Page 133 – Guideposts Articles

My Angel Is a Cancer Survivor

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Colleen Hughes

Today my angel is a cancer survivor.

I’m due for my yearly checkup with the oncologist. When he told me last fall that I’d “graduated,” and no longer had to see him every six months, I was thrilled. How far I’d come from having to see him every three! If he was convinced I was cured, I should be too. Right?

And usually I am a pretty positive thinker. Except when I have to make that now yearly appointment, and while I’m waiting for the doctor to come into the room for my exam.

The New York Times featured a piece by Julia Baird recently called “Getting the Diagnosis.” She wrote movingly about waiting two weeks for surgery, making her young children their school lunches and making out her will. Her suspected diagnosis was advanced ovarian cancer, probably spread to the liver.

Find out more about one of Guideposts.org’s sponsors: Cancer Treatment Centers of America

After a five-hour operation and eight days in intensive care, she learned in fact that her ovarian tumors were not malignant. She had another, rare, nonaggressive cancer, and though it can recur, it has a much higher survival rate. She is optimistic, for good reason. But it seems she was optimistic even when she had no business being so.

Her doctor recently asked her how that was. “I prayed,” Julia said. She wrote (as if just for me) that she prayed so hard she grew unnaturally calm, that stillness and faith can give you extraordinary strength. “I locked out negativity and drama, and drew my family near. I tried to live deliberately.”

So enough of my drama. I have an appointment to make.

My Adventure in Self-Publishing

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Kitty Slattery

We are all storytellers. Indeed, there are many who believe that the desire and ability to tell stories is a primary characteristic of being human. There’s a reason God made us this way.

When we choose to step out in faith, take a risk and share our stories–whether around the dinner table with our family, over a cup of coffee with a friend, through the pages of a book or in the digital glow of an e-book–beautiful and amazing things can happen.

Through the power of God’s grace, our hearts are opened. We realize we are not alone with our various human frailties, fears and failures. In a word, we connect.

In the most delightful way, God uses our stories to help us as well as others as we travel along life’s journey. And if getting a story published is something that God wants for His good purposes, then nothing can stop it from happening.

At the same time, God has a way of doing things in His own time, in His own way.

I’ll never forget the summer afternoon I met with my editor at Guideposts Books to discuss the first draft of my memoir, Lost & Found: One Daughter’s Story of Amazing Grace.

As with my previous books, I was working within a traditional publishing arrangement. I had a contract with a deadline and had been paid a modest advance. I had worked on the book non-stop for nearly a year, and this meeting marked the half-way point in the book’s progress. She opened the black plastic loose-leaf binder with my three-inch thick 225-page manuscript, looked at me kindly, and shook her head.

Uh-oh, I thought. I’d had enough meetings with editors over the years to know that look.

“Oh, Kitty,” she said, “you’re off to a great start. But you’ve got a lot more work to do. Delightful as many of these stories are (she pinched a good half-inch of the manuscript) they do not work for this book.”

My heart sank.

“Don’t worry,” she smiled brightly, and patted my shoulder. “They will be perfect for your next book.”

“My next book?”

“Yes,” she said. “Your next book.”

But I haven’t even finished this book! I thought with dismay. Any “next book” seemed impossibly far away.

Still, deep down inside I knew my editor was right. Lost & Found was an inspirational memoir specifically about forgiveness, reconciliation and healing–the healing of a wounded relationship between my mom and me, plus the healing of my eating disorder–and in order to tell the story fully and honestly, I would have to stay focused like a laser beam on those themes, and those themes only.

But my life consisted of so much more than the story told in Lost & Found! I thought. There were so many more tender moments shared with my parents, children and husband… so many more important life-lessons learned… so much more laughter and joy! For my family especially, I wanted to share, as the late, great radio legend Paul Harvey would say, “the rest of the story.”

After the publication of Lost & Found (with its necessary specific, limited narrative and themes) it was my heart's desire to get "the rest of the story" out, to create a more fully developed portrayal of my parents. I guess you could say I deeply wanted to honor my mom and dad, who were wonderful people, and who did a great job as parents.

So I got to work on a collection of true, first-person stories that follow the narrative arc of an everyday mom, daughter, sister, wife and friend and explore the joys and challenges of life’s changing seasons… from being a young mother… to being a member of the “Sandwich Generation”… to being an empty nester and losing my mother… to being a joyful mother of the bride.

I called the book Heart Songs: A Family Treasury of True Stories of Hope and Inspiration, and as I do with every book I finish, I said a little prayer: “God, this book belongs to you. If you want to get it published, show me the way.”

I then shared the manuscript with David Morris, the Editor-in-Chief at Guideposts Books, who surprised me with his response. “Kitty,” he said, “I think this would be terrific for our new self-publishing line, Inspiring Voices.”

Self-publishing? My initial reaction was one of vague suspicion, and, truth be told, I was a little hurt. Heart Songs was my seventh book. I thought only first-time authors self-published.

David explained to me that Guideposts Inspiring Voices is what is known as a “non-traditional indie publisher” and detailed the advantages, including not needing an agent. The author also gets to decide what text, title, cover, images, illustrations, fonts, and so on, are used in the book. The timeline from start to finish is much quicker than a traditional publisher, which can take two or more years to complete. With the development of new “print on demand” and e-book technologies, self-publishing is far more cost-effective than it used to be, and as a result it is becoming increasingly popular with both established and first-time authors.

Most importantly, David emphasized, there is no longer any stigma associated with self-publishing. Indeed, many believe that indie publishing is the wave of the future, as indie books can be creatively and successfully marketed through social networks and Internet book vendors. He encouraged me to visit the Inspiring Voices website to learn more, which I did, and I was impressed.

I talked it over with my husband Tom, and I remembered my prayer, asking God to show me the way… The answer was clear: Yes, I would publish Heart Songs with Guideposts Inspiring Voices. And thanks to Inspiring Voices, I have been given the opportunity to create a beautiful new book–just the way I want it, complete with photos and original illustrations–for my family, friends–and readers everywhere.

Heart Songs is available from Amazon.com as well as InspiringVoices.com.

Watch as Kitty Slattery discusses the Inspiring Voices Book Publishing Contest.

Motivational Story: Advice from Sam Bracken

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by dwade

– Hi. I’m Sam Bracken, and I’m the author of “My Orange Duffel Bag, A Journey to Radical Change.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I tell people, growing up in my household was like a whacked-out version of “The Brady Bunch” on an episode of “Cops.” It was just really unusual. My family– really, my parents were heavy drinkers and used drugs openly. My siblings were in and out of trouble a lot. And in the environment that you’re supposed to be cared for and nurtured, it had a lot to be desired. I was exposed to unspeakable things as a child. But as a result of doing that– trying to cope with such struggles at home– I became good at a couple of things. I became good at running and football, because I was big for my age, and I loved, you now, taking out my frustrations on the football field. And I was rewarded for it, you know. They’re like, “hey, good job if you try to kill this person in front of you.”

When I was 15 years old I was homeless, and I was bouncing from school to practice to work. And everything I owned fit in this little orange duffel bag. Right. And as I’ve– as I’ve lived my life, I understand that the metaphor of a duffel bag is a fabulous metaphor. You know, we all have bad things that happen to us. And we can pack our bags with a bunch of junk and smelly things, and open it– and periodically open it– and wonder why there’s– our life’s a mess and why things stink. Or we can pack our bags with all of our hopes and dreams. It’s up to us. So I chose to– to pack my bag with hopes and dreams. And– and so that’s the reason we called it “My Orange Duffel Bag.”

The reason I was so open sharing my past with everyone was about 10 years ago, I was working as a volunteer at a prison– a full, a maximum security youth prison, where I lived. And I would– every Wednesday night and every Sunday, I would spend time with very– kids with a lot of trouble. I mean, they were in this prison for aggravated sexual assault, first degree murder, and they had a 99.5% recidivism rate. And so these kids were sort of, they’re at their last place before they spent the rest of their life in federal penitentiary.

