the city was in the throes of the Great Depression, and the sanctuary was never full. Dr. Peale brought a vision of hope to the city and church, and soon the sidewalk was crowded with people waiting to get inside. Later he became minister to millions on radio and TV, but he never lost that empathy for the people, rich and poor, who came to hear him. I remember him telling me, “Everybody who walks through that door is broken by some sort of pain or sorrow. It is for me to remind them of God’s gifts.”

For 18 years I worked with Dr. Peale on the staff at the church. I enjoyed watching him treat the big city as though it were an Ohio boy’s hometown. He loved taking taxis (cab drivers were often the sources of his best anecdotes) and I don’t think he ever missed a Rotary meeting at the old Roosevelt Hotel when he was in town. He relished being in the ecumenical hub of things, rubbing shoulders with business, political and religious leaders. In 1969, when he invited Bishop Fulton Sheen to speak from Marble’s pulpit, I think it was the first time he had ever spoken at a Protestant church.

“When we meet our Maker,” Peale often used to say, “I think we’re going to have to answer one big question: ‘What did you do with what you were given?’”

Without a doubt, Dr. Peale did the utmost with his gifts, both large and small. I was always touched by his sensitivity to people. Once he apologized to me four times in a day—four separate telephone calls—for a hurt that had been entirely unintentional. When a group of ministers asked him what the most important thing a pastor could do for his congregation was, he stated unequivocably, “Love them, love them, love them.”

That, I think, was the key to his success. He learned to love all the people he dealt with. And so, unlike General Sherman on his horse or William Seward on his bronze pedestal, the statue of Dr. Peale is at street level, on equal footing with the crowds that pass by on Fifth Avenue. There he will stand for the ages, the humblest of men, preaching the Good News.

A Conversation with Trent Shelton

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Brett Leveridge

Trent Shelton Finds New Purpose Off the Field
I’m Trent Shelton, founder of Rehab Time, author of a bestselling book, The Greatest You. I’m a former NFL player. Spent three years in the NFL. But I hit my lowest point in that process by getting cut and released. But at my rock bottom, I found my purpose, which is Rehab Time.

Rehab stands for Renewing Every Heart And Body. My whole entire identity, since I can remember, was sports. We moved to Texas when I was in seventh grade. And Texas is, like, football is everything. I ended up getting a scholarship in football to Baylor University.

I was down there for five years, and my career was great. Ended up getting a call from the Indianapolis Colts as a high-priority free agent. Got to Indy, and I had an outstanding preseason—I mean, one of the best in the NFL that year amongst rookies. Three weeks into me living in Indy, I get a call from the Colts again, and they cut me.

So at that point, that was my first taste of “OK, this is a business.” And so I drive from Indy to Texas, which is a long drive. 13, 14 hour-drive after you get cut, and I’m thinking, “What am I going to do with my life? Everybody knows me. If I’m here, that means I got cut.”

So I stayed inside my mom’s house—depressed, stressed, all these things, but still smiling for the cameras, I like to say. But dying behind the scenes, telling people, “I’m all right. I’m good.” But I wasn’t good at all.

Two weeks—maybe a week or two later, I get a call back from Indy. They want me back. So I go back up there.

And to make a long story short, that was my NFL career for three years. I would be here, I would be there. I would be in a new city. And in that process, I had the birth of my son, Tristan.

And me and Maria—at the time, we weren’t together, so it definitely wasn’t planned. And that hit me, like, “Man, what am I going to do with my life? I’m getting cut, I’m getting released. I don’t have any job security. My life is all over the place, and I have a son on the way. What am I going to do?”

And instead of going back to the foundation that I had that my parents gave me, which was faith, and going back to God, I ran farther away from God, and I ran to the things in the world—clubs. I’m around celebrities now. Let me just—let me just pop pills, drink alcohol, smoke weed. Let me do all these things, just to get my mind off of it.

And it gave me a temporary high. It gave me a temporary escape. But once those things wore off, I was back dealing with my reality. And you can fool perception, but you can’t fool reality.

The main thing, I guess, that really triggered my change was in 2008, when Tristan was born. And when I held Tristan for the first time, I remember—not telling him in an audible voice, but just in my mind—“I don’t want you to grow up to be like me, especially right now. Like, I don’t want this life for you.” And that hurt me when I said that.

