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How Her Sobriety Changed the Family Christmas

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Suzanne E. Hayes

When you’re a recovering alcoholic single mom with no job, no money, no house of your own and only partial custody of your kids, the beloved Christmas song has it all wrong. Christmas isn’t the most wonderful time of the year.

I was an active alcoholic for more than 15 years. I’d started drinking in high school. At first, alcohol transformed me from an average, overlooked youngest-of-five into someone daring, funny and popular. For about a decade I kept my drinking under control enough to graduate college, get married, have kids and make a living, but eventually the alcohol took over.

By the end I was drinking vodka around the clock. I had gotten two DUIs, detoxed in the hospital multiple times and burned through a marriage. I couldn’t even hold down a job. I did all of this as a mom to three wonderful kids. I was crippled by guilt. But ruled by my disease, I drank anyway. My shame was most painful at Christmas.

My ex-husband, Brian, had primary custody of the kids because of my drinking. Every other year I’d have them for Christmas Eve or morning, then Brian and I would make sure everyone made it to church and grandparents’ houses. I managed to mess up even this. I’d be late, forget stuff, pass out, try to hide what was glaringly obvious. Every year my vow to stay sober would crumble.

I’d compensate with gifts. I’d max out credit cards, cajole friends and relatives into “loaning” me money and buy the kids stuff they didn’t need. Some years I’d start stressing about the holidays in February. Everything would depend on that one moment, when the kids tore through the big pile of gifts. Their excitement would mean they loved me. That I was a good mom after all.

I thought all of that would change when I finally got sober five years ago. I expected sobriety to make all my Christmas problems vanish. But it was more complicated than that. The last Christmas before I got sober was the worst one of all. Two months before the holiday, I was in detox again. The facility told me a bed had become available at a well-respected local rehab program, which required a six-month commitment. It would mean missing the kids’ birthdays. And Christmas.

“Should I do it?” I asked everyone.

“If you don’t, you’ll be back in the hospital, in jail or dead,” my brother-in-law said. He was one of the few members of my family unafraid to tell me the truth.

Everyone else tiptoed around my drinking. “Try quitting on your own,” they said. “You need to be there for the kids.” Which was of course what I wanted to hear. I’d sober up—well, manage my drinking—through the holidays, then think about rehab. It was my year to host Christmas morning. How could I let the kids down?

Once again I maxed out credit cards and pestered everyone for money. I bought a tree for the apartment (mostly paid for by my parents) and piled up the presents. I was already drinking before Brian showed up with the kids on Christmas morning. Molly, the oldest, was 10. Nora was six. Emmet was three.

Nora and Emmet were too young to know about my disease. But Molly knew more than enough. She’d seen me passed out. Suffered through my chronic unreliability. I tried to pretend otherwise, but deep down I knew she was wounded every time I drank. Still, gifts were gifts. Molly joined her brother and sister tearing through presents. I was relieved to see Brian pull up outside to take us all to church and my parents’ house.

The rest of the day was a blur. By the time Brian took the kids home and I returned to the apartment I was somewhere between drunk and hungover.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Wrapping paper, ribbons and boxes were scattered around the living room. For a moment I thought someone had broken in. Then I remembered. The kids had opened presents that morning and we hadn’t cleaned up. Christmas morning with the kids had been my excuse to avoid rehab—and now I had only the vaguest memory of any of it. Two months later, I was in the rehab I’d rejected in the fall.

The following Christmas, I had 10 months of sobriety under my belt. I was determined to make up for every holiday I’d ruined. One problem: The holidays are a minefield for a recovering alcoholic.

“Be careful,” Alcoholics Anonymous veterans warned at meetings, telling stories of throwing away years of sobriety in a careless moment at a Christmas party.

I was a nervous wreck. Plus, I was still broke and I’d moved in with my parents after getting out of rehab. I’d decided I wouldn’t manipulate people into giving me money this time, so instead I opened a bunch of new credit card accounts and ran them up buying enough gifts to show the kids what a good mom I was now that I was sober.

They sort of liked the gifts. Molly spent Christmas Eve eyeing me warily. I could tell she was searching for signs that I was drinking. The holiday ended with me feeling deeply let down—and equally deep in debt.

“You can’t buy your kids’ trust,” my AA sponsor told me. “Give it time. If you stay sober, it will happen.”

