Page 111 – Guideposts Articles

The Science Behind the Benefits of ‘Spiritual Thinking’

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Holly Lebowitz Rossi

In the 1990s, when I first worked as a religion reporter, a new category of believer was emerging in America. Some of my colleagues called this SBNR: Spiritual, But Not Religious. More recently, journalists responded to demographic data suggesting that as many as twenty percent of the American public identify as “nones,” or having no religious home.

Both “SBNRs” and “nones” are less likely to belong to religious communities or identify overtly with a faith tradition. But in both cases, social science research consistently identified a simple truth—any sense of spirituality, any level of “spiritual thinking” in a person’s life benefits their mental health, their happiness and their resilience.

Lisa Miller, a clinical psychologist and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University, has written a new book—The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life—about the brain science behind the mental health benefits of spiritual thinking, regardless of whether or not a person’s spirituality is attached to a religion.

“Spirituality is innate,” Miller recently told The Wall Street Journal, “We can all cultivate this natural capacity and build our spiritual muscle.”

When we do, Miller said, our mental health is more likely to strengthen and be resilient against life’s challenges. “A strong spiritual awareness protects against the most prevalent forms of inner suffering, the diseases of despair: addiction, depression and even suicidality,” she said, referencing multiple studies. These studies are based on brain scans that showed spiritual thoughts to activate parts of the brain associated with greater blood flow, lower stress hormones and emotional responses like bonding with others.

Protection from mental illness is not the only benefit of spiritual thinking, she continued. “Character strengths and virtues such as optimism, grit, commitment and forgiveness go hand-in-hand with strong spiritual awareness. It helps us be more creative. It also leads to more gratitude and more resilience. There is a sense that things will work out.”

“Spiritual thinking,” according to Miller, includes intentional practices to quiet the mind, elevate feelings of awe and gratitude and think generously and altruistically about others.

Meditation, prayer, community fellowship, text study and simple kindness are all ways to cultivate and practice spiritual thinking. For some, those might be connected to a religious congregation or set of teachings. For others, they might have simply evolved over a lifetime of learning, self-reflection and growth.

What does “spiritual thinking” look like in your life? How do you use it to strengthen your emotional health?

The Safe Haven of God’s Love

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Christi Paul

I lace up my running shoes and head outside. The autumn night air is so crisp it feels like you could break a piece of it off. The leaves on our block crunch under my feet.

I remind myself for the thousandth time: Christi, you had to make that phone call. It was a matter of survival. You did the right thing. But did I?

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I start my run. Running always clears my mind, especially through this familiar territory. I’m so happy to be back home with my family in the small Ohio town where I grew up.

A harvest moon rises above the branches like a giant pumpkin; moonlight shimmers on the shingles. I know every turn in this road, every crosswalk, every hedge. My roots run deep here. But where am I going? Am I running away from something or running to something?

My breathing focuses me. I think of Justin and our failed marriage. I come from a solid churchgoing family that has been there for me, all my life. My grandmother, Gram, helped take care of me as a child.

Like her, I sang in the church choir. She and my parents came to all my performances in the school plays. All I knew from them was love, not fear. But my relationship with Justin had become about fear.

I remember the first time I saw him blow up. We were working together as TV news anchors and he exploded in a rage in the newsroom. We were having a little disagreement, but his face turned red, the angry words spewing out like venom.

We all just watched him, no one more bewildered than I. This wasn’t the Justin we knew.

It was our first job in TV, a tiny station in West Virginia. Justin seemed so confident, handsome and charismatic. I saw in him what I wanted to be, self-assured. I fell in love.

In a matter of months we were engaged and I was going to follow him to his next job at a bigger station out West. Wasn’t that what a wife was supposed to do? Stand by her man and support him in every way possible?

Sure, I told myself, he has a temper. I could help him with that. I didn’t think he was abusive. I made excuses for him, even when we had our first big argument just before the wedding.

I had gotten an unexpected job offer of my own, working as an anchor in Cleveland, not far from my family. It would be a huge step up, great experience in a good market. Maybe we could work something out, change our plans.

“You can’t do that, Christi!” Justin screamed. “We’ve already decided. You can’t back out now.” That same anger was in his voice, and a veiled threat. If I loved him, truly loved him, I should go with him, not him with me. Otherwise, it was over.

My running shoes pound the sidewalk, the trees tremble in a cool breeze. I remember driving through these same streets on my way to the wedding, heading to church. It should have been the happiest day of my life. Instead, one uncomfortable scene after another haunts my memory.

Justin stomping away from the altar when the photographer wants to take more photos of me; Justin rolling his eyes when the DJ asks us to dance together again. I know now I was in denial. I told myself things would be better after the honeymoon, when we were on our own.

Only a few weeks into our marriage, he went out with some of the guys after work. He came back to our apartment rip-roaring drunk and in a foul temper. His words were toxic and felt like a punch in my gut. “You whore,” he shouted. “You’re a liar! You don’t really love me.”

“Justin, please calm down. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. Who was this stranger screaming at me? Not my husband.

“I never want to see you again,” he snarled. “This marriage is over.” Then he threw his wedding ring at me.

“Justin, wait…”

The next thing I heard was the sound of splintering wood. Boom! Two fist-sized holes in the bedroom door.

When he finally passed out, I curled up on the bathroom floor, scared to breathe. I knew I couldn’t let him treat me like this. But I also knew I married this man. I couldn’t walk away.

Maybe he’d suffered some terrible trauma. Maybe Justin just needed to know that he was loved unconditionally. I couldn’t abandon him when he was clearly hurting. Wasn’t that what marriage was about? For better, for worse. Love could heal all.

Why did I think I could stop the violence just by being a devoted wife? His demons were much too big for me to deal with alone. And yet I was too ashamed to tell anyone that I needed help. Ashamed to admit how he treated me, ashamed that I would be seen as a bad wife.

Justin and I moved ahead in our broadcasting careers and had some good times together. We’d go out with friends, see movies. But then some argument would rise up about nothing, usually after Justin had a few too many, and he would lash out at me again.

His rage chipped away at everything I knew about myself. One day I looked in the mirror and had no idea who the woman staring back at me was.

If only I could be kinder, more loving. Maybe that would change things. Maybe that would help. At least he doesn’t hit me, I told myself. But once he held my arms so tight I got bruises. Another time his fists flew so close to my ears that I could feel the wind rush by. The threat was unmistakable.

“We’ve got to go to therapy,” I pleaded. We went. Justin promised to stop drinking and that lasted for a while. But then we stopped seeing the counselor. “I don’t need some guy to tell me how to run my marriage,” he said. I was too exhausted to object. And too afraid.

Only when I was home in Ohio, home with people who loved me, could I begin to see through the fog that was my marriage. Only when I stopped saying it was all my fault. Only when I dared to believe I wasn’t the awful things he said I was.