As a parent, your choices will become your children’s consequences. And for me, I was like, “Nah, I have to change.” So Tristan was a start for me becoming a better man.

I was with the Seattle Seahawks, and I got released after the season with Seattle. But I was on the road. I like to call it the Rehab Road. I was living Rehab-ish, meaning that I was changing, but I was still one foot in, one foot out.

I was laying down, looking around my room, looking at trophies and pictures of my son. I knew football wasn’t going to be it for me. Even though I still had time to prove myself, I wasn’t confident enough.

So I asked God, like, “Is this going to be it?” And I started crying. And something came over me. And I said, it’s Rehab time. I literally started it for myself.

And I said, I’m going to put this strength back into a weakness. People who hear rehab, they think drugs, alcohol. Rehab, for me, is this. We all have something in our life that we can rehab—mind, body, and soul.

So I said, what can I control? Because so many times in life when we’re trying to change things, we think about all the things we can’t control, right? And so I said, what can I control? Well, I can control my fitness. I can control my spiritual walk. I can control my mindset.

I started working out. I started getting into my Word. I started reading books. I started writing. And in that moment, that was my journey that started Rehab Time.

It’s so funny how God will still use what you care about. Because I had one more shot at the NFL. The NFL stands for Not For Long, by the way. So you have three years, pretty much, to prove yourself. And so I had one more shot with the Washington Redskins.

And in 2009, I signed with the Redskins. And same thing, I get cut and released. But I’m in a better mindset now. Like, I know now there’s something bigger than just football for my life.

And that’s what started Rehab time. That’s what I want to do, whether it be from a spiritual level, fitness level, just a holistic change—I want to be able to impact lives.

But I knew that started with myself. That’s why I always say it all starts with you.

So I wrote a book, and it’s called The Greatest You. I really want people that pick up this book to turn their pain into their power. And if you’re a person that’s watching this and saying, “Well, I don’t have any pain” —you have pain.

But if you’re a person that’s saying that, there’s always a next level to your life. And that greatest you is not anything external. And that’s the whole part of this book. It’s not like the world has the greatest you. It’s not like you have to become something. A lot of this book is about unbecoming and realizing the greatest you is inside you.

How Trent Shelton Transformed His Breakdown Into a Breakthrough
I’m Trent Shelton, founder of RehabTime, author of the bestselling book, The Greatest You. I’m a former NFL player. Spent three years in NFL, but I hit my lowest point in that process by getting cut and released. But at my rock bottom, I found my purpose, which is RehabTime.

The foundation of strength is pain. Like, there’s no way in the world you can get stronger without going through pain. I mean, physically. Like, you go outside, like, there’s no way you can become in better shape without breaking down. And so I let people know, like, right after your breakdown, is your breakthrough. I thought, when football was over, that was my final destination.

But football was just a vehicle, was just a chapter in my life. So people say, “Trent, you’re a expert because…” I’m not an expert because I went to school. I’m an expert because I’ve been through life.

And so I’ve been through struggle, I’ve been through heartbreak, I’ve been through losses, I’ve been through losing my faith. And when you own that—when you say, you know what? I’m going to own this about me.

The greatest thing I feel, like, personally, a person can do, is take responsibility over their life. Is to point the thumb at themselves and say, you know what? It’s on me. Because we live life, most times—I know I did for a long period of time—like this: Pointing the finger at everybody else. Blaming God, blaming their relationship, blaming their job, blaming their boss. And even though maybe someone hurt you, or someone gave you pain—the pain might not be your fault, but the healing is your responsibility.

Somebody might have brought you to where you’re at today. But guess what? At the end of the day, you can choose to stay there, or you can do something about your life. And so, pain produces growth. Struggle produces strength.

Even when I go through things now that I don’t like, I’m like, “OK, this is power, because I’m going to learn something from this.” And it’s like if I gave you a map, right? And I said, “Look, I never hiked this trail before, and I made this map for you, and I gave it to you.” You would look at me like I was crazy.