I wanted to believe that. But it was hard to be patient in the day-to-day of parenting. Molly remained wary of me. Sometimes she’d bring up memories of the old days, and I’d have to fight the urge to argue, “I’m sober now! Please forget all that.” Ignoring my sponsor, I kept turning to money.

Kids upset? Spring for a trip to the trampoline park. Tired and stressed? “Let’s go out to dinner!” Christmas coming? Max out those credit cards again. Then it came time for me to work through AA’s ninth step: making amends. The hardest of all was Molly. How could I begin?

“Just be honest,” my sponsor said.

“I’m so sorry for everything I did,” I told Molly, echoing words my sponsor had suggested. “I’m trying my best to stay sober and be a good mom to you and Nora and Emmet. I want to earn your trust.”

A single conversation can’t repair years of damage. But after opening up to Molly, I noticed her opening up a little to me too. She got a good grade on a test and I was the first person she called. She’d still bring up incidents from when I was drinking, but she’d add, “I’m glad you don’t do that anymore, Mom.”

That Christmas I was less stressed because I was more confident in my sobriety. I still bought too many gifts. But it began to dawn on me that even more fun than the gifts was the time we spent together—cooking, decorating and baking cookies for Santa. Each year the holiday got a little better. Bit by bit the kids—and everyone else in my family—trusted me more. Brian and I settled into a good Christmas rhythm. The kids and I established our own traditions.

Last year I rented a house on my own with money saved from my job as an admissions office manager at a private school. The kids helped me move in on a hot August day. As Christmas approached, I got excited about celebrating in our new home.

Over the previous year, mindful of paying rent, I’d tried saying no more often—as in, not rushing out to buy whatever the kids had asked for because I was afraid they wouldn’t love me otherwise. The kids were actually happier. Somehow, more structure equaled less stress. I decided to try approaching Christmas the same way.

Instead of armloads of presents, I bought each kid one gift they really wanted plus a few fun things. I got a skateboard for Emmet, a little camera for Nora and a cell phone for Molly, who was now 15.

The kids and I bought a tree at a tree farm and put up ornaments. We decorated the house and hung stockings from the banister going upstairs from the living room. I took the kids to see Santa at the mall—they were kind of old for that, but they loved it anyway. We baked cookies on Christmas Eve.

There were noticeably fewer gifts under the tree. But the kids were so thrilled with their big gifts, they didn’t seem to notice. I, however, noticed everything. The crisp weather. The glow of lights from our tree. The quiet house when everyone had gone to bed. The excited chatter of opening gifts contrasted with the delicious laziness of staying in pajamas all morning long. I noticed it because I was sober. No crushing credit card bills loomed. No guilt shadowed my heart. It was a day of love and pure celebration.

This is why people like Christmas so much! I thought. It was a revelation. So do I agree with the Christmas song now? Sort of. Don’t get me wrong. I love the holidays. But I love the rest of the year too. My sobriety is a gift that renews itself one day at a time. My kids’ love and trust continues to grow. The God we celebrate at Christmas provides a life I could only dream about when I was drinking.

It’s all wonderful. At Christmas and always.

How Her Horse Helped Her Connect with God

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Lou Dean

Phil and David and I crept along the yard fence on our bellies and elbows, like soldiers on a battlefield. In the lead, my older brother, Phil, gave a hand signal for us to lay low while he proceeded.

Within minutes, David and I were scrambling up on the golden palomino mare as Phil untied her from the fence. Our older sister, Pat, came blasting out the screen door into the front yard.

“You little brats!” she screamed. “She’s my horse.”

“Just ’cause you’re the oldest doesn’t mean she’s yours,” Phil yelled as he jumped on Maybelle and kicked to get us going.

Maybelle trotted toward the back pasture of our farm with the three of us bouncing bareback and clinging to one another. Sis pursued us on foot. As we passed the barn, I turned and could barely see her, a speck near the creek. After a few minutes I heard the screen door slam. Phil pulled the mare to a walk, and we rode off toward the blackjack thicket that surrounded our Oklahoma farm.

“She’s a good old babysitter,” Phil said, patting the mare’s neck.

“I’m no baby,” David said, with a pout. “Don’t need no babysitter.”