I had to leave Justin. But how could I end my marriage when I believed that marriage was forever? I would be letting down God.

I prayed for God to give me wisdom and strength, and made that call from Mom and Dad’s house. I couldn’t have this conversation with Justin face to face. I had to be in a safe place. Still, it was the hardest thing I had ever done.

At first Justin was quiet, almost eerily so. Then he started shouting. “I can’t believe you’re doing this, Christi! Don’t think you’re getting out of this easy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I hope you can understand.”

“Tell that to my lawyer,” he hissed.

I hung up the phone and waited for the tears, but they didn’t come. Only relief. But the following night the guilt found me again. So I ran.

Running lifts me. Running makes me feel closer to God again, as if it’s just him and me, one-on-one, leaving the cares of the world behind. Not running from something but to something.

I dash by the high school, by the track around the football field, by the auditorium where I’d sung in the musicals. I head back toward home along the street where Gram lives, the same house where I used to drop by and play her old Melodian. Her light is on. I stop and push open the door. “Gram!”

She comes, ready to listen, ready to help. As always. We sit in the living room, she on the old couch, me on the Melodian bench. I notice the hymnal open to a favorite hymn.

“I have to tell you, Gram,” I say. “I called Justin and told him I’m not coming back to him. I can’t stay married anymore.” The guilt still burns, the fear that I am wrong. That it is still somehow my fault.

“Oh, honey,” she says. “I’ve been praying for you.” She stands and comes to my side. “God doesn’t want you to be where you aren’t safe. Not where there’s violence. That’s not love.” She pauses. “I know.”

I scan her sweet, lined face and know in an instant what she is talking about. She too had been in love; she’d had a very happy marriage.

But when my grandfather came back from World War II, she said, he wasn’t the same man. He drank and turned “mean.” Though she never elaborated, I know we have something else in common now.

“I prayed and prayed then,” she says, “and asked God what was the right thing to do. For years I waited. Then one day I knew I had to leave him. God has never let me down. God won’t let you down.”

“I love you,” I say and hug her, and in that hug is all the reassurance I need. This is what I had to do. Love with violence isn’t love, and God is only on the side of love. As guilty as I felt about leaving, I could see that love isn’t abuse. Nobody is born for this.

I have to be honest. I had a lot more work to do on my own, separating the excuses from the truth, learning how to ask for help and not be too proud or ashamed.

I found an incredibly supportive therapist and in session after session I looked at who I had become. I needed to let go of the victim and reclaim the strong, capable woman God had made me. I had to forgive in order to heal. Fear is the opposite of love, and where fear reigns, love can’t.

What I dared to believe brought me where I am today, happily remarried to an extraordinary man. We have three beautiful girls. They’re a big part of the reason I needed to tell my story. I want them to know, the way Gram let me know.

Love doesn’t make excuses. Love doesn’t intimidate or lie. Love speaks the truth even when it’s painful but not in a painful way. It is the way I was loved by my family. It is how we are all loved by God.

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The Role of Faith in Coping with Chronic Pain

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Brett Leveridge

Hi, Guideposts. I’m Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God From Scratch, and I’m excited to talk with you today. My experience with chronic pain changed the way that I encountered God in at least two ways—in fact, two very, very different ways.

Initially, it sort of short-circuited my relationship with God. I think a lot of people who experience any kind of tragedy in their lives—either it’s a personal experience or it’s an experience where they have to watch some kind of confusing evil or pain or injustice in the world—they have a short-circuiting of their faith.

They wonder, “Where is God in all of this? Why would God allow this?” You almost experience a severing from your own spirituality as a result of pain. And I felt very far away from God, particularly in the first year or two of this journey. There were things that I said to God that you couldn’t say in a PG-13 movie.

But I noticed, over time, as I began to hold my relationship with God a little more loosely, to allow God to define what that relationship would look like rather than placing expectations on God about the way that our relationship should function, it began to change because I started to realize that God’s role in the midst of pain is not at all what I thought it would be.

God doesn’t just offer us a parachute out of pain, but God offers us divine presence in the midst of pain. And once I could receive that presence, rather than to constantly be frustrated with this divine exit strategy that never seemed to come, it gave me the sense that I was no longer alone in this struggle, that there was always someone with me who promised to never leave me and to never forsake me so long as my pain persisted.

When I first started struggling with chronic pain, I could never have predicted the way that that experience would affect my prayer life. You know, in the Western world, particularly those of us who are Christian, when we want to pray, we make noise. We say something. We have to come up with the right words.

But what kind of words do you say when you’ve run out of all the right words, when you’re drowning in the midst of frustration and confusion, and you can’t find any words to say? What I realized is there’s a whole other side of prayer. There are other traditions of prayer where you’re not as focused so much on speaking the right words as you are with not speaking words at all.

So I began to practice a kind of meditation known as mindfulness meditation, a kind of Christian contemplative practice. Instead of constantly speaking to God, giving God my grocery list of things that I was waiting for God to do—on my timetable, of course—I instead learned to, as the Psalmist said, be still and know that God is God, to merely sit in God’s presence and to wait on God to say what I needed to hear in that moment. It was a long time coming.

You know, when you ask people with chronic pain what gives them hope, typically you get some list of platitudes, maybe with Jesus wallpaper on it. But what I realized is the thing that helped me the most was really practical. It was the spiritual practice of observation, the spiritual practice of noticing, to begin to notice the influences in my life that changed the state of my health for good or for ill, to begin to notice the triggers in my life that I had never noticed before that made things better or worse.

I began to realize that when I ate certain things or when I avoided eating certain things, it could change my health. I began to realize the ways in which my travel schedule, just getting on an airplane, the stress of going through airport security, the way that affected my pain. I began to realize that sleep, for me, was a big trigger. That if I didn’t sleep well, I wouldn’t feel well.

I began to accept my own limitations. No longer could I work from 8:00 a.m. until midnight every day. I began to have to accept those limitations and then to proactively accept a schedule that was more healthy for me.

And so it was a long process of realizing, noticing my triggers, and then proactively managing those triggers. Each time, I began to see just a little bit of improvement. That little bit of improvement was the spark that would give me the hope to keep going day after day after day.

What to Give Up for Lent: 15 Meaningful Suggestions

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Rick Hamlin

Every year when Lent rolls around I go ahead and launch into giving up something for 40 days. No, I won’t tell you what I’m going to try to give up because that would be bragging about being humble, which seems to go against the whole meaning of Lent. Suffice it to say, I’ll try.

Why Give Something Up for Lent?

The practice of giving something up for Lent originated in the Biblical story of Jesus going into the wilderness for 40 days and resisting temptation. This period of time was necessary for Jesus before He could begin his ministry.