And I worked with them for about a year. And I remember being really frustrated and saying, you know– coming home one night I said, I don’t know if I can do this volunteer work anymore, because I just don’t seem to be making an impact. In my– and I was telling this to my wife, my sweet wife, and– and she said, well, let me ask you a question, Sam. Have you have you shared with them what your past was like?

And I said, no, not really. You know, I’ve spent the first 35 years of my life packing that in a– in a back room and locking the door. She said, honey, you’re never going to get through to these kids unless you tell them what you’ve been through. So I took her advice, and I came back and I started opening up to these kids. And it was amazing the transformation that happened in my relationship with them and the common ground that we stood on, and how we were able to work through things together.

And two years later when I stopped– when I had to stop doing it– my life was never the same. And what I realized by doing that, is that everybody has a story. Everybody suffers. Everybody has pain. And oftentimes, if we take that pain that we’ve suffered, and we use it as empathy to help others, great good can come out of it.

And that was our approach to this book. You know, we wanted good to come out of it. We didn’t want to play victim. We wanted to use the suffering as a way to gain empathy and connect with people to help them change, learn, and grow regardless of their circumstances.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Mother Teresa’s Legacy of Love

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

Nearly 20 years after Mother Teresa’s passing, the Catholic Church will canonize her as a saint. Known worldwide for her devotion to the poor and the dying, Mother Teresa’s legacy lives on in the hearts of all whom she blessed.

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk is one of the millions of people whose life was forever changed by Mother Teresa. Today, Father Brian is the director of the Mother Teresa Center and the editor of A Call to Mercy, a collection of testimonies of her impact. But in 1977, the man who led the charge of Mother Teresa’s canonization was just a 21-year-old seminary school dropout who was looking for direction in life.

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That June, Father Brian traveled with his family from Canada to Rome to meet Mother Teresa and she encouraged him to enter the brotherhood. “I was so shocked I didn’t say anything,” Father Brian tells Guideposts.org of his reaction to Mother Teresa’s encouragement. Then a young man, Father Brian had a steady girlfriend and was thinking of marriage—something priests cannot do, with a few exceptions. But Mother Teresa’s words stirred in him.

“The next day in the morning, in the convent, I saw her and I went up to her and asked her what did she mean [that I should join the brotherhood] and she said she just wanted me to stay [in Rome] right then and there and not even go back to Canada, but I couldn’t stay,” he says.

He went back to Canada and had a “difficult” conversation with his girlfriend about the new call he felt over his life, thanks to Mother Teresa. Just a few short months later in September, he returned to Rome and has been living his vocation ever since. Father Brian shared with Guideposts why Mother Teresa still matters.

GUIDEPOSTS: What do you think is maybe the most important thing that people should know about Mother Teresa and who she was and what she stood for?

FATHER BRIAN KOLODIEJCHUK: I’ll keep with this theme of kindness, of love for your neighbor. From the book, A Call to Mercy most of those stories [of what Mother Teresa did] are anecdotes. They’re things that everyone could do. We could all do them. She would say, “Small things, great love. Ordinary things, extraordinary love.” And she would say, “You don’t have to go to Calcutta to find the poor… Calcutta is everywhere, even in your own family.” She went out of India into the West. She discovered that – she would say, “The greatest poverty in the world today is to be unloved, unwanted, uncared for.” And that you can be rich, you can be middle-class–it doesn’t matter exactly your material situation. So that if we pay attention, if we look if we…we’ll be able to discover right around us people who need that little gesture a smile even. A little gesture of kindness, a word of kindness, a small favor.

GUIDEPOSTS: So knowing what you know about Mother Teresa and her life, why do you think she was able to have the kind of connection with God that she was able to display? How did she get to be this person that we all recognize?

FB: She said from childhood Jesus was her first love. She was a woman passionately in love with Jesus. Really she made a resolution as a young woman to love Jesus as He has never been loved before and to really take that seriously is quite a daring kind of desire and resolution. You can see that when she really defines everything according to or relating to Jesus. Suffering is related to Jesus kissing you. So another good example, she would say, “Well you have this love for God inside but it needs some incense to make it burn. And that incense is the suffering.” So on one hand the whole work of the mission is a journey to relieve suffering. The whole book A Call to Mercy is about that, on one hand. On the other hand, while we are suffering we can give it value, a spiritual value with eyes of faith. She would say, ‘Give whatever He takes. Take whatever He gives,’ with a smile.

GUIDEPOSTS: Based on the title, would you consider your book a call to action for people?

FB: Yeah, that’s why you see at the end of each chapter there’s some examples of how the reader could practice [the lesson]: Look at Mother Teresa, what’s her example? And then see well how can I do that In my life, in my family, in my work, where I live? In the different groups or communities that I’m involved in, how can I practice this mercy, this compassion, these ordinary things with great love. So the challenge is to look for those opportunities because they are certainly around us if we pay attention.

A friend of mine, right at the beginning of his acquaintance with Mother Teresa, asked, “Mother, how do you love? What does that mean?” And she said very simply, “Well just serve the people out of love for Jesus and that’s loving.” It’s a very simple explanation: Do works, acts of service, do it out of love for Jesus. All of us Christians could do those things. We just need to pay attention.

More Than Love Alone

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Dana Ritter

Everything was coming together for me. I’d landed my dream job, covering the White House for the Christian Broadcasting Network. I’d found a great apartment in suburban Virginia and took the train to work, an hour and a half commute each way. But I didn’t mind. To me that was a mark of success, proof that all those years of hard work had paid off.

Best of all was the present I got that October, 2008, when my boyfriend, Michael, flew in from Texas for my twenty-eighth birthday. That night on the National Mall he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. “Yes!” I screamed and threw my arms around him. Nothing had ever felt so right.

I couldn’t wait to tell my family. They were happy, of course—they loved Michael. But there was a shadow of hesitation in their voices. “Are you certain about this?” my mother asked.

“Mom, don’t worry,” I told her. I had, in fact, given it a lot of thought. Prayed about whether Michael was the one. It wasn’t something we’d rushed into. We’d known each other for eight years.

Not that I didn’t understand what my mother was concerned about. Michael is a quadriplegic, able to move his biceps, but otherwise paralyzed from the neck down, the result of a high school gymnastics accident. But when I looked at Michael I didn’t see the man they saw. I saw a vibrant, upbeat, can-do kind of guy.

He was 31, studying web design online. He’d lived on his own for years in Texas with the help of aides. There were things I’d need to do to care for him, of course, like helping him into his wheelchair in the mornings. But I could do that. I wanted to.

Caring for Michael was an act of love, the true measure of how much he meant to me. I persuaded him that we wouldn’t need aides once we were married. I didn’t want strangers in our bedroom. I didn’t want anyone coming between Michael and me, intruding into our personal space. He wouldn’t need aides when he had me.

I clung to that idea for the first year of our marriage. I woke up at 3:00 a.m. five days a week to get myself ready for work and see to Michael—bathing him, dressing him, lifting him into his wheelchair. Then at night doing it all again, only in reverse.

I kept telling myself it would get easier, but I was losing weight; my hair had started to fall out from the stress. That winter, when the alarm went off, it was all I could do to crawl out of bed. One day I almost didn’t. I felt awful—achy, my throat scratchy. But I couldn’t call in sick. I had to get to work. And who would care for Michael but me?

I felt my way to the bathroom and took a shower, then went to the kitchen and made coffee and lunches for Michael and me. Michael couldn’t grip anything but he could use silverware and pick things up with the help of a leather strap that attached to his arm.

Back to the bedroom. Three-forty-five a.m. Already running late. I had to be at work by seven. I turned on the light and gently stroked Michael’s face. “C’mon, honey, it’s time to wake up.”