“Phil just means that Maybelle is calm and can be trusted,” I said. “That’s what Dad says. He calls Maybelle a natural babysitter.”

“Mama will be comin’ back soon,” my younger brother proclaimed. My four-year-old brother had remained adamant that our mother would return to the farm.

Phil pulled on the reins, Maybelle stopped and all of us slid off into the knee-deep bluestem grass. He tied Maybelle to a low-lying limb, and the three of us walked through the weeds up over the pond dam. Grasshoppers jumped up around my bare legs. At the sound of our approach, a pair of wood ducks flew off the water and bullfrogs splashed into the muddy pond.

“Mama won’t be coming back to live with us,” Phil said. “She and Dad got a divorce. But we’ll see her sometimes.”

David stamped his foot, sending blackbirds flying from a cottonwood tree. “I’m mad at her.”

Embracing the truth that our mother was gone for good seemed too much to bear. “Well I’m mad at God,” I blurted.

Phil grinned at me. “That a girl, Sissy, go straight to the boss.”

It irritated me that he always remained so calm about the disruption that had rattled our world. I picked up a dirt clod and tossed it at him. “Know-it-all.”

He pulled fishing line and hooks from his shirt pocket. “Let’s catch some grasshoppers and fish.”

While the boys distracted themselves, I returned to Maybelle, untied her and crawled up onto her back. I held the reins loosely so she could graze. I leaned forward and let my arms dangle around her strong neck. I listened as she pulled the grass and munched, as she blew out her breath and switched her tail. I thought about the day Mama cried, told us goodbye and left the farm. Now Dad worked his railroad job, farmed and stayed in a bad mood.

“Got ya!” Sis screamed in triumph, grabbing the reins.

“Don’t take her, Sis. I like just sitting on Maybelle as she grazes.”

Sis motioned for me to scoot back. She grabbed a handful of long white mane and used her bare feet to climb the mare’s front leg, then slid in front of me.

“I like to sit on her too,” Sis admitted. “Makes me feel safe somehow.”

There was a long silence between us. At 13, my older sister had taken on the responsibilities of the house after Mama left. Together we’d burned cornbread and learned to fry chicken. We had stood in the kitchen of our small farmhouse, peeled potatoes, sliced peaches and made cobblers. Sis talked of school and boys, and I talked about my dog and the other farm animals, but during all that time, we’d never discussed Mama’s leaving.

“It’s hard to feel safe sometimes,” I said.

“Yeah. A friend of mine who lost her folks in a car accident says a person can talk to God and it helps.”

Talking to God interested me. “Do you ever do that?”

“Sometimes,” Sis allowed. “When I’m by myself on Maybelle.”

Phil and David came charging over the hill. “Let’s play chicken,” Phil yelled, grabbing Maybelle’s reins and leading her toward a ditch.

Phil squeezed up behind Sis, in front of me.

“Why do I always get stuck in the back?” David wanted to know.

“Because it’s the natural order of things, little brother,” Phil said. “It’s called seniority.”

Our game began as we thumped our bare feet against Maybelle’s sides until she took off in a fast trot, up over the first hill then down, red dirt flying into our faces. The object of the game was to be the last one remaining on Maybelle—which seldom happened, because when one of us started to slide off we clung to the one in front until the pair of us were goners.

As Maybelle scrambled up out of the second gully, David slid to one side and tried to use me to save himself. I clung to Phil in front of me, but David had managed to get me off balance and drag me over with him. We hit the ground with a thud. Phil and Sis lasted just one more gully, then the four of us lay strung out on the ground in giggling heaps as Maybelle calmly stopped and waited for us to remount.

After that conversation with Sis about talking to God, I began to ride Maybelle off alone any chance I got. I’d take her to the deep woods and sit in the shade with the summer sun blazing out across the farm and the locusts humming. I’d been to church only on a couple of occasions with my grandmother, who lived four hours away. The only prayer I’d ever said was the “Now I lay me down to sleep…” prayer, which Mama taught us and Dad seemed to have no time for.

Once, while in Sunday school at Grandma’s church, the teacher had insisted we all pray out loud. Around the circle she came, laying her hand on the shoulder of the one to pray next. I was scared and had no clue what to say. My face burned with embarrassment as the teacher waited behind me and I remained quiet. After an eternity she moved on around the circle and left me with my humiliation.