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I know people who use Lent to give up bad mental habits. One year my wife, Carol, declared that she’d give up worrying for 40 days. (Our friend said that would be like Fred Astaire giving up his tap shoes.) I’d be all for getting rid of fear and sloth and self-absorption for six and a half weeks. That would be some accomplishment. But then I’m always trying to tackle those demons.

I actually believe in giving up something material. It’s not about health, although I suppose there might be some health benefits to what I do. It’s about remembering that I am All Too Human and that I don’t really have to be a slave to the cookies at lunch or the chocolate bar in my desk drawer.

The Meaning of Giving Something Up for Lent

The reason we give something up for the 40 days of Lent is because it is a spiritual discipline. It’s a way of saying to God, “I know I’m a physical being with natural wants and desires but you’ve also made me a spiritual being with wants and desires that you are ready to satisfy.” When that urge for the thing I’ve given up for Lent comes—as it surely will—I remind myself of what’s most important in my life.

How to Give Something Up for Lent

It can be tough to stick with your Lent fast. Giving something up for 40 days (not including Sundays) is no small task. You might find yourself slipping without even realizing it. You committed to not doomscrolling, but here you are reaching for your phone. You said you wouldn’t complain, but soon you find yourself venting about your day to your friend. Stumbling during the Lent season is normal, but there are steps we can take to stay committed to giving up what we said we would. Here are a few suggestions:

Add your Lent plans into your daily planner or calendar. Make it an active part of your day. Right before bed, cross out your Lent practice on your to-do list to mark a job well done.
When you feel the urge to do whatever you gave up, pray or meditate instead. Focusing on your body and breathing or reaching out to God for strength can help these moments go by faster.
Journal during Lent to keep track of how you are doing. Be honest. If you slip up, write it down and think about why you gave into old habits. If you are successful for a whole week, write about how this practice helped you or taught you something about yourself.
Do Lent as a family or reach out to others who are participating in Lent. Share what you are giving up (if you want) and figure out ways you can support each other through the 40 days.

15 Things to Give Up for Lent:

1. Complaining

While venting about a problem you have is a great way to blow off some steam, we can sometimes fall into the habit of constantly complaining. We can start to only focus on the negative things that happen to us instead of recognizing the things in our life we can feel grateful for. Instead of focusing on the bad traffic during the morning commute or the spam calls that keep blowing up your phone, think about what great audio book you could start listening to in the morning, or friends you want to reach out to for a quick catch-up call. Try to commit to kicking the complaining habit this Lent season.

2. Staying Up Late

After a long day of work or running errands, it can be tempting to stretch out your evenings to put off the next day’s tasks. This can lead many people to stay up later than they should, spending their time watching TV or scrolling on their phone instead of getting some much-needed rest. Try giving up staying up late this Lent. Start to wind down earlier in the evening by turning off your screens and making a cup of tea. Commit to a bedtime so you are getting that necessary 8 hours of sleep. It may take some time to get used to the new schedule, but 40 days might be just what you need to keep up this positive habit all year long.

3. Self-Criticism

Self-reflection is an important part of being a positive, well-rounded person. How can I be doing better for my family and friends? What internal biases do I have and how can I stop them? However, it’s important not to be too critical of ourselves, especially about aspects we have no control over.

This Lent give up the bad habit of being too self-critical. When you look in the mirror, instead of focusing on the parts of yourself that you don’t like, list everything you love about yourself. When you make a mistake in life, take the steps to apologize and take steps to forgive yourself.

4. Procrastination

Everyone falls into the habit of putting off tasks that need to be done. I’ll do the dishes after one more episode. I’ll start my exercise routine later today instead. Use this Lent to give up procrastination. Do a task as soon as you decide it needs to be done. Make a habit of getting up to tackle it without a second thought. If you have a few things that need to be done during the day, do them all back-to-back so you don’t lose that productivity momentum. You’ll be surprised how gratified you feel after doing away with procrastination this Lent and beyond.

5. Binge-Watching

With easy access to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and more, it’s simpler than ever to fall into the habit of binge-watching. It’s how we unwind after a stressful day or how we prefer to spend a rainy weekend. However, like our parents always said, too much TV isn’t good for you. You spend too much time staring at a screen and not enough time being social or active. Think about giving up those TV marathons this Lent. Instead try limiting yourself to one episode a night or skip TV time altogether and do something else with your time instead—relax after work by going for a walk or spend your rainy weekend listening to music and doing a jigsaw puzzle.

6. Staying Indoors

Because more people than ever work from home, with no commutes to get them outside, it can be easy to fall into the habit of staying indoors all the time. Or you might walk straight from the car into the house, or you might be a stay-at-home parent with no errands to run that day. No matter your situation, try to give up staying indoors this Lent and commit to some outside time. Go for a walk after your workday, spend your Saturday at a local park, or plan a hiking daytrip with the whole family. Soak up some sunshine (and vitamin D) and breathe in the fresh air. Just don’t forget the sunscreen.

7. Skipping Prayer or Meditation

How many times have you been stressed about something and didn’t take the time to slow down and breathe? How many times have you been faced with a dilemma and just tried to figure it out on your own without asking for help? You might have pushed through the stress and felt burned out at the end of the day, or you tried to fix everything alone and ended up disappointed.

Use this Lent to stop skipping those steps that can help you in these situations: prayer or meditation. Commit to praying more this season by turning to God with your problems or simply checking in with Him throughout the day. Make meditation a regular practice by finding a quiet spot and using a guided meditation app.

8. Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling is the act of scrolling on your phone and reading only troubling headlines and bad news. Because of how much we are used to scrolling on our phones for information, we can fall into a habit of doing this every day for several minutes or even hours. Doomscrolling can disrupt your sleep and even heighten your anxiety. Here are some ways to commit to giving up doomscrolling this Lent:

Set a timer on your apps. Most phones come with a function to limit the amount of time you can spend on an app. Set it for twenty minutes so your scrolling has a definitive end time.
Use your phone for positive things. Follow pages or accounts with inspiring stories or messages. Read about people helping people or stories of hope. Let these pages fill your feed so your scrolling makes you feel uplifted and hopeful about the world.
Don’t use your phone in bed. A prime time for doomscrolling is in bed at the end of the day before we click off the lights. Commit to not using your phone during this time. Instead read a book, listen to calming music, pray or meditate.

9. Social Media

Social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok can be the places where the most doomscrolling happens. Take a social media break during Lent by deleting the apps from your phone for the full 40 days. There are plenty of other ways to check in with your loved ones. Instead of liking their post about a job promotion, send them a personalized text message telling them congratulations. Instead of scrolling through an old friend’s profile, give them a call to catch up. Instead of using social media to be social, plan an in-person get together with your friends.