I wrapped my arms around him and slowly raised him to a sitting position. Got a washcloth and washed his chest and back. Then laid him back down. Went to the bathroom and drained his urine bag. Came back and wriggled his underwear on. Stretched his arms up and down, from side to side, exercises critical for strength and flexibility. Finally, I put his pants on.

It was time to transfer him to his wheelchair. I put a gait belt, especially made for lifting, around his waist, then put my arms around the small of his back and grabbed hold of the belt. Michael rested his arms against my chest and slowly, using every muscle in my body, I lifted him into his wheelchair. Ooomph! All I could think about was how good it would feel just to fall back into bed.

“Honey, can you adjust my pants a little? They’re bunching up in back.”

Why did he feel the need to tell me this every time? Like I didn’t know. “Yes, of course,” I said, trying not to sound irritated. I took him to the bathroom, washed his hair. Finished dressing him. Wolfed down some instant oatmeal, the same breakfast I made for Michael. Dried my hair. Did my makeup. Kissed Michael goodbye and was out the door. Five-thirty.

Heading into D.C. I stared out the window, the world a passing blur. Exactly how I felt about my life. Before we were married, the thing I’d looked forward to most was telling Michael everything about my day. He’d always been there for me, even before we fell in love, the one constant in a demanding life.

I’d graduated from college in three years. Worked in four different cities in seven years. He’d seen me through some awful breakups. Difficult bosses. Empty, lonely apartments. His faith, the way he never seemed to get down, gave me reassurance when I needed it, sometimes desperately.

We’d met in 1999, when I was in college, on a mission trip to Florida. Back home our occasional calls had grown more frequent until we were talking every day. It was his mind—his intellect, his goofy sense of humor—I first fell for, though it wasn’t like I could ever forget that face, those deep blue eyes.

It was 2006 when we got together in person again. I’d broken up with the guy I was dating. I needed to know if Michael and I could ever be more than just friends. I’d flown to Texas for a week. He’d shown me how to connect to his hand the strap he used to eat with.

In a way that moment felt as beautiful, as intimate, as our first kiss. I loved how open, how unafraid he was about everything. On our last day together we held each other for what seemed like forever. I didn’t want to ever let him go.

And now, now that we were married, it seemed like we never cuddled. I didn’t feel physically married. I’d even begun to resent how, in bed, I had to be the one who lifted Michael’s arm to put it around me. Lately that was more than I could do. Too exhausted. Instead, when I was sure Michael was asleep, I’d bury my head in my pillow and cry.

We almost never went out, besides going to church. We didn’t have the money to buy a van with a wheelchair lift, and I didn’t have the strength to transfer Michael into my SUV. At least not very often. The more I cared for Michael the worse I felt, as though the effort was stripping away my feelings.

I thought caring for him would be an act of love. And I did love him. I was simply devastated that my love wasn’t enough. I’d thought it would be all I’d need. I even found myself snapping at him—like about his bunched pants—and instantly rebuked myself. Who was I to be cross? I had the use of my arms and legs.

“I don’t want to be a burden to you,” Michael had been telling me more and more. “We could hire an aide, take some of the pressure off of you.”

“Oh, honey, you’re not a burden,” I’d respond. “I love you. I want to take care of you.” But more and more, I felt like I was failing him. Failing at the thing that was most important to me.

My head was pounding as the train pulled into the station. My work as a reporter was the one thing I felt good about. A refuge—where people knew me as a professional and not an inept caregiver. But not this day. I could barely talk. I told my editor I was taking a sick day and went to the doctor.

“You have strep throat,” he said. He wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic. “But the best thing is to go home and rest.”

I called Michael, but he didn’t answer. Even when I called again from the drugstore. And on the train. I was dismayed. I felt almost betrayed. The one time I wanted Michael to take care of me, even if it was just to say he was sorry I was sick, he couldn’t be bothered to get the phone.

By the time I got to the apartment I was steaming. I opened the door to find Michael sprawled on the floor. That morning he’d reached to plug in the Christmas tree lights and tumbled out of his wheelchair.

I rushed to his side. I couldn’t move him. I couldn’t use the gait belt. It was for moving him from a bed or his wheelchair. Michael kept telling me what to do. I needed to focus, but I was growing frantic.

“Just shut up and let me think!” I said. For the longest time neither of us said a word. Michael looked like I’d slapped him and I couldn’t imagine feeling much worse if I had.

Finally Michael spoke. His voice was quiet. And deliberate. “I have an idea,” he said. “What if we piled up the couch cushions…”

We could make a kind of ramp we could use to get him onto the couch and from there into his chair. When at last, after many failed attempts, I was able to do it, I was spent. Completely and utterly drained.

I went to the bathroom and collapsed onto the cold floor, sobbing. “I can’t do this,” I cried. “I need help. Please, God, I can’t do this on my own.”

If anyone was ever convicted by her own words, it was me. I can’t do this on my own. Why did I feel like there was no one who could care for Michael but me? I’d wanted to prove my love. Instead I’d made caring for him into a self-defeating obsession—until there was no room for anything else.

No room for us just to be together, as husband and wife, to have a real relationship. No room even for…God. When was the last time I’d felt his presence? Asked for his help? I was trying to be a caregiver when what my husband needed was a wife.

That night I told Michael everything— how I felt as if I was a failure, that I was letting him down. There were tears in our eyes. We were in bed and I lifted his arms to embrace me. They felt strong. As if God was using them to bring us together.

I was ready to accept that I needed help, that asking for help was the most loving thing I could do for my husband and our marriage. We hired an aide to come three mornings a week and get Michael ready for the day. Those three days made all the difference. Not feeling constantly under pressure helped me be a better caregiver. I got so I could do Michael’s entire morning routine in about an hour, once I saw how efficient a professional was.

Four years later I’ve never been happier or more in love. We’ve moved to Virginia Beach, where I still work in TV, but without a long commute. For fun we love going to the beach, or out for coffee in our van—we finally got one, as a gift.

At night I snuggle next to him while we watch TV. My favorite thing to do is anything we’re doing together. Not that it’s always easy. But I know where to turn for help. To a Caregiver who is always there for me, 24/7.

Download your FREE ebook, A Prayer for Every Need, by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

Monica Iken: 10 Years After September 11

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Ashley Lateef

Mitch Horowitz’s Surprising Inspiration

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Mitch Horowitz

My girlfriend, Allison, and I pulled up in front of a nondescript two-story house in Waltham, Massachusetts—a working-class suburb of Boston. The house had two units and was where Allison had grown up. Her mom, Terri, lived in the top unit. Her grandmother lived downstairs. Allison and I had met in New York, where I worked in publishing and she was in TV news. We’d been dating about six months. It was time to meet Allison’s family. Given that this was a tight-knit Italian Catholic clan (and I’m Jewish) that had a protective attitude toward Allison, the stakes were high.

I tried to remain positive. In fact, I’d spent a lot of my life trying to remain positive. Ever since I was a teenager, coping with my parents’ divorce and the plunge into near-poverty that followed, I’d relied on what I called practical spirituality to keep myself mentally and emotionally centered. Things like the precepts in a book called Ethics of the Fathers, a distillation of wisdom from the Talmud I’d stumbled across as a teen and clung to for dear life.

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I knew the work of Norman Vincent Peale and other writers and spiritual leaders who taught the manifold benefits of having a prayerful, faithful, positive attitude toward life. My temperament was naturally pessimistic and self-doubting; I had to work against that all the time.

Like now. What would Allison’s mom and grandmother think of me? I envisioned sharp-eyed, appraising stares, questions about how I’d raise kids, Bostonian suspicion of a native New Yorker.

“Don’t worry,” said Allison. “I’m sure my family will love you.”

I loved Allison. We were talking about marriage. All I could hope was that I’d find some way to connect with her family. Allison and I walked up a flight of stairs to the second-floor unit. She opened the door, and we went inside.

A woman of medium height with smartly done brown hair and smiling eyes walked right up and gave me a hug.