In spite of that early failure to connect to God, I became determined. Maybelle would help me! As I sat in silence on back of Maybelle and hugged her with my bare legs, I made a number of efforts that didn’t go far. But one day, I blurted out my feelings.

“I’m mad at you,” I said in a whisper. “How could you let our Mama leave?” The words loosened a damn of emotion, and as I continued, the tears rolled and with them came an immense relief. I had the clear feeling that someone was listening.

After that day, I held daily visits with God. I talked to him about my worries. That the four of us would somehow survive on the farm without Mama. That Mama would be okay. I’d talk aloud as Maybelle munched grass and grabbed overhead at the turning leaves. I talked as the crows called out from the pecan grove in the distance.

One day I was in the barn when Sis came in crying. I hid behind some bales of hay, watching as she slid up on our horse and the two of them trotted off toward the far pasture. I asked God to be with my sister and to wipe away her tears.

On a glorious autumn day, when the four of us were scheduled to meet Mama at the cattle guard that bordered the county road and get introduced to her new husband, Hank, it was David who suggested we ride Maybelle to the meeting place. “It seems safer,” my little brother said.

Dad wouldn’t allow Mama and her new husband on the farm, but had agreed we could meet them outside the property near the cattle guard. The four of us, spit shined and polished, mounted Maybelle that morning and started off. Halfway to our destination, Sis pulled Maybelle to a stop. In the distance we saw Mama’s station wagon driving slowly down the county road toward the cattle guard.

“I don’t wanna meet him,” David confessed.

“I’m not all that crazy about it myself,” Sis agreed.

We sat in silence for a moment. The wind made the colorful red, gold and brown leaves dance overhead. By then I’d gotten real comfortable with God. I swallowed hard, took a deep breath and squeezed my bare legs against Maybelle’s great belly for inspiration.

“God,” I said, “please be with us today and help us be kind to Hank.”

Phil shouted, “Amen.” He kicked Maybelle gently. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

That was the start of a long road for us kids, with high points and low points, growing up on the farm. I was a freshman in college before I really explored the memory of that day all of us rode on Maybelle’s back to do something we didn’t know if we were strong enough to do. The old farm had sold and Maybelle had passed. Sis was marrie and Phil was in the Air Force. David lived with Dad and his new wife in southern Oklahoma.

It was a picture in my college mythology book that got my attention, the picture of a grand horse with wings. Transfixed by Pegasus, I considered our Maybelle, who had been so much more than a babysitter. After all, it was while sitting barelegged on her broad back that I had entered into a relationship with God. The golden palomino with a white mane and tail had carried me through difficult days and onto the faithful road I continue to travel, safe in God’s care.

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How Helping Others Can Be Its Own Reward

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Cindy Connolly

The sweet and special times you share with someone who needs your help can shine through amongst even the toughest challenges of caregiving. An additional and perhaps less obvious beacon of lending support to another can be the act of giving itself. We all know ’tis better to give than to receive, but it’s not only because giving benefits those around us. It can also improve your health in significant ways.

Doing for others has been shown to boost both physical and mental well-being; among the benefits are lower blood pressure, increased self-esteem, decreased depression and stress levels and greater longevity.

Stress goes along with any caregiving role, but the act of giving can be a powerful stress buffer.

If you feel your calling may be to do work that helps others—such as a paid in-home care aide or a volunteer serving any number of needs—consider how doing so could help you as well.

Giving support—rather than receiving it—may have unique positive effects on key brain areas involved in stress and reward responses, according to one study. Researchers used neuroimaging to look at how brain areas involved in stress-, reward- and caregiving-related activities were affected by giving versus receiving social support.

At the brain level, only support giving was associated with beneficial neurological outcomes. According to the researchers, giving support might improve health by “reducing activity in stress-and threat-related regions during stressful experiences.”

Lower blood pressure was correlated with giving social support in another study. It also found that “participants with a higher tendency to give social support reported greater received social support, greater self-efficacy, greater self-esteem, less depression, and less stress than participants with a lower tendency to give social support to others.”