10. Being Wasteful

The Lenten season is a popular time for spring cleaning and downsizing the clutter in our homes. This means lots of trash headed to the garbage cans. Use this as a chance to give up being wasteful and focus on going green this Lent. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Take the time to recycle.
Take up composting to lessen your waste even more.
Instead of throwing unused clothes away, see if friends or family want them.
Put your unneeded furniture on a local Facebook page and you might find a neighbor who could use it.
Plan your meals ahead during the week so you don’t have a bunch of spoiled leftovers in the fridge that will inevitably end up in a landfill.

11. Sweets

For many people, Lent is a time to give up a kind of food. Whether you are interested in the spiritual benefits of fasting or simply looking to cut out an unhealthy habit, resisting the temptation to eat a favorite food shows true sacrifice and discipline. For example, you can give up sweets for Lent, whether that’s chocolate, sugary drinks, ice cream, or dessert. While the human body does need sugar to function, too much sugar can be unhealthy and even lead to a sugar addiction.

Guideposts contributor Jeanette Levellie wrestled with a sugar addiction and found comfort through prayer and distractions. “Whenever I felt powerless or overwhelmed by my urges,” she said, “I learned to shift my focus. I’d walk around the neighborhood and revel in the wonders of nature, work a jigsaw puzzle with [my husband,] Kevin, or get lost in a novel.” Let Lent be the time to commit to cutting back and you might even find yourself continuing even after the 40 days are up.

12. Gossiping

Diplomat and former-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.” Talking about other people behind their back may be a tempting practice, particularly if it’s someone you don’t get along with. However, doing so can leave us feeling more bitter than before. Use this Lent as a time to give up on gossiping. If you find yourself wanting to talk about others in a negative way, stop yourself and think of something nice or constructive to say instead. Try including friends in this Lent practice so you all can hold each other accountable for making the group a gossip free space.

13. Isolating

How many times has a friend asked how you are doing, and you responded “fine” even if you weren’t? When we are going through difficult times, we may feel the urge to avoid others and never ask for help. What I’m going through is not a big deal. I can handle it myself. I don’t want to bother others with it. Yet asking for help is a vital step in bringing ourselves to a better place, no matter what we are going through.

This Lent, stop the bad habit of isolating yourself and commit to being more open with your loved ones. You can also use Lent as a time to help your loved ones who are feeling isolated. Reach out to a friend when they are going through a rough time. If they respond they are “fine” give them the space to share more with you so they can ask for help if they need it.

14. Sarcasm

After Laura Boggs’ daughter told her that Laura’s sarcastic comments were getting hurtful, she took it as a chance to give sarcasm up completely for Lent. It was harder than she thought. Would it be hard for you as well? If you are the type to throw a sarcastic joke into a conversation, try giving it up this Lent. Instead of automatically making fun, take a minute to think about the thing you are cracking a joke about. Could making this joke hurt others? Is it worth putting a negative comment out there? And why do you turn to sarcasm so quickly?

For Laura, giving up sarcasm for Lent helped her see the ways that her demeaning comments were really her way of putting herself down. “Humor isn’t a bad thing,” she said. “In fact, it’s a great thing. But not when you hide behind it, afraid to really reveal yourself, flaws and all.”

15. Ignoring Your Body

How many times have you walked away from your work desk with tense shoulders and an aching back? Have you gone for a glass of water and gulped it down, not realizing how dehydrated you are? Are you so busy during the day that you accidentally skip a meal? All of these are moments in our day to day when we don’t listen to our body and what it needs.

Use this Lent as a time to give up ignoring your body. Pay attention to it throughout the day and give it what it needs to be healthy and comfortable. If your muscles start to hurt during the day, try a simple stretching exercise to loosen them up. Keep a bottle of water with you so you can always hydrate when your body needs it. Set a timer so you don’t skip meals and be sure to pick healthy foods that your body will thank you for.

READ MORE ABOUT LENT:

Is Lent in the Bible?
A Special Lent Devotion
15 Inspiring Bible Verses for Fasting
20 Beautiful Lent Quotes to Inspire You
5 Fun, Easy and Faith-Filled Ideas for Lent

The Real Joy of Being Together

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Holly Lebowitz Rossi

In his widely-read book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, sociologist Robert Putnam examined vast stores of data that revealed a troubling truth: Americans were becoming more disconnected from each other—and in that isolation was a deep communal disengagement and personal dissatisfaction.

That book came out 2000, before the age of mobile technology truly took hold. Last year, a new book built on the conversation—Ruth Whippman’s America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks.

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Whippman looked around at the culture of self-help, self-care and happiness-seeking in today’s America, and she noticed a critical flaw in the narrative of what is supposed to bring us authentic joy.

Too often, she says, we are told, “Happiness comes from within.” But what we should understand is, “Happiness is other people.”

In an October op-ed in The New York Times, Whippman writes, “Study after study shows that good social relationships are the strongest, most consistent predictor there is of a happy life, even going so far as to call them a ‘necessary condition for happiness,’ meaning that humans can’t actually be happy without them. This is a finding that cuts across race, age, gender, income and social class so overwhelmingly that it dwarfs any other factor.”

Social engagement doesn’t have to mean raucous parties or huge circles of friends. As Whippman writes, “Despite claiming to crave solitude when asked in the abstract, when sampled in the moment, people across the board [including self-described introverts and extroverts] consistently report themselves as happier when they are around other people than when they are on their own.” This can mean a quiet cup of tea shared with a trusted confidant, or a small book club, walking group or a movie night with a neighbor.

Christmas Day is a wonderful time to reflect on the power of community, the real joy that comes from embracing the fact that human beings—introverts, extroverts, social butterflies and wallflowers alike—are innately social creatures who thrive when we cultivate relationships in ways that work for us.

As Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Together, we can make happiness a daily reality for ourselves…and others.

The Radical Honesty of an ‘Outlaw Christian’

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Brooke Obie

Everyone has a breaking point. Concordia College professor of religion Jacqueline A. Bussie, PhD, reached that point when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and forgot everything.

Suddenly, Christian platitudes that used to comfort her, like “It’s God’s plan,” felt empty and cruel. She needed space to grieve out loud, and not in the shadows. She needed to be angry with God, to question, to complain, to explore, to find and build an authentic, open and honest relationship with God and other people, without judgment.

Bussie wrote her new book, Outlaw Christian: Finding Authenticity by “Breaking the Rules,” to share her faith journey with others who are longing for a relationship with God free of shame and secrecy.

GUIDEPOSTS: Why is it important to have a faith that’s “outside the law”? What do you mean by that?

JACQUELINE A. BUSSIE: I try to clarify it’s not just any laws that I’m saying we need to break. A lot of the laws I’m really isolating are more cultural than they are Christian and that’s my point. I define an outlaw Christian as someone who is no longer willing to hide their grief, scars, questions, doubt, or anger from God or from each other. It’s on those particularly taboo topics that we need to break the law. I’m not saying let’s break all laws. The laws that I isolate they are really, really hurting us and they’re damaging our lives. They result in shame, secrecy and loneliness. And they’re not good for us.