“It is so nice to meet you, Mitch,” she said. “Allison has told me all about you. This is my mother, Josie.” She introduced me to Allison’s grandmother, who embraced me just as warmly.

I looked around. The house was cozy and a little cluttered, with knickknacks and angel figurines on just about every available surface. I noticed something else too. Something odd.

Everywhere—on walls, lampshades, figurines, the coffee table—there were what appeared to be small cards affixed with tape. The cards looked like business cards turned around to their blank side, with a sentence or two written on them. Short sayings:

“Being too serious about all I have to do can make me unrealistic,” said one.

“If anyone speaks badly of you, live so that none will believe it,” read a second card.

And another: “When you cannot pray as you want, pray as you can.”

Other cards had Bible passages, prayers or 12-step slogans on them.

Who had written and taped these up? It must have been Terri. Obviously she felt a need to surround herself with positive messages. Was she into practical spirituality too? It was the first hint that she and I shared a vision.

Thus began my relationship with one of the most important people in my life: Terri Orr, my mother-in-law. Allison and I did indeed get married. We settled in New York, where I rose through the ranks of publishing to become editor of my own imprint at Penguin Random House. I’ve also written my own books, including a history of positive thinking in America called One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. Allison and I have two children and feel blessed by the life we’ve been given.

Terri has been a secret source of inspiration for all of that. She’s been a mentor and a teacher, not only showing me how to live a faith-filled life, but also pointing me toward parts of America’s spiritual history—especially the development of 12-step programs—that I never would have thought to look into. Meeting Allison was the best thing that ever happened to me. So was meeting her mom.

The night of that first visit, I slept in a spare bedroom, which doubled as Terri’s office. Like the rest of the house, it was festooned with faith-filled business cards. Allison and I stayed up late talking before she padded off to her childhood bedroom. I was distracted half the time by reading Terri’s cards.

“Has your mom always done this?” I asked, gesturing at them.

“I guess so,” said Allison. “They’ve been there as long as I can remember. I don’t even notice them anymore.”

I spent the rest of that visit reading as many of the cards as I could. I longed to know what had given Terri the idea and how the cards helped her.

Over the years, I learned answers to my questions. It turned out Terri hadn’t always been a positive thinker. Just the opposite, she told me.

Born the daughter of an Italian-immigrant barber, Terri went on to become the first woman in her family to earn a college degree. She attended Brandeis University on a merit scholarship and embarked on a career in academia that propelled her to the job she held when I met her—associate dean of admissions at Harvard Medical School. Along the way, she married and had two daughters.

All of that threatened to fall apart in the late 1970s, when Terri and her husband divorced. Two years later, her father died. Terri was devastated by the loss. A single mom, she remained in the house where I met her, so she could stay close to her mom.

That same year, Terri was diagnosed with a sleep disorder often associated with obesity. Food had become a source of comfort following the divorce and her dad’s death. She’d gained a lot of weight. For the next decade, she tried every diet imaginable. The pounds always came back. She was depressed. Lonely. She felt out of control.

The year 1991 was her darkest. She weighed nearly 200 pounds and moved so unsteadily that she’d broken a foot. A doctor told her, “You’ve got to take the weight off or you’ll never heal.”

That night, she sat at her dining room table, confronting an array of diet plan brochures. Each one made her feel more and more depressed.

Suddenly she heard herself saying, “God, please, just tell me what to do and I’ll go do it.”

An answer came: “Join a 12-step program.” Terri had tried a 12-step program once before but hadn’t stuck with it. This time she remained committed. Gradually the weight came off. And stayed off.

More importantly, Terri’s whole approach to life changed. Around the time of her divorce, a friend who served with her on a church committee said jokingly, “Terri, if there were a cabinet position called the Secretary of Worry, you would be a shoo-in!”

While taking a spiritual inventory of herself—one of the 12 steps—Terri realized that worry and negative thinking dominated her life. Clearly that was not God’s intention. If she was going to turn herself over to a higher power, she’d have to give up the worrying too. But how?

Reading 12-step and other inspirational books wasn’t enough. Terri’s negative outlook was too ingrained. She needed positive messages in front of her eyes every second. And so she took some old business cards that she had from a previous job and began jotting down inspirational messages and taping them to the fridge. When the fridge got too crowded, she moved other cards to kitchen cabinets and to the dresser in her bedroom. Soon the whole house was speaking positive messages to her.

“I decided to call them my ‘God cards’ because I believe God speaks to me through inspirational literature,” she said to me once. “These cards keep me going.”

They sure did! By the time we met, Terri not only was a Harvard dean, a devoted mom and daughter and a churchgoer, she was also incredibly optimistic. A doctor at Harvard once said to her, “Terri, you are the most positive person I’ve ever met.” I looked forward to trips to Terri’s house, not only for her company (and watching her dote on our boys) but also for the latest batch of wisdom I’d glean from her and the God cards.

When I told her I was researching a book about American spirituality, she asked if I was going to include a chapter about 12-step programs. I told her it hadn’t occurred to me. “That’s okay,” she said with a smile. “I’ll tell you all about it, and then you will.” And that’s exactly what happened.

Many of her God cards have ended up going home with us, where they now adorn our own fridge or are tucked away in drawers or between the pages of favorite books. For Terri’s seventieth birthday, we gave her a leather-bound album of the cards’ “greatest hits.”

Among my favorites:

“I can choose to be right or to be happy.”

“My helping hand is needed. I will do something today to encourage another person.”

“Abstinence is not difficult; withdrawal is!”

“I am able to feel my feelings and not think something is wrong if I am not happy every minute.”

“Waiting has more power than an ill-timed decision.”

And from the very first page: “Faith in God + Mental Reeducation = Modern Miracle.”

That’s Terri—a miracle of faith and positive thinking.

Of course, she’d never boast about herself. “I’m a quick forgetter,” she says. “I slip into negativity very quickly.” Just like me! “The cards remind me that God is always with me.”

I’m sure that message is on a card somewhere in Terri’s house. Actually, it’s on all the cards. It’s the message behind each one. A solid foundation for an inspiring life.

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

Misty Copeland: Made to Dance

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Misty Copeland

“Thank you for your application to our ballet academy. Unfortunately, you have not been accepted. You lack the right feet, turnout and torso length. You have the wrong body for ballet. And at your age, you are too old to be considered.”

I sat in my dance teacher Cindy’s living room, staring at the letter from one of the top ballet companies in the country, too shocked to move. The company not only didn’t want me, it thought I was totally wrong for ballet? Finally I handed Cindy the letter and asked, “Why would they say that about me?”

I’d gotten a late start in ballet. Some dancers begin their training as young as age three. I took my first lesson when I was 13. Not at an elite dance school either, but at a Boys & Girls Club, something unheard of in professional ballet.

I’d made real progress, though. By the time I auditioned for that prestigious company, I was 15. I’d been called a ballet prodigy, a word whose depth of meaning I didn’t initially understand.

Early on, Cindy had read me the famed choreographer George Balanchine’s description of the ideal ballerina. “A small head, sloping shoulders, long legs, big feet and a narrow rib cage,” she said. “Misty, you’re perfect. God made you for ballet.” And I believed her.

Maybe it was a reaction to the uncertainty of my childhood, but I longed for a place where I felt safe and valued, where I belonged. At last I found it in ballet. Or so I thought. I grew up in San Pedro, California, one of six children. Things were not easy for our family. We moved around a lot—in large part prompted by my mom’s relationships with the men in her life.

At one point, Mommy and the six of us lived crammed into one motel room, eating Cup O’ Noodles for dinner. I was a shy child, and the stress of moving and changing schools gave me terrible headaches.

In middle school I discovered the joy of movement and performance. Following in the footsteps of my big sister Erica, who’d been a star on the drill team, I auditioned with a routine I choreographed myself. I made the team, shocking my family by being named captain.