You’re, like, “I’m not about to listen to this guy.” But if I say, “Listen, I hiked this trail multiple times before. Here’s a map. Trust me, it’ll get you to where you’re going.” And I feel like you’ll be like, “Yeah, OK, cool.”

I feel like that’s the same thing with life. What you go through has qualified you to help other people get through it. And so, like, now, you can be like, “Listen, I’ve been there.”

I understand you. Trust me. You can get through this. I’ve been through it. And your pain qualifies you.

Trent Shelton on the Power of Prayer in His Life
Ty’Ann Brown: Hi, Guideposts. I’m Ty’Ann. I’m here with the amazing Trent Shelton, here to talk about faith in prayer.

How were you able to implement faith when you knew you had to build yourself up, but everything looked downhill?

Trent Shelton: I learned having a gardener’s mindset. That’s what I feel like what faith is. And I learned this from my grandfather. I would go to Arkansas, and he would plant, like, plants and stuff like that, or he would plant crops.

I was probably four or five years old. And we would go out there. We would plant it. And two hours later, I’d be, like, “Hey, Grandpa, like, where’s the crop at? Like, it hasn’t grown.” And he’s, like, “You know, Trent, just be patient. And I would bug him, like, every other hour.

He said, “When you have faith, you have to know something is taking place, even when you can’t see it.” And so I always keep that in my mind. I know if I do the right things, I know if I, you know, eat the right foods, I know if I exercise, I know if I feed my mind, body, and my soul, that eventually, that harvest will take place.

I knew, and I have to know, growth is taking place, even when I can’t see it.

Ty’Ann: In your book, you talk about Jeremiah 29:11.

Trent: Yeah. When I made it to the NFL, my mom gave me this book. It was, like, a football cover. and it said, “NFL.” And it had “New Found Life.” And she wrote on the cover, Jeremiah 29:11.

When I was going through that hard time, I opened that book, and I read that. I read the scripture. And I realized God has a plan for me, right? Not to fail me, to prosper me. I might not understand it. I might not get it. It might be hard. I might have to go through a place that I don’t understand just to bring me to the place where he needs me to be. But I trust on that.

And what’s funny is that the NFL, a New Found Life, wasn’t the NFL. It was Rehab Time for me. So I don’t know. It was just super surreal.

Ty’Ann: That’s awesome. So you go from “Not For Long” to “New Found Life.”

Trent: “New Found Life.” There you go.

Ty’Ann: Through the word of God.

Trent: Yep.

Ty’Ann: I love it.

Prayer has to be really prominent in the life of someone like yourself, with all that you’ve been through.

Trent: The realer prayer for me is, like, a conversation with God. But growing up, you know, I always thought that it had to be a set time, and it had to be a certain prayer. And I felt like my prayers were, like, programmed. I felt like I was saying the same things, which nothing wrong with that.

But I say, you know what? I want to be real with God. Like, I want to have a real conversation. Like, God knows me anyway. And so my best prayer life is when I’m out in nature. I feel like nature is, like, God’s natural medicine for the soul.

I always wonder why Jesus would go up to the mountains. When I go to a mountain hike, I just love it. I just feel so connected to God. It’s not the only time I pray, obviously.

But when I’m going through something hard, tough, or I’m going through stress, I will go out on these trails, and I always say, nothing exists outside these trails—no worries, no doubts. And I just feel that peace that surpasses all understanding. That’s what I call protecting my peace, and I do it very often.

Ty’Ann: Was there a specific time where you can recall prayer really helping you in a specific moment?

Trent: So just with speaking. Like, as we know, speaking is the no. 1 fear. Like, people would rather die than speak, right? I always say they would rather, like, be in the casket than give the eulogy.

When I’m always backstage, I think about this. I’m being selfish if I’m thinking about being perfect. Because there’s no way you can serve, right, by being selfish.

And so when I’m back there, I always say, “God, help me not focus on me being perfect. Help me not focus on how I look. Help me focus on giving your message to the world.”

And my thing is God using me. Like, sometimes, it’s just like that—“God, just use me in the way you want to use me. Whenever that looks like, I’m open to it. I’m going to follow you.” And He uses me in the way He wants to.

Ty’Ann: What is the most important thing you would say for someone to remember while they’re praying?