GUIDEPOSTS: You summarize this point and your whole book well when you say: “In order to really follow Jesus, we must stop following laws that destroy life.”

JAB: That’s right. Even Jesus was a social revolutionary. Jesus was breaking certain laws. Jesus, He was helping people on the Sabbath. According to the law, that’s not permitted, but Jesus is questioning, is this law that we’re following life-giving? Is it spiritually fruitful for human beings? In that particular incident, the answer was, well, Sabbath rest is important but not if someone is in trouble. We need to be helping them. Jesus called us to question. I think Jesus was an outlaw and the Psalmist was an outlaw and Job is a perfect example of an outlaw.

GUIDEPOSTS: You quoted Job at the beginning of the second chapter, “I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.”

JAB: I love that quote, but have I ever heard a sermon on it? God comes in at the end [of the Book of Job] and says, ‘Job has spoken rightly of Me.’ It’s an amazing book, I think. Everything I ever learned from Sunday School about [Job] is not really what the text is saying. Job is saying, “I am completely impatient and I have a right to be.” And yet we say, “Oh, Job was so patient, the patience of Job.” It’s not who Job is; it’s not what the Bible says, it’s the spin we put on it.

GUIDEPOSTS: Why do we put that spin on it? Where did we get this idea that grief and sorrow and anger are shameful emotions we should hide from God and the world?

JAB: I think it comes from our culture and the sense that vulnerability is weakness. When we look at leaders, we want a traditional understanding of power. “I can make you think this way, I can make you act a certain way.” And I don’t think that what we get from Christianity is the same message at all. I think that they conflict. Our cultural values bleed over into our Christianity. Because in Christianity, what you have is a God who is completely vulnerable. The origin of the word “vulnerable” comes from the Latin word “wound.” We have a vulnerable God on the cross, a God who is willing to be wounded. That’s a very different sense of power than we have within our culture. God’s definition of power comes from the cross; it’s the only real power there is: that which empowers other people.

GUIDEPOSTS: Your vulnerability in expressing the limits of your knowledge of God, even as a PhD in theology makes Outlaw Christian all the more compelling. What’s the power in admitting you don’t know everything?

JAB: I think there’s so much power in not knowing everything because when we don’t know, we’re forced to ask someone else, forced to listen to other people and their experiences or forced to realize the deepest truths about the world. I think it’s the truth that Jesus taught: We’re interdependent upon each other. It’s painful to discover that. We would love to be independent. Did we grow the food we ate? Did we drill the oil we used to drive our cars today? Who were our teachers? The truth of the world is that really we should enter every day with a sense of radical gratitude, in my view. That’s what’s so important about this understanding of interdependence and I think uncertainty can teach us that.

GUIDEPOSTS: What does “radical gratitude” look like, in practice?

JAB: I think radical gratitude entails taking the time out of our busy lives and telling other people what it is that they’ve done for our souls. I think that it entails identifying who your “hope parents” are. I like taking time out to reflect upon who are the people who taught you how to have hope in the worst times, in the toughest times? And really reach out to them and thank them for that. I take that as a way of living into that passage in 1 Peter, “Be ready to give an accounting of the hope that’s with in you.” This being ready entails having these conversations and expressing our gratitude to the people who helped instill that hope in us.

This is going to sound paradoxical, but, like radical hope, I think radical gratitude, also entails acknowledging the real suffering of the world. As we talk about hope sometimes as Christians we omit some of the horror that’s given us the need to have hope. When we do that, we lose touch with the real situation that people are in. Real hope has to speak to real suffering. Radical gratitude has to do the same thing. When we bury our stories of scars and shame, we also bury stories of gratitude and hope. And that’s a problem.

GUIDEPOSTS: You say that honesty keeps you “always in trouble,” but also is the reason why you can “always find joy.” But honesty can also open you up to judgment and it can be very isolating to be honest with people who aren’t ready for or interested in honesty. So what’s the joy in honesty?

JAB: You’re totally right! Honesty will get you in trouble. I’m really struck by how true that is, particularly in our world today where there are many injustices, and when we speak truth to power about them, they’ll also be negative consequences for us. I guess I’m really relying on one of my favorite books, which is Alice Walker’s novel Possessing the Secret of Joy which I read in the midst of turmoil and truth telling in my own life. She says: the secret is resistance.

Honesty is always resistance. Honesty is resisting being told to hush up about something society doesn’t want us to talk about. Honesty is sharing our scars that we’re told are socially taboo, honesty is saying, everything is not perfect about my life even if it must look like it on Facebook.

Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness depends on a circumstance, joy has this in spite of character. This idea that when we do resist injustice or suffering and we resist it in community, we do find joy in that, because we discover that we are not alone like we’re always told we were. As long as we’re hiding our grief from each other, everyone feels alone and ashamed. The minute you’re honest about that, the situation doesn’t change. I can’t take away the fact that somebody was abused or sexually assaulted but suddenly we have the joy of knowing I’m not alone if I’m fighting an injustice.

I’m not alone if I’ve been abused or I’m divorced or I have a mental illness. I have people who understand me. And that’s where I think the joy begins for Christians, because when we start thinking this way, who else has scars? Who else has a story of grief? Who else has been wounded? The answer to all of those questions is God. We learn that from Jesus. God has a story of grief. God too is wounded God. God understands what it’s like to be broken, and rejected and despised. And these are the things that happen to truth tellers within our culture.

The P Word

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Edward Grinnan

I’m writing this on a train on the way back from Washington D.C., in many ways a very un-GUIDEPOSTS city. Why? Around here the P word means politics, as in, “We don’t do politics.” GUIDEPOSTS and politics just don’t mix. Not in the magazines, not on the web sites, not in books.

Of course among the staff there is a diversity of political opinion, which makes for some pretty interesting and passionate discussions around the water cooler, especially this year (I’m sure a lot of you are going through the same thing at your workplaces).

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We care a lot about our government and about public policy. We just keep it out of the magazine because politics by its very nature is polemical, even divisive, and that’s simply not what we are about. We don’t take sides.

A reader once told me that she could get politics just about anywhere. GUIDEPOSTS is where she came for inspiration and for stories about “where the rubber of people’s values meets the road of life.” I thought that was a colorful way of putting it.

Now that I’ve tried to explain all this I’m going to tell you about a breakfast I attended this morning with President Bush, Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), Representative Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) and a couple hundred members of Esperanza, a faith-based organization that sponsors The National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, an annual D.C. gathering.

First, let me say that every event I’ve attended where President Bush is making an appearance necessitates a security line that rivals the most congested airport at the height of the holiday rush, so I arrived very early and very sleepy despite the virtual tankard of hi-test coffee I held slightly in front of me as if it would somehow pull me along.