The drill-team coach suggested I take a ballet class at the Boys & Girls Club, where her friend Cindy was the instructor. The class was held on the basketball court. At first, I didn’t have the nerve to join in. I didn’t have a leotard or ballet shoes like everyone else. So I watched from the bleachers.

Cindy finally coaxed me onto the floor in my baggy gym clothes and socks. “This isn’t about how you’re dressed,” she said. “It’s about how you move.” Compared to the other girls, it seemed like I was doing everything wrong. I was mortified. Still, I kept going, and Cindy kept encouraging me. She had me take classes at her ballet school (she waived the fees).

“The way you can pick up movements after seeing them just once or twice,” she said, “do you know what a gift that is?” She was taken by the way I could do steps that took most students years to learn. I fell in love with ballet. Dancing, I was no longer the shy new girl. I felt strong and sure of myself.

Just three months after I started ballet, I stood en pointe for the first time, one arm rounded and raised above my head, the other resting on the barre for balance. “You’re going to be a star!” Cindy said, snapping a photo so I would always have a memento of that moment.

A star like American Ballet Theatre’s Paloma Herrera? Cindy had shown me a video of her dancing, and I was spellbound. Could I become a principal dancer with ABT and wow audiences like Paloma?

That dream took hold of me. I was determined to learn as much ballet as I could as fast as I could. My mom let me leave our crowded motel room and live with Cindy and her family so I could train intensively. At 15, I won an arts scholarship from Los Angeles’s Music Center. I was on my way.

Along with a newfound confidence, ballet gave me the stability I longed for. In class and onstage, all my stresses fell away and I felt at home. I auditioned for a spot in the summer programs of the top ballet companies in the country. I was so sure ballet was my destiny that the rejection letter came as a complete shock. “I’m wrong for ballet?” I asked Cindy, hardly able to get the words out.

Cindy took my hands. “It has nothing to do with your talent, Misty,” she said. “There are very few African-American dancers at major ballet companies, and they don’t know what to make of you. But I know God made you to dance. And deep down, you know that too.”

I took her words to heart. That summer I studied at the San Francisco Ballet, and the next at ABT. When I graduated from high school, I moved to New York City and joined ABT’s studio company as an apprentice. At age 18, I was promoted to the corps de ballet. Step by step, I was getting closer to my dream.

Then I developed a vertebral fracture and couldn’t dance for a year. Without the routine of classes, rehearsals and performances, I felt lost. Things got worse when I finally hit puberty and my body changed. Suddenly I had a large chest and a thicker body. Even after I was able to dance again, I could no longer eat anything I wanted without worrying about the consequences.

Ballerinas are judged on the way they look. Especially in the corps, which in classical ballet is supposed to have a uniform look. Being different can be considered distracting to the audience and to the overall artistic vision, something casting directors keep in mind when selecting ballerinas for roles that can make a dancer’s career.

One day a staffer at ABT called me into his office. “You need to lengthen,” he said. Lengthen is ballet lingo for losing weight. “Just a little, so you don’t lose your classical line.” Even though I was five foot two and barely over 100 pounds, I didn’t have a classical line anymore, I had curves.

It was like an echo of that rejection letter. You have the wrong body for ballet. Now I felt as if my dream company was rejecting me too. I left the staffer’s office in tears.

Ballet wasn’t my safe space anymore. I felt like an outsider in the one place I’d been most at home. To me, the message was, You’re not white, so you’re never going to be right for ballet. Since the company was founded, in 1940, ABT had never had an African-American female principal dancer. I wasn’t going to change history. What was the point of even trying?

So I rebelled. In class, where we practiced in front of mirrors to perfect our technique, I wore big T-shirts so no one, including me, could see my body. I’d go home feeling bad about myself, overeat, then get even more upset because I’d lost control and looked worse than before.

Soon I stopped going to class, which would practically ensure that I never became a principal dancer. My career was slipping away. I was far from my family, from Cindy. Being the only African-American woman in the company made my isolation worse. I might have stayed stuck in the unhealthy cycle of emotional eating and self-doubt if a few special people hadn’t come into my life.

One was my first boyfriend, now my fiancé, Olu. He helped me develop a new relationship with food. Growing up, I just ate whatever my family could afford. I started choosing foods that would strengthen my body and give me the energy I needed to get my dream back on track. “A ballerina is an artist and an athlete, and you need to have your body in top form,” Olu would say.

Another big influence was Susan Fales-Hill, an author and TV producer whom ABT’s artistic director asked to mentor me. “There are so many African-American women rooting for you,” Susan told me one day. “Think about the ones before you, who broke down barriers for you. You may be alone at ABT, but you are not alone in the world.”

Susan helped me regain my focus and made me see the bigger world around me. Ballet wasn’t just for my own joy. It was a way to inspire people, to show other little brown girls growing up in poverty that they could reach for their dreams.

One morning I was practicing in front of full-length mirrors and for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t worried that I was fat. I was amazed by how my arms, my legs, my feet moved so beautifully and confidently. My skin color and body type aren’t going to change, I thought. I just have to love myself and be the best dancer I can be.

Once I grew comfortable with who I was and what I looked like, opportunities I never could have imagined opened up in my career at ABT and beyond. Shortly before I turned 25, ABT promoted me to soloist. The next few years I performed a variety of roles, both classical and contemporary. I even danced in a music video with Prince and performed with him on tour.

In 2012 I danced my first lead role in an ABT production, in a new staging of Firebird, one of three dancers chosen to perform the role. Alexei Ratmansky, the choreographer, encouraged us to adjust movements based on what was most natural for our bodies. It was an extraordinary experience, one I’ll always cherish.

I saw more people of color in the audience at the Metropolitan Opera House for my debut as Firebird than I’d ever seen before. That night was about much more than me. It was about welcoming a new audience to this beautiful art form.

When the opportunity came in 2014 to be one of the faces of Under Armour’s “I Will What I Want” campaign and shoot a commercial, I was excited. Finally, people will get to see ballet dancers as the athletes we are, I thought.

The commercial had more than nine million views. I hope that, as a result, little girls everywhere, no matter what they look like, were introduced to ballet and can either see a future for themselves or become fans.

I made history in June 2015, as the first female African-American principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre. So much has happened in the last four years. I’ve been up and I’ve been down. But I’ve learned a lot. My hope is that the progress I’m making in my career will open a path of possibilities for generations of brown ballerinas to come.

Today my body is pretty far from that of Balanchine’s ideal. I have a large chest, curves, and muscular arms and legs. Yet I still believe Cindy was right. God made me to dance and to show people that there is no one standard for what a ballerina should look like.

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

Miracles in the E.R.

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Robert Lesslie

“Doc, I’m tellin’ ya, it was a miracle!” Fresh out of my residency, when one of my ER patients would tell me this, I’d shrug. Not that I didn’t believe in miracles. But in the ER, with all its chaos? Not likely. We were all about intervention, not intercession.

Today, after 30 years as an emergency room doctor, I know differently. I’ve seen healings that medical science can’t fully explain. Healings that can only be the work of a power beyond medical intervention. So many stories I’ve written several books. Here are three of my favorites from Miracles in the ER.

Two techs rolled 14-year-old Ben Stevens into the ER’s trauma room with the results of the X-rays I’d ordered. A sprinter on his high school track team, he’d come in with a broken femur. He’d collapsed during a meet, running the 440. The way he’d explained it, the bone had snapped in two near the end of the race. He was healthy, strong. It didn’t make any sense.

One of the techs clipped an X-ray onto the view box. I felt the blood drain from my face. “What’s the matter, Dr. Lesslie?” Ben’s mother asked. I couldn’t respond. I just stared at the X-ray. The break was irregular, layered haphazardly, like onion rings.

“Where the femur is broken it looks like bone cancer,” I finally managed to get out. “And I’m afraid it’s already fairly advanced.”