Trent: Believe. Like, believe when you pray. I know for a lot of my life, I’ve prayed these victorious prayers. But I don’t know if I believed it.

When you truly show God that you trust Him and say, like, “I believe in you. I don’t care how impossible. I don’t care how much rejection. I don’t care how many setbacks I’ve had in my life, how many people have walked out of my life and told me no. I believe that you got me. And I feel like that activates the power of God in your life.”

I’m going to believe what I pray in, and I’m going to walk it out, those ordered steps, until, you know, that harvest come into my life.

Ty’ann: But you talk about belief being an important component of praying.

Trent: Yeah.

Ty’Ann: How do you encourage someone who prayed a prayer, but it seems that the prayers have gone unanswered?

Trent: I don’t really believe in unanswered prayers. I believe that prayers aren’t unanswered, because—in your way, but maybe God is answering another prayer. And a lot of times, say, it might be, God, I’m praying for this job.

But one prayer that pretty much we all pray is prayer for protection. So God—maybe He answers your prayer for protection. Maybe that job was going to cause you to be stressed out. Maybe—you know, whatever it may be.

So the prayer for protection has always been answered. So know if God doesn’t answer your prayers in your way, He has something bigger and better for you.

How Trent Shelton Uses Social Media to Inspire Others
I’m Trent Shelton, founder of Rehab Time, author of the bestselling book, The Greatest You. I’m a former NFL player, spent three years in the NFL, but I hit my lowest point in that process by getting cut and released. But at my rock bottom, I found my purpose, which is REHAB Time.

Rehab stands for Renewing Every Heart And Body. I want to break it down so people can understand. My definition is always just putting the strength back into a weakness. But I was, like, I want something that people can gravitate to, whether it be from a spiritual level, a fitness level, just a holistic change. I want to be able to impact lives, but I knew that started with myself. That’s why I always say, it all starts with you.

The video thing, I’ve got to give kind of a backstory. I love to rap. I love music. I was making videos, like rap videos. I would be on Twitter. And I would still have motivational spiritual stuff. But, like I said, I was one foot in, one foot out.

The main catalyst for me like really being committed to Rehab Time was my college roommate committing suicide. And me going to Anthony’s service made it really real for me that life is not guaranteed.

And with him committing suicide, like, it literally broke my heart because he lost something. So even when people watch my videos, they say, “Trent, you talk a lot about removal,” or, “You talk a lot about losses,” and that’s the reason. Because I made a promise to Anthony that if anybody in the world ever feels, like, “My life is over because I lost this”—I felt like that because I lost football or some people feel like that because they lost a relationship and they lose their relationship with God because they lose their relationship with a human being—I want to be that voice for people to say, “You know what, no matter what you lose, who you lose, your life can still carry on and your life can get better.” So that was my reason, right, that really made Rehab Time real for me.

I wasn’t getting booked to speak, once I realized that I was a speaker. Many people weren’t watching my videos at that time. So I say, “I’m just going to share my journey. I’m going to be transparent about my life.”

So the beginning videos, it was a lot of me talking to myself. It was my accountability. Because my thing was, if I’m going to put it out here, I have to live it. And I picked up my iPhone—I didn’t have expensive cameras, I didn’t have production or lighting—and I made two-minute videos.

As I was making these videos, they were impacting lives. I always said impact over numbers. But it took me walking into my biggest fear, which was speaking on a stage, that really, I guess, gave birth to the videos.

And it was at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, a good friend of mine, he asked me, “Trent, I want you to speak at my event.” And I tried my best to get out of it because I’m, like, I’m not a speaker. Like, “Nah, I can rap. You know, I can make it clean. Let me do that.”

And he was, like, “Nah.” He’s like, “I see something inside of you that you don’t see in yourself. Like, you have a gift, I’m telling you.” And I was, like, “I’m not trying to hear that. Like, if you see anything, see me getting signed back to a football team, you know?”

I ended up doing it. What seemed like five hours was five minutes. And I literally forgot everything I prepared once I got on the stage, and I just said, “God, use me.” And God flowed through me, and those kids were locked in.