Helping behavior has also been associated with living longer. Researchers at three universities had 846 subjects from the Detroit area complete baseline interviews assessing past-year stressful events and whether they had provided tangible assistance to friends or family members during that time. The researchers then tracked participant mortality for five years via newspaper obituaries and state death records. “[O]ver the five years of the study, we found that when dealing with stressful situations, those who had helped others during the previous year were less likely to die than those who had not helped others,” said Michael J. Poulin, PhD, a coauthor of the study. “Our conclusion is that helping others reduced mortality specifically by buffering the association between stress and mortality.”

Another way to boost longevity is through volunteer work. One study suggested, however, that motivation is key. Participants who volunteered regularly and frequently lived longer, but only if they were motivated to volunteer out of a true desire to help others, rather than for self-oriented reasons.

Volunteering offers a host of additional health benefits, especially for older adults, according to the Mayo Clinic Health System. It can lower stress levels, boost self-confidence and trust in others, decrease the risk of depression, and even leave you with a positive feeling known as a “helper’s high.”

Lending your time as a volunteer for as little as two hours per week can improve your mental, emotional and physical health, reports the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging. It can reduce chronic pain, risk of disease and social isolation and increase physical fitness, mental functionality, sense of purpose and social connection.

So, give of yourself, if you’re so inclined, and if your heart is in it. It could be one of the best things you do for you.

How He Came to Minister to Hikers on the Appalachian Trail

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Matt Hall

Approaching the summit of Mount Katahdin, the highest point in Maine, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Day One of my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail and God was already blessing my hike with his powerful presence!

The hair on my arms stood up. I felt an electric charge in the air. I could see the sign marking the summit. I was starting at the northern terminus of the storied trail, and this was my first day’s goal. Was this what folks mean when they talk about “trail magic”?

Then I looked up and saw a massive thunderhead directly above the summit. The wind picked up, and the electricity in the air intensified.

I wasn’t having a direct encounter with God! This wasn’t trail magic! I was blundering into a thunderstorm atop an exposed peak. A mistake only a rookie hiker would make.

A rookie hiker like me.

Next minute, I was engulfed. Hail pounded down. Stupidly, I ran to the summit, got a picture of myself with eyes closed against the elements and raced back down, nearly slipping on what had become an icy trail.

The only encounter with God I had that day was divine mercy shielding me from the lightning strike that my inexperience had exposed me to.

I reached the base of the mountain, where the trail wends toward its southern terminus, Springer Mountain in Georgia, almost 2,200 miles away, and said a ragged prayer of thanks.

I also thought, Matt, what have you gotten yourself into?

It was June of 2017. Not only was I thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail solo, but I was also doing so as an official United Methodist Church trail chaplain. Since 2013, the Holston Conference of the UMC has selected a member to travel the length of the trail, befriending hikers and bringing God’s love to a place where many people are on a spiritual as well as physical journey.

If you had met me four years earlier, you would never have predicted that one day I would embark on a challenging long-distance hike as a witness for Jesus. Not in your wildest dreams.

I was sitting in jail in Virginia for selling methamphetamines. I’d sold the drugs to support my opioid addiction. I’d been an alcoholic, drug addict and dealer for years.

My dad had abandoned my mom when she was pregnant with me. Mom was 19. She dropped out of college. My stepfather struggled with meth addiction, and there was lots of fighting and instability in our house.

I experimented with drugs and alcohol in high school. Experimented—who was I kidding? By graduation, I was a full-blown addict, the guy who got crazy drunk at parties to overcome shyness, then felt deeply ashamed the next day and drank more to blot it all out.

I got booted out of the Army after failing a drug test. Lost jobs. Totaled a brand-new car and broke my neck. The accident introduced pain pills to my menu of substances.

At last came the inevitable arrest and felony conviction. I detoxed in jail and, for the first time in years, experienced the world as a sober adult. I was 23.

A preacher came into the jail periodically to read from the Bible and deliver a sermon. Most of the inmates ignored him. I wasn’t particularly interested in what he was selling, but his sincerity was hard to ignore. I realized he was the first apparently good person I had encountered in years.

I wound up in a court-ordered treatment program, which was followed by a year of strict supervision. I took up running at the recommendation of a treatment counselor.

One day, I jogged past a small Methodist church. Remembering the jailhouse preacher, I started attending. Church was one of the few places my restricted license allowed me to drive.

Why did I keep going to that church? Why did I stay sober? The answer is simple. People welcomed me—a felon, a drug dealer, a guy who’d wrecked