Since this is a blog and not a more formal piece of writing I am going to take the liberty of digressing slightly and tell you about the first time I ever had to pass muster with the Secret Service.

It was back in Ann Arbor in 1976 and I was covering President Gerald Ford’s announcement that he would be running for a second term after succeeding Richard Nixon in 1974. Ford was making the announcement at a huge rally at the University of Michigan, his (and my) alma mater.

I was all of about 22 and working my first newspaper job. There had been two recent attempts on Ford’s life and security was tight at Crisler Arena. We journalists had to pass through a Secret Service inspection and when the agent checked my backpack, he found my handy, ever-present Swiss Army knife and confiscated it with no guarantee that I would get it back, despite my pleas that it was a cherished graduation gift from my uncle. Coffee played a role in this episode as well.

Once I had gained entry to the press area I grabbed a Styrofoam cupful from the courtesy table along with a stale Danish and made my way through the journalistic throng.

Along the way I managed to stumble over a TV cable, spilling the coffee on a man standing nearby with a microphone in his hand—Roger Mudd, the chief correspondent for CBS News who was about to do a live “stand up” for the network. Except now his crisp white shirt and distinguished red tie were hopelessly defiled with my coffee and there was no way he could go on camera like that.

Underlings rushed to clean him up while he took the opportunity to berate me at considerable length for my clumsiness and youthful unprofessionalism, etc., much to the amusement of various onlookers, including several rival correspondents.

So this morning before going through security I was careful to ditch the coffee and make absolutely certain I wasn’t carrying anything that could get me in trouble with the Secret Service (I never saw that Swiss Army knife again, by the way). Thankfully all went smoothly and I took my seat.

President Bush was the first speaker and he ended his brief talk with a very simple prayer that God bless our gathering and our country. He lingered briefly so people could come up and have their picture taken with him (my host Doug Pratt’s 10-year-old son, Michael, who’d broken his wrist skateboarding, got the president to sign his cast).

Then Senator Graham spoke, then Congressman Clyburn, the son of a preacher. Despite the differences of party affiliation, both men spoke the same humble language when it came to prayer, and both men said that prayer guided them as surely as political philosophy.

This was not some theocratic blurring of church and state but rather the very simple truth that few people who are given great responsibility and great power can undertake their duties without understanding the need for divine guidance and succor, if only as a recognition of their own human shortcomings.

Politics may sometimes divide us but prayer always unites. It’s one P word we do not avoid at GUIDEPOSTS.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.

The Psychological Benefits of Baking for Others

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Daisy Urgiles

While most people see the act of baking for others as a form of generosity, psychologists reveal that there can be many psychological benefits for the baker, as well.

Donna Pincus, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, tells Huffington Post that baking for yourself or others is a form of mindfulness. “If you’re focusing on smell and taste, on being present with what you’re creating, that act of mindfulness in that present moment can also have a result in stress reduction,” she explains.

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In that way, baking can be a form of therapy. According to Pincas, the step-by-step thinking process that baking requires can increase mindfulness and decrease the presence of sad thoughts.

Baking can also reduce stress when it’s used as a productive form of self-expression and communication. When it’s difficult to find the words, baking for someone can communicate everything from appreciation to sympathy which helps reduce stress. The cultural norm of bringing food to someone when a loved one has passed says everything you need to say when there aren’t adequate words.

It’s also a form of altruism. Pincus explains that baking for others can make you feel good about yourself for doing something meaningful and thoughtful without expecting anything in return.

“Baking for others can increase a feeling of wellbeing, contribute to stress relief and make you feel like you’ve done something good for the world, which perhaps increases your meaning in life and connection with other people,” says Pincus.

So now that you have more than one reason to make those homemade cookies that everyone loves, get to baking!

The Promise of Hope: Creating Your Change Vision Statement

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Daisy Urgiles

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi. I’m Edward Grinnan, editor-in-chief of “Guideposts” and author of the new “Guidepost” book, “The Promise of Hope– How True Stories of Hope and Inspiration Saved My Life and How They Can Transform Yours.” Today, I’m going to walk you through maybe the best way to get started on any kind of change journey in your life.

For a lot of people, it’s helpful to sort of draw up, you know, a change vision statement. And I would suggest five things. Number one, what is it about yourself or your life that you want to change? Number two, how are you going to change it? Number three, what is going to be different about you when you do change?

Number four, how are you going to feel when that difference comes about? And number five, ask yourself, how will your change positively affect the people around you? Because that can be the most powerful motivator of all. To read my own story of personal growth and change, order my book, “The Promise of Hope,” at the address below.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The Prodigal Father

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Rick Hamlin

I was reading something the other day that said when you pray, keep in mind how glad God is to hear from you. “It’s the way you feel when you’re a parent and you get a call or a text or an email from your kids,” the writer said. I know what that’s like, I thought.

A couple of years back when our older son, William, came home from college for summer vacation he waltzed in the house at eight o’clock. He kissed his parents, hugged his little brother, put his bags in his bedroom and sat down to the delicious dinner his mother had cooked for him. Must have been garlic chicken, his favorite. I said grace— “Thank you, God, for William’s safe arrival home”—ready to kick up my heels in celebration. Hosannas and Hallelujahs would not have been out of place.

At dinner we talked about school, his friends, the grade he hoped to get in his tough econ course, the wild game of baseball he’d played with buddies. He acknowledged some anxiety about his summer job. That he got up from the table, checked a few messages on his cellphone, put on his jacket and headed for the door. “Bye,” he said. “I’m going to see some buddies.”

“Bye,” we said. The door closed and I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. He’d been home for exactly one hour.

When I recounted this story to a friend at the office, she asked me, “Weren’t you a little disappointed that he didn’t linger longer?”

My face wreathed in smiled, I shook my head. “No, no, no, you don’t understand. He was home for one hour! We got to see him and talk to him for one solid hour!”

If I feel that way about my son, I have to think my heavenly parent is about as happy with a visit from me, even if I just want to complain. As has often been pointed out, the parable of the Prodigal Son could easily be called the parable of the Prodigal Father. Because the word prodigal means profuse and lavish, abundant and excessive, and that’s just what the Father’s love is like.

Check in any time and find out.

The Prayers of Others Saw Her Through Opioid Withdrawal

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Roberta Messner

Past three o’clock in the morning, two weeks before Easter. I sat in the darkness of my car, parked in my driveway, feeling as if I were going insane. I’d been awake all night. I couldn’t stop twitching, moving, grabbing at myself. My mind raced. Bad voices clawed the edges of my brain. I tried everything I could to stop them. Racing up and down my attic stairs. Doing frantic jumping jacks. Bicycling my legs in the air. But it was hopeless. On the streets, they had a name for what ailed me: dope sick.