I went with the family to an orthopedic surgeon who confirmed the diagnosis. Ben’s leg would have to be amputated. Then there’d be chemo and radiation. Even with intensive treatment, his chances weren’t that great. Ben’s mother looked at the surgeon and then at me, all the while gently patting her boy’s shoulder. “He’s in the Lord’s hands,” she said, with a serene confidence that took me aback.

After the surgery I learned that the cancer had spread to Ben’s lungs, three aggressive tumors. He had only months to live.

Three months later his parents brought him back to the ER. He had a fever, chills, aches and a persistent cough. He looked terrible.

“We tried the chemo,” his mother told me. “He got so sick they stopped it after the second treatment. They haven’t decided what to do next.”

I turned my attention to Ben. I was concerned that he had pneumonia and that the tumors in his lungs had spread. “We’ll need to get a chest X-ray,” I said. “I want to be sure he doesn’t have any infection in there. And since it’s January, I’m going to get a flu test. We’re seeing a lot of it now, and that might be a possibility.”

Ben’s father looked despairingly at me, then turned away. No one said another word. I called for a nurse and told her what we needed.

About 20 minutes later, the nurse and an X-ray technician brought Ben back to the ER. I had them put him in Exam Room 4 with his parents while I looked at his X-rays in another room. This time I wanted to be able to compose myself first.

“Doc, the boy in four is positive for the flu. Type A,” the nurse said, reading off a lab slip. That would explain the fever, aches and cough. After all, even though he had metastatic bone cancer, he could still get the same things everyone else did. In fact, it was more likely. I flipped on the bright light on the view box.

I had to force myself to look. His lungs. They were completely clear. No pneumonia. And no cancer! His tumors were gone! He just had the run-of-the-mill flu.

I ran over to Room 4 and told Ben and his parents the news. Ben nodded calmly. His father gaped at me. His mother gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth and tears flowed down her cheeks.

Just as she’d said, Ben had truly been in God’s hands.

READ MORE: WALKING MIRACLE

One Friday in October. The “A” team on duty: Lori Davidson and Charlotte Turner, two of our top nurses, and Amy Connors, our hyper-efficient unit secretary. Staffers who worked unflinchingly through the worst trauma. It had been a hectic night, but for the moment the ER was quiet.

“ER, this is EMS One.” The paramedic’s voice shattered the stillness.

“Go ahead.” Lori had a pen in her hand, ready to take notes.

“Five minutes out with a one-car ten-fifty. Is…Dr. Lesslie nearby?” A 10-50 was an auto accident.

“He’s standing right here, EMS One,” Lori said. “Go ahead.”

“Can you give him the radio and switch off the speakerphone?”

“It must be something bad,” Charlotte said. Lori handed me the receiver. I stepped away from the desk. “This is Dr. Lesslie.”

“This ten-fifty,” said the paramedic, “it’s…the driver is a seventeen-year-old kid, Bobby Green, and he’s fine. Drunk, but fine. The passenger—he wasn’t belted and was ejected from the car. He broke his neck. Doc, it’s Charlotte’s boy, Russell. And he’s dead.”

Reflexively, I glanced at Charlotte. She was talking with Lori. Our eyes met and she froze. “No!”

Charlotte was devastated. For the next year she couldn’t seem to recover from her anger at the young drunk driver. We had to assign her to the minor trauma department, treating patients with sprained ankles, small cuts, respiratory infections and the like. It saddened me to see her struggling, unable to do the work that was her true calling. I was a doctor, but I had no idea how to help her heal.

One day I was in minor trauma, stitching the finger of a teenage boy, making small talk as the final suture was being knotted. He had been sharpening a lawnmower and the blade had slipped.

“So what are your plans after you graduate?” I asked.

But he didn’t respond. He was staring at someone behind me.

I turned to see Charlotte. My eyes went to the chart beside my patient. Bobby Green.

How had I not remembered that name? I kept tying knots in that last suture, desperately trying to think of what to do, what to say.

“Mrs. Turner…” Bobby’s voice broke. “I want you to know that—” Charlotte stepped around me. She looked Bobby in the eye. They stayed like that for a long moment, motionless, until finally she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “It’s okay, Bobby.”

He put his hand on hers. His body shook with sobs. It was done. With those few, simple words she had forgiven him, released him. And she had released herself. A most incredible healing.

Every couple of weeks, for going on two months now, Mildred Jackson had brought her eight-year-old boy, Benny, into the ER with blisters from head to toe. After a few days the rash would go away, only to mysteriously reappear. I was as baffled as the rest of the doctors. We checked his labs but found nothing unusual.

Thankfully, it had been a few weeks since we’d seen Benny. Maybe whatever was ailing him had finally gone away. That night the ER was crowded. I picked up the chart of my next patient. “Danny Totherow. 42 yr old. Male. Bar fight—head lacerations,” the cover sheet read. He was lying on his back on a stretcher, a blue surgical towel draped over his head.

“How did this happen?” I asked.

Danny’s words were garbled. He was still under the influence of whatever he had imbibed. All I could make out was that someone had hit him with a beer bottle.

Just then the curtain behind me flew open. “Dr. Lesslie, it’s me, Mildred Jackson. And Benny.”

There was Benny sitting on a stretcher, covered with blisters. “I see the rash is back,” I said. “Let me take care of this gentleman and I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

But Mildred didn’t wait. She went over the entire history of her son’s mystery malady, every ER visit they’d made, everything the doctors had told her before.

Danny rose up on one elbow, peered at Benny, then collapsed back onto the bed. “Hot tub?” he mumbled.

“What was that?” I moved the towel aside.

“Got a hot tub?” “No, we don’t have a hot tub,” Mildred said. “Why?”

Danny muttered something incoherent. But I knew what he was getting at. “No hot tub in the neighborhood?” I asked. “No friends with one?”

“No, we don’t have one and no one—wait, the Pottses have one in their backyard. Charlie’s one of Benny’s friends. But he’s not allowed in it.”

“Uh-huh,” came the slurred response from Danny.

“Benny, you haven’t been in Charlie’s hot tub, have you?” Mildred looked at her son. He shook his head slowly. “Benny?” She dragged his name out.

Benny’s head-shaking morphed into a slow, sheepish nod. “I’m sorry, Momma. Charlie said it would be okay as long as I didn’t have the rash.”

“Has Charlie ever gotten this rash, Benny?” I asked.

“No, he never did. He never got in the tub. Said it was too nasty.”

“Uh-huh,” Danny mumbled again.

That was the answer. Hot tub dermatitis, a common bacterial infection that causes a bumpy, blistery red rash. The Pottses’ tub was a regular petri dish—and every time Benny’s rash cleared, he would dip himself in it again. I explained all of this to Mildred.

“Praise the Lord,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” agreed Danny.

I couldn’t have said it better.

Mike Rowe Uses the Tools God Gave Him

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Mike Rowe

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d make a living hosting and narrating TV shows. My plan was to follow in the footsteps of my grandfather, a man who worked with his hands, not his voice. A man who avoided the spotlight.

I grew up outside Baltimore, Maryland. We were just a few miles from the city, but it felt like a whole different world. Our family’s land bordered 60 acres of woods, so there was nobody else around. We lived next to my grandparents in an old farmhouse on eight acres with a barn, horses, a bridge and a babbling brook. Everything I needed for an idyllic boyhood.

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My grandfather Carl Knobel—I called him Pop—left school after eighth grade to go to work. He was a master electrician by trade but he could do pretty much anything. Build a house without a blueprint. Dig a well. Install a furnace. I once saw him take apart a broken watch and put all the tiny pieces back together so that it ran perfectly again. I never once saw him read the instructions to anything. He just knew how stuff worked.

Pop had a huge hand in building an addition to our church, the wing where my Sunday school classes were held, my Boy Scout troop met and the congregation had potlucks and Bible studies. Not that he ever talked about it. Pop was a humble guy, a man of few words.