The next day, I had to report to New Orleans for Arena Football because I was still hanging on to football because that’s where my identity was. And I called the coach when I got offstage, and I said, “I’m not coming.”

And I want people to understand this, like, [there weren’t] many people watching videos. I wasn’t the person that you guys know of me today. But I stepped out on faith and I said, “This is what I was created to do.”

Because there was a certain amount of certainty I felt on that stage, in the midst of fear, confusion, so I knew it was God. But I knew I had to let go of what I was holding on to. And when I let go, three, four months later, the videos started to go viral, and my life changed forever.

So why do people enjoy my videos? I ask people that question a lot. And I think it’s—the thing that I get is, “Trent, you’re transparent. You’re real. You’re not afraid to talk about things that people go through.”

And a lot of people say, “I feel like you know my life.” And it’s not that I know your life. I know my own struggles, and I’m not afraid to talk about my own struggles. It’s my transparency in my own life.

And I say, “Look, I dealt with depression. I still deal with it, at times. I go through things,” and I think that’s why people relate to it so much.

But to see people not commit suicide, to see people break away from toxic things, to see people rekindle a relationship because of a video, every single day, there’s somebody that’s like, “You know, I watched your video and it helped change my life.”

And I always tell people this, like, “I didn’t change your life. Like, I’m just a vessel. God used me. God changed your life. You made the decision to actually take the information and apply it to your life.”

I try not to understand it, if that makes sense. I just try to live in the calling that God has for me.

Trent Shelton: How Failure Inspired Him to Find a New Purpose

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Trent Shelton

I sat on the bed in my old room in my parents’ house in Fort Worth, looking at the pictures on the walls, the trophies lining the shelves. Football. It had always been about football. In high school, in college at Baylor, where I’d been a star wide receiver, dreaming of making it big in the NFL. Now those plaques and trophies seemed to taunt me: “You’re a failure. You’re a loser.”

As seen in the August 2019 issue
of Guideposts magazine

I didn’t get picked in the NFL draft. So I’d started out as an undrafted free agent with the Indianapolis Colts. They were fresh off a Super Bowl title—this was 2007. I figured I’d be there to help them get another ring. Peyton Manning and I would be making big plays all over the field. Big plays.

In training camp, I turned heads, balling out. I’m gonna make this team, I told myself. Yet the Colts didn’t play me. “They’re just trying to hide you,” veteran players said. “Keep other teams from signing you.” The Colts cut me instead. I was re-signed to the practice squad, then got cut from that.

That was the first time I holed up in my bedroom. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I felt humiliated. Since I was a kid, I’d talked about being a star in the NFL. What was I going to say now?

A week later, the Colts called me back to the practice squad. A second chance! Coach Tony Dungy talked about putting me in a Monday night game. Then something went wrong with my knee. I tried to suck it up and play through it. Coach saw me limping and told me there was no way I could be activated if I wasn’t able to go full speed. That was it with the Colts. The next season, the Seattle Seahawks invited me to minicamp. They cut me at the end of the preseason. A week later, they called and said they wanted me to come back. I packed my stuff, rushed to the airport, all ready to board the plane. My phone rang. Seattle again. They’d changed their minds. Another receiver had become available, someone who “fit into their plans” better. Someone better than me.

I got another shot, with the Washington Redskins. I ran my fastest time in the 40-yard dash: 4.3 seconds. Elite speed. The Redskins signed me to the practice squad, but I never played a game. By November, I was—you guessed it—cut.

I still wasn’t ready to face the truth. I tried Arena Football—where the smaller fields of turf laid over concrete were brutal on my body. Then I signed up to play for the United Football League, right before it went belly-up. I went into a spiral: smoking, drinking, partying. I got a woman pregnant. I might have been the son of a preacher, but I wasn’t acting like it.

Around that time, my college roommate Anthony Arline took his life. A Baylor football star like me, he’d also had a short-lived NFL career. Like me, he’d gone into a tailspin when his football dreams ran up against reality.

Was that my fate? Retreating to my old bedroom this time felt like the bitter end of everything. I turned away from the photos of me snagging a touchdown, all the trophies and plaques. They held no positive meaning for me anymore. Only reminders of failure. How was I going to move forward? How was I going to support my son? What kind of role model was I going to be?