At 64, I was in withdrawal from opioids. For 28 years, I’d been prescribed OxyContin for pain relief. I have a genetic condition that causes invasive, noncancerous tumors to grow on nerve cells all over my body. I’d undergone 34 surgeries over the years to remove the worst of them. But the ones that remained caused constant pain.

At first, the OxyContin was a godsend. It allowed me to keep my job as a nurse and to live a normal life. But my town in Appalachia had been gripped hard by the opioid crisis. My insurer stopped paying for OxyContin. My doctor said new insurance rules required me to enroll at a pain management clinic for a new prescription. A specialist there took me off OxyContin entirely and put me on a new, weaker medicine for nerve pain to be taken every 12 hours.

“It’ll help you more than the OxyContin did,” the specialist assured me. “You might have some withdrawal symptoms as you go from one drug to the other. They shouldn’t be too bad.”

The last three days had been hell on earth! I’d been taking OxyContin for a long time. While I’d never deviated from my doctor’s instructions and she’d tapered me off slightly before I quit cold turkey, I’d built up a strong dependency. Deprived of OxyContin, my body panicked. It ached like a giant toothache. Pain signals coursed up and down my arms and legs. I called the clinic. I was told to tough it out. How? I shook with chills. My skin felt as if insects were crawling all over it. I couldn’t keep anything down. Worst of all, my mind buzzed with bad voices. They taunted me endlessly.

It’s going to be like this forever, Roberta….

You’re going crazy.

There’s no point trying. Just give up already.

No one else knew what I was going through except my sister Rebekkah. She’d come to stay with me after I left the pain clinic. I’d sent a brief e-mail to friends in my writing group, asking for prayers because I was going through a “rough time.” But I kept it vague. I was ashamed of my dependence on OxyContin. What would people think?

No one loves you.

Even God’s left you.

You’re all alone.

Not sure what else to do, I’d banished myself to my car in the early hours of the morning. It was usually the place I did my best praying. Now that I was here, though, I couldn’t think. I could barely get Jesus’ name out. I had too much trouble breathing. I was going to die in this car. God, where are you when I really need you? Have you totally left me this time?

The dashboard clock told me it was four o’clock. A piece of advice someone had told me ages ago came to me: “It’s the friends you can call at 4 a.m. who really matter.” I thought of my dear friend Sue. Her husband used oxygen for a lung condition—maybe it would help? We usually talked every day, but I hadn’t heard her voice since this whole withdrawal thing. She’d probably been calling, worried sick. I hadn’t checked my voice mails, e-mails or mailbox for days. I dialed her number on my cell and told her my situation.

“Come right over,” Sue said. “I’ll get the oxygen set up.”

Rebekkah drove me to Sue’s house in the cold, black night. Sue tucked me into a makeshift bed on her sofa and got the oxygen. I breathed it into my greedy lungs. She parked her chair by the sofa and massaged my agitated legs. Within minutes, I was no longer starved for air. I began to relax. Three hours later, I woke up to the smell of coffee and raisin toast. I’d slept for the first time in days.

Sue fixed up the guest room so I could stay with her as long as I needed. The pain and panic persisted. I didn’t know how much longer I could survive. I thrashed wildly at night, hitting my head against the brass headboard. Sometimes I awoke to the sound of Sue playing Easter hymns on her piano, convinced I was hallucinating.

Then, four days before Easter, something changed. I awoke in the middle of the night with the most bizarre feeling. As if I were being held, wrapped in a giant hug. Safe and secure, buoyed by some force. As if being lifted up somehow. Tentatively, I listened for the voices. They were still there. But they were different this time.

You’re going to make it, Roberta!

Don’t be afraid.

You aren’t going to just survive. You’re going to thrive.

This new medicine is going to work wonders!

I felt strong. Confident. Courageous. It defied all logic! I grabbed my journal and wrote down everything I was hearing. These voices…they weren’t mine.

The pain didn’t immediately subside. But I knew, without a doubt, I was going to be okay. On Easter morning, I awoke to Sue practicing the piano again, singing the hymn “He Arose.” I zipped up my jacket, poured myself a cup of coffee and found my way out to the front porch. It was daylight. I climbed into Sue’s big wicker porch swing and listened to the birds singing. Across the street, I could see a wife planting flowers as her husband washed windows. Yellow and white daffodils had pushed their way through the wintry soil. Pink dogwoods were in glorious bloom. It had been ages since I’d seen or contemplated such things. I thought again of the voices. The good ones, now running through my head regularly.

There’s nothing to fear, Roberta. You’re going to make it!

I knew this time I would.

After 10 days at Sue’s, I was well enough to return home. As I rejoined the living, I finally listened to my voice mails, read my e-mail and collected the big stack of colorful envelopes and packages from my mailbox. I hadn’t told a single soul, outside my inner circle, what I was going through. And yet dozens—many dozens—of people had prayed for me anyway.

“I sensed you’re in crisis, Roberta,” one friend wrote. “I’m praying for swift healing.”

“I felt moved to pray for new pain relief for you,” another e-mailed.

Wanda in Montana placed a lovely lace handkerchief inside healing passages in her Bible, prayed the verses and then tucked the handkerchief inside a gorgeous card she sent me. Peggy and Mike in upstate New York mailed me a comfort blanket they’d prayed over. Karen in Georgia had been pausing by a bush of red roses every morning to talk to God specifically about me. The prayers got more and more specific.

“I suddenly felt you need God’s peace, Roberta. Lord, I am praying that you be with my friend and comfort her.…”

“Dearest Roberta, I knew you were in trouble, so I gathered my entire church and we were anointed with oil and prayed for you.”

Readers of my stories that have appeared in Guideposts and Mysterious Ways wrote in too.

“I found your address online and had to write to say that I am praying for you,” wrote a woman named Pauline from Michigan. “I sense you are in difficulty and am asking God for your healing from pain.”

The prayers went on. And on. I went back and checked the dates on the messages, then compared them to the dates in my journal. They were all dated a few days before Easter. The very time I’d felt inexplicably held.

“It’s the friends you can call at 4 a.m….” the advice went.

I had called. The greatest friend of all—and his network of followers—had answered.

Roberta shares 5 things she wishes people knew about opioid dependency.

The Prayer Practice That Helped Him Reconnect with God

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Jonathan Merritt

My struggle with chronic pain began out of the blue. One gray December day, I woke up and couldn’t feel my hands. I wrung my arms, shook them violently. Held them under hot, then cold, water.

No sensation.

I’m a full-time writer whose typing hands pay the rent. Panicked and bewildered, I called my doctor. “Probably carpal tunnel syndrome,” she said.

The symptoms worsened. Prickly tingling crept up my arm and into my shoulders. The numbness became burning, aching, stabbing pain. Even my fingernails seemed to throb.

Nerve twitches began in my legs, arms, back and face. I couldn’t sleep and arose each day exhausted. I broke out in shingles. I suffered panic attacks. Random stressors—a crowd, a long line, everyday occurrences in New York—sent me fleeing.