Dad was the one who showed me the plaque at church with my grandfather’s name on it. “That’s to honor him for all the work he did,” Dad said proudly. “Who else do you know with a plaque?” Dad was a public-school teacher but on weekends, he and Pop tackled one project after another.

I tagged along, trying to help out. Mostly, I just slowed things down. We used a woodstove, and on cold winter mornings we’d go out on the Massey Ferguson tractor in search of firewood. Mom would hand us a lunch box with a large thermos of coffee. “Try not to kill yourselves,” she said. “Dinner’s at six.”

We drove the tractor through the lower pasture into the woods. First we had to find the right tree. “Hardwood puts up a fight but it burns the best,” Dad said. Then the bigger challenge: taking the tree down properly so nobody got hurt and it landed exactly where you wanted.

How to make the notch in the trunk, where to put the pulleys and winches—regardless of the challenge, Pop had it all figured out. I remember one Saturday when I was 12 and the toilet in our house backed up in a rather spectacular fashion. The problem went well beyond a plunger. “Don’t worry,” Dad said. “Pop’s on his way over.”

We helped Pop dig a trench that led to the septic tank. Soon the lawn was covered with mounds of dirt and pieces of old pipe. Pop laid down new pipes and fittings and sealed them together. By the end of the day, the trench was filled in, the lawn was neat again and the toilet was back to normal. I had blisters and a sunburn. I didn’t smell good. Still, it was one of my favorite days ever.

To me, Pop was a magician, and his talents a great mystery. As his would-be apprentice, I mimicked his every move. I took the shop class offered in school, and applied myself. But the bookshelf I made turned out lopsided, the metal box I welded didn’t close tightly. My grandfather’s “mechanical gene” seemed to have skipped me, and my shortcomings made me grow insecure and resentful.

One Saturday I was helping Dad and Pop build a patio on our house. I can’t remember what I messed up that day—probably didn’t get the cement mixed right or the bricks laid in straight, but it felt like the final confirmation that I could never be like Pop.

I just didn’t have it, that gift he had for fixing things. I was not the would-be apprentice. I was the apprentice who would never be the master of any trade. I put down my tools, flopped on the ground and let out a long sigh. Pop stopped what he was doing and sat down beside me, waiting for me to stop feeling sorry for myself.

“I can’t do anything right,” I said ruefully.

“Sure you can, Mike.”

“Not like you, Pop. You could build a whole city if you wanted. I can’t even mix the cement.”

Pop thought for a moment before he spoke. “God gave me a toolbox, Mike. He gave you one too. But he didn’t give us the same one. You understand?”

I shrugged. He was just trying to make me feel better. I didn’t have a toolbox, and if I did, I doubted it contained anything worthwhile. Good thing other people knew better. Like my mom, who urged me to sign up for the high school choir. And Mr. Fred King, the new music teacher and choir director, who saw some potential in me and pushed me to develop my voice.

Soon, I was singing solos, then trying out for the school musical. I got the lead. Something clicked. Standing onstage, singing, performing, it just felt right. Over the years, I discovered I had other tools. For my Eagle Scout service project, I read aloud to students at the state school for the blind. I formed a barbershop quartet with some friends from choir, and with Mr. King’s help, we won several competitions.

I majored in communications in college, and studied acting and music. I won the debate competition. I auditioned for the Baltimore Opera—I figured it was a good way to meet girls—and sang professionally for several years. In the early 1990s I landed my first television gig: selling stuff on QVC, the home shopping channel. From there I got other work on air, hosting shows for local stations, then for TBS, FX, the History Channel, PBS. I approached my work like a tradesman, freelancing wherever the jobs took me.

On visits home to Baltimore, I’d play Pop videos of myself from this or that show, and he got a kick out of it. My quiet, ingenious grandfather— a man who would rather listen than speak—and me, his grandson who got paid to smile and talk. Amazing.

I was living in San Francisco, hosting a show on the local CBS station, when the toilet in my apartment backed up once again. (It’s a recurring theme in my life.) Pop wasn’t next door to help, so I found a plumber in the Yellow Pages.

“Think you can fix it while I’m at work?” I asked. “No problem,” he said. “Just leave a key under the mat and a check on the counter.” When I got home that night, the mess was gone and the toilet was working just fine. It was as if the plumber hadn’t even been there. But something bothered me.

I thought of Pop and the day he’d fixed our plumbing all those years ago. I thought of all the hard work he did on our house, our church, and hundreds of homes and businesses in our community. I remembered how badly I had wanted to be a part of all that, and how I had yearned for the ability to do what he could do.

I didn’t even know the name of the plumber who fixed my toilet. How could I be so disconnected from the kind of tradesman I had once dreamed of becoming? I considered a world without men like Pop. What would civilization look like without them? If a TV host calls in sick, life goes on. But if our tradesmen don’t report for work, things fall apart. Literally.

Okay, Mike, I thought. You found your toolbox. What are you doing with it? More game shows? Talk shows? What about a show for men like Pop? What about a show that honors hard work and the people who do it?

The next day, I pitched a new show to my station manager called Somebody’s Gotta Do It—short profiles of people who do the tough jobs. Rather than act like a typical host, though, I would assume the role of an apprentice, and let the worker call the shots.

It was a radical idea, but the manager gave me the go-ahead. I found a dairy farmer who specialized in artificially inseminating cows. My crew and I spent a day filming this man at work, showing what a hard, dirty—and necessary— job it was. That profile of the dairy farmer turned out to be the most popular segment the station had aired in years. We got tons of calls and e-mails, and invitations to film in all sorts of other interesting places.

Best of all, I got a thumbs-up from Pop. He was in his nineties and not getting around too well, but he was excited to see each new segment. “Good for you, Mike,” he said. “I think you’re on to something!” I did more of those profiles, which eventually led to the show I’m best known for, Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs.

In the next eight years, I would travel to every state and work every conceivable dirty job: salt miner, fish gutter, septic-tank technician, ostrich farmer, underwater lumberjack, worm-poop rancher—you name it. I can’t tell you that I did those jobs well. In fact, I was a disaster, as most apprentices are their first day on the job. But I didn’t care anymore. Because my incompetence was now illuminating the expertise of the skilled workers I profiled.

All I had to do was humble myself, share my own shortcomings with millions of viewers, and shine the spotlight on the very people I had always admired the most. Pop died just before Dirty Jobs premiered, but really, he had seen the first episode 40 years earlier. He knew it was there all along, buried in a toolbox I never knew I had. The one he told me about back when I was his apprentice. The best job I’ve ever had.

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

Meet the Bible B.A.B.E.S.

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Barb Swanson

Twenty women sat at round tables inside the fellowship hall of my church that Monday evening, looking at me expectantly. Smiling, but I could see doubt flickering in their eyes. I knew what they were thinking: She’s going to teach us how to lose weight?

I couldn’t blame them. I was wondering the same thing. Where I’m from, we love God, music and food. All that food got to be a problem. I’d been a big girl–five feet eight and 130 pounds by sixth grade–and that number on the scale crept up as I got older.

I put on 25 pounds in high school, gained the freshman 15 (well, more like 20) in college. I married Dale and we had two children. Now the kids were in high school and I was still carrying the baby weight, despite trying every diet known to woman.

Even though I was wearing the most slimming outfit in my closet–black slacks and a long top–I knew it couldn’t hide those extra pounds. I felt totally exposed standing in front of these women who’d signed up for our new weight-loss group.

Who was I to think I could help them when I couldn’t help myself?

One of them–my friend Sam–caught my eye and nodded. “Look how everyone encourages one another in your Bible study,” she’d said to me a few weeks earlier, when we were commiserating over our perennial New Year’s resolution to lose weight.

“You’re accountable to each other and that helps you all stick with it. Maybe that would work for weight loss. It’s not like anything else has.”

I took a deep breath and outlined the 12-week program that Sam and I had come up with.

We’d eat sensibly: three 300-calorie meals a day, three 100-calorie snacks. Exercise three to five hours a week. Keep a daily food-and-exercise journal. Meet weekly to weigh in, share our challenges and successes, discuss a topic like setting goals or avoiding pitfalls. And we’d pray for each other.

“Now let’s go around the room,” I said. “Tell us a bit about yourself and how much you want to lose by the end of our twelve weeks.”

For some, it was a modest 10 to 15 pounds. Others, 50 pounds or more. My turn. “I’ve been overweight pretty much my entire life,” I said. “Especially after I had my kids. I’ve tried every diet imaginable. So we’re in this together. I need your help and prayers to lose forty-five pounds and keep it off.”

Time for our first weigh-in. Sam and I had hung beach towels at the back of the room to give the women privacy. We wrote down everyone’s weight. Then we gathered in a circle and I said a closing prayer.

“Lord, we know all things are possible through you,” I said. “Give us the strength to stick with our program. And the assurance that we’re not alone in our struggles.” Everyone seemed upbeat when they left. “I knew we could do this,” Sam said. “That went really well.”

If only I could say that about my first week on our program. By Wednesday afternoon I was starving. I ransacked the pantry for a bag of chips. Nothing. Then I remembered. I’d talked Dale and the kids into getting rid of all the junk food.

I called Sam. She was having major sugar cravings. “I just want to give in and grab a doughnut,” she said. Uh oh.

I did what I would have done if someone in my Bible-study group hit a roadblock in her spiritual journey. I turned to Scripture. “Remember Ecclesiastes 3:11,” I said.

“‘He has made everything beautiful in its time,’” Sam said. “Okay. I feel better. I guess I needed to hear that.”

We hung up. I was dying to dash out for a burger and fries. But what kind of group leader would I be if I did that? Instead, I found a crisp apple in the fridge, my afternoon snack, and went for a long walk.

At our meeting Monday I cautiously stepped on the scale. I’d lost five pounds! I let out a shout. Every one of us had lost weight. I talked about goals, the importance of having realistic expectations, but I don’t know how much people paid attention, we were so giddy with success.

I managed to get through the next week without cheating food-wise, and even started to like the regular exercise. I couldn’t wait for our meeting. I hopped on the scale and…huh? One pound. I’d lost one lousy pound. All that work. And for what?

A lot of the others had barely lost any weight either. A couple had actually gained. “This is impossible,” one woman said. “I hate my body,” another moaned. “Sometimes I wonder how anyone, even God, can love someone who looks like me…” I saw heads nodding in agreement.

“We can’t give up,” I heard myself say. “Some weeks are going to be harder than others. There’s no quick fix. It took years to develop our unhealthy habits and it’s going to take time to change them.”

That was met with forced smiles. I didn’t know what else to say. We finished the meeting with a quick prayer.

Sam and I had started this program because we wanted everyone to come away from our weekly sessions uplifted, like after Bible study. Not down in the dumps, like they were now. What was missing?

I thought about it all week long. I could totally relate to those women hating their bodies, hating themselves. I used to feel the same way until…. A memory kept coming back to me.

The next Monday, even before our weigh-in, I shared a story. “Last Easter, I was onstage with our worship team, dancing and singing. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Not because I didn’t know the notes or the steps but because all I could think of was how fat and ugly I thought I was.

“And then something amazing happened. It was as if a huge tangled knot–my insecurities, my self-disgust–was suddenly pulled out from within me. And in its place was pure love. God’s love for me as I am, as he made me…beautiful in his sight.”

I paused. The women looked stunned. “Now I know why I’m here, leading this group,” I said. “It’s to tell you this: You don’t need to lose weight to be loved. Lose weight because you’re loved. And become the best you that you can be.”

After that I focused less on the numbers on the scale and more on how God was at work in me, in the women around me. I could see the change. Not just in our bodies. In self-image. In attitude. In the way we celebrated each other’s victories and prayed each other through challenges.

As the Bible tells us, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

At the end of the 12 weeks I’d shed 25 pounds. We’d all lost weight. More important, we all felt more healthy, energetic and positive. I didn’t want to quit. Neither did the others. The very next Monday we started another 12-week session, with twice as many women.

That was nine years ago. Today thousands of women in multiple chapters have reaped the benefits of our weight-loss group, following the same basic principles as that first class.

We call ourselves BABES: Beautiful, Accountable, Babes, Exercising, Sensibility. People often ask me why my program works. The answer is simple: It’s about love. God’s love, the one thing you can never get too much of.

Download your FREE ebook, Paths to Happiness: 7 Real Life Stories of Personal Growth, Self-Improvement and Positive Change

Meet the 89-Year-Old Grandma and Grandson Duo Taking the Road Trip of a Lifetime

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Daisy Urgiles and Carolina Pichardo

Brad Ryan, 38, has made it his mission to help his 89-year-old grandma, Joy Ryan, fulfill a lifelong wish to see more of the world.

After realizing that⁠—besides a local state park⁠ near her home in Duncan Fall, Ohio⁠—his grandmother had never traveled much or seen a mountain or desert, Ryan decided to take her to all 61 U.S. National Parks.

“So I called her up,” Ryan told Guideposts.org, “and said, ‘Hey, I really need to get away. I want to go to the Smokies and I think that it’s time that you see that mountain, are you game for that?’ And she said, ‘What time are you picking me up?’”

As for Grandma Joy, she said she was ready for that call. “You can just stay in your little old corner of the world for so long,” she explained, adding that she worked in a deli store up until her husband and dog passed away, she had very little—besides her church community—holding her home. “There wasn’t anything there. And so, I just thought it would be nice to have an adventure.”

That fateful three-day road trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2015 was, according to Ryan, a healing experience for the two of them. Ryan at the time was completing his fourth year as a veterinary student in The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, battling what he said was “severe depression and imposter syndrome.” Grandma Joy was recovering from a recent health scare that forced her to termporarily leave her home. His grandmother’s declining health, he said, is what prompted him to reconnect with her.

“I remember the intense guilt that I felt, like she could go at any time and I’ve already lost all this time,” Ryan said. “I’m never going to know how to make those raisin-dough cookies, or know what I was like as a kid, and I’m never going to know how she met my grandpa, and on and on.”

That first trip, Ryan said, allowed them to do so much of that. He wanted to continue taking Grandma Joy to National Parks, but didn’t have the money, so he created the “Grandma Joy’s Road Trip” GoFundMe page in 2017. The campaign, Ryan said, raised over $3,000 and helped pay for the big, month-long road trip that allowed them to visit 21 U.S. National Parks, including Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon, Sequioa and Canyonlands. Since then, Ryan said the dynamic duo have completed six road trips, including a six-weeks long journey last fall.

For Grandma Joy this has all been unexpected, but she’s thrilled to be enjoying this experience with her grandson.

“Well, the way I look at it, I would try anything once,” she said. “It’s a wonder I ever survived, but we did. I got to climb a mountain, I didn’t expect to do that!”

The duo is now almost to their goal of 61. They have visited 53 National Parks and driven 28,000 miles through 38 states in the last three and a half years. Their travels are captured on their joint Instagram account, which currently has over 35,000 followers.

“We’ve met many wonderful people,” Grandma Joy said. “We’ve met people from everywhere, all over the world, Australia, Germany. We did some Facebook Live and people asked us questions, and people called us from Belgium and Ireland, and my goodness, you never even thought that anyone would even know you were there.”

The two said the experience has been “kind of a shock,” but it’s been nice overall. “It’s something I’ll always remember,” said Grandma Joy.

“I just hope everyone gets some encouragement and realizes your life’s not over,” she said. “You can always do one more thing.”

The duo, who has partnered with Hyatt for support with their travels, hopes to celebrate Joy’s 90th birthday by visiting the remaining parks throughout 2020, and eventually fulfilling Grandma Joy’s biggest wish, visiting Hawaii and Alaska.