I sat and wept bitter tears. God, who am I now without football? Why did you give me this dream just to take it away? I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before. Then it came to me: rehab time. Athletes rehab from all sorts of injuries and setbacks. Wasn’t I also struggling with a setback? A big setback.

I started out by hitting the gym with a dude from church. We’d go there in the middle of the night, when the place was empty. Pumping iron, pounding on the treadmill, holding each other accountable. I needed my friend to watch out for me as I watched out for him. I had to remake myself inside and out. I pored over the Bible. I drove to the mall and hung out at Barnes & Noble, sitting at one of the tables, reading every self-help book and inspirational book that I could get my hands on.

I’d get glimpses of what I needed to do, but you can’t remake yourself all at once. You need to take it in stages. I had to face up to the truth of who I was, not who I imagined myself to be. I made short videos of what I’d learned and posted them online, passing on the advice. RehabTime, I called it.

One of my new rules for living was to thank God at the beginning of each day, before even getting out of bed. Thank God for the life I was given. Thank God for my parents, my son. Set things right.

I was just a former football player, not a preacher, author or media star, but I got a call out of the blue. A guy I knew from Baylor asked me to speak at his church. “Who am I supposed to speak to?” I asked. A bunch of teenagers, he said. How many of them would be there? “Five thousand,” he said. Five thousand for my first speaking engagement! How long was I supposed to talk?

“Five minutes,” he said. Five minutes? It might as well have been five hours. I tried not to freak out. I wrote down all the things I should say. I rehearsed them over and over in my head. But the minute I stepped on stage, my mind went blank. I had no idea how to help these teens. All I could talk about was what I’d been through. I took a deep breath, opened my mouth and spoke from the heart. No notes, no filter. Just me straight up.

Those kids peppered me with questions afterward, hungry for more. I got a huge ovation, bigger than I ever got on the football field. That’s when it hit me: You don’t have to be perfect to help people. All you have to be is real.

My life was coming together. I was working at being a good dad, a good son, a good friend. Without even planning it, I had a whole new calling. I began posting to YouTube every day. The videos took off, getting thousands of views, hundreds of thousands—millions. It was both humbling and awe-inspiring. The comments and questions came pouring in, people asking for advice, help I’d never be able to offer if I were playing on Sunday. Help that came from my own struggles.

One day, I picked up the Bible my mother had given me way back in high school. On the cover was a football with the initials NFL. I’d always thought it was a reference to my football dreams, but then I noticed that the letters also stood for something else: New Found Life. On the first page, Mom had quoted Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” This was my newfound life.

Trent with his wife, Maria, and their
children, Tristan and Maya

Today I’m happily married with two kids and another on the way. I do a lot of speaking engagements, and every day I post a video and respond to all those questions from people, always trying to be honest, speaking from the heart. Admittedly, trying to keep up with 10 million Facebook followers and 1.6 million on Instagram can be tough. One morning, I woke up and checked my phone before I even got out of bed. Ding, ding, ding, ding. I was being bombarded. How would I ever keep up? I started typing answers. Something on Twitter caught my eye, and I went to retweet it.

Then I stopped myself. What was I doing? Hadn’t I told people that the best way to start the day is with gratitude? Didn’t I believe in doing that myself? No wonder I was so stressed. Physician, heal yourself! Trent, it’s RehabTime.

I put down the phone and went for a hike. There are some great trails near our house. Great for exercise and fresh air. Best of all, my phone doesn’t even work out there. No signal. Nothing to take me away from where I am. I have a new way to start the day now, to protect my peace and to connect with God. I go for a hike first thing. For 45 minutes, nothing else matters. It’s just God and me.

So you see I’m still a work in progress. We all are. There are so many ways to grow; there’s so much to learn and pass along. So much to discover.

Not long ago I was back at that Barnes & Noble, where I used to sit for hours, studying book after book, learning from people who seemed so wise, so full of faith. This time I was sitting in front of a huge stack of books, signing copies. Because this book was my own, The Greatest You, by Trent Shelton. Me, a published author. Who could have ever known? When God says he’ll give you back better than what you lost, believe him.

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