Increasingly desperate, I sought out help from an army of health practitioners: orthopedists, neurologists, chiropractors, nutritionists and even a Hasidic Jewish healer.

My medication list grew as fast as my symptoms: anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, nerve pills, painkillers, antiepileptic drugs, sleeping pills, healthy doses of Lexapro and Xanax to stave off a nervous breakdown.

I broke down anyway. Pain assailed me every moment. I awoke to pain, worked with pain, dined with pain and fought for sleep in spite of pain. My routine fell apart. My social life disintegrated. I felt tormented and alone.

Even God seemed to abandon me. First I pleaded for help. Then I raged. Finally, still in pain, I gave up and figured God didn’t care. I mostly stopped praying, stopped going to church.

For a person who grew up the son of a prominent church leader and attended his first church service just three days after birth, I felt as if I had slammed into a sudden, cruel, inexplicable dead end. Sometimes I wished I were dead. That was three years ago. Today my pain is mostly gone. My relationship with God is restored. I write, publish books and travel to public speaking engagements as I did before. I am, you could say, healed.

Or is that the right word? Certainly it’s tempting to tell my story as a kind of miraculous healing. After all, that’s the kind of story a person of faith might gravitate to.

I see my experience differently. If there was a miracle, it was a miracle born out of struggle, despair, hard-won knowledge and a willingness to question everything I once thought true. Pain, I have learned, is a teacher. A hard teacher but sometimes a necessary one.

What did I learn from pain? The answer is difficult to put into words. That’s why I’m telling my story. In a way, the story is the lesson.

I actually began thinking about pain as a teacher when I was at my absolute lowest point. By that time, I’d been in pain for more than a year. I was with a friend, waiting in a pharmacy for yet another prescription.

“Do you think God is doing this to you?” my friend asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not. All I know is that it feels as if pain is some kind of teacher. I just don’t know what the lesson is yet.” That was the hardest part, not knowing why this was happening or how I was going to get out of it.

I left that pharmacy more despondent than I had ever been. A short time later, I was visiting a friend who rented a room in his apartment to vacationers. A Portuguese woman renting the room happened to overhear me talking about my misery—pretty much all I ever talked about. “The same thing happened to me,” she said.

Surely not, I thought. The doctors had told me they’d never seen my array of symptoms and had no explanation.

“I was told I had fibromyalgia,” the woman said. “I was put on disability. I thought I’d never work again.”

“You’re not in pain anymore?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “And it’s thanks to a doctor right here in New York. His name is John Sarno. He writes about the connection between the mind and the body. You should try one of his books.”

Mind? Body? What was she talking about? I looked up this Dr. Sarno. He’d begun treating patients for back pain in the 1970s. He noticed that there was often no correlation between patients’ symptoms and the physical condition of their backs. Some had pain but no underlying physical problem. Others had slipped discs and other abnormalities but little pain.

One thing many of his patients did have in common: huge amounts of stress and unresolved emotional conflict. Sarno concluded that, at least in some cases, chronic pain can be caused by more than physical symptoms. Resolving problems in the mind sometimes resolves problems in the body.

I was raised in a very traditional, conservative wing of the church. Growing up, I was taught that when bad things happen to people, it’s often because they did something wrong and God is punishing them.

I was also taught that only crazy nonbelievers seek psychological therapy or any other nontraditional form of healing. “Faith and prayer are all you need,” I was told.

Dr. Sarno sounded like someone I would have been warned away from.

Well, I was desperate. I read one of his books. It felt like my autobiography. I made an appointment with one of his protegés. He diagnosed me with chronic pain stemming from unresolved psychological conflict. He recommended I see a therapist and reduce stress in my life.

Still skeptical, still desperate, I saw the therapist. To my surprise, I found myself weeping in her office and talking about all sorts of things that seemed to have nothing to do with the numbness in my hands or my inability to sleep or the pain that tortured me every day.

Over the course of many months, I told the therapist about the strictness of my upbringing. About the idea I’d absorbed that God is mercurial and wrathful, loving only those people who are perfect and follow the rules.

I told about the older boy in my neighborhood who sexually abused me.

I told about my struggle with intimacy.

The more I told, the more I began to see not only how much psychological pain had built up inside me over the years but also how frightened I was that maybe the pain was punishment from God or a sign that I was doing something wrong. Or, worst of all, a sign that God didn’t care and had turned his back on me.

The therapist recommended meditation to help reorient my nervous system. “Your brain is using physical pain as a way of coping with deeper emotional pain,” she said. Meditation was another thing I’d been warned away from while growing up. With the help of more reading, I realized Christians have been practicing a form of meditation for centuries.

It’s called contemplative prayer, sitting quietly in God’s presence rather than coming to him with a laundry list of requests.

I tried it. It felt strange at first. A bit boring and frustrating. Thoughts and fears clamored noisily as I sat. The more I did it, the more the clamor fell away and I felt myself surrounded by something I had never experienced before. A loving presence larger than my fretful mind. Larger than my pain. Larger than everything.

Last fall, I decided it was time to try putting all this treatment to the test. I flushed the remaining pain medication I was taking down the toilet. A friend who owned a house in the country offered to let me stay there for a month. There was no cell phone reception. No TV. Nothing to distract me.

I spent my days reading, walking, writing and sitting in prayer. I thought about everything the therapist had told me. I dove into painful experiences in my life, reimagining them as if I had not been helpless. I sat quietly with the God I was just beginning to know.

Who was this God? He was a God of love, not wrath. A God who did not demand perfection. A God who did not give up on me and never turned his back on anyone.

A God who always kept this central, defining promise to humanity: I am here.

When I returned to the city, my pain was almost entirely gone. I was psychologically and emotionally wrung out.

I had never felt more alive.

I don’t tell this story because I think all chronic pain is like mine. According to the Centers for Disease Control, up to four in 10 Americans suffer from some sort of chronic pain, and every one of those people has a story that’s unique.

The American medical system excels at treating conditions that can be tested, scanned and cured with drugs or surgery. Sometimes such treatment is necessary. Sometimes it’s worth exploring further. The mind, the body and the soul are closely intertwined. God is not a specialist. God sees, loves and is present with the whole person.

I hope I never have to take pain’s challenging class again. It was the most frightening, debilitating experience of my life.

And yet, as I regain my health, I am grateful for what I learned.

I learned how to pray again. I learned that, like everyone else, I experienced hard things growing up but that those things do not have to rule my life today. I learned to accept myself as I am and that I don’t have to be perfect to be loved.

God is perfect, not me. And God, I learned in the most important lesson of all, is always there. Always loving. Always beside me.

Doubtless I will know pain again as I get older. I am ready for it now. Walking with God, I know I will not be alone. And so I will not be afraid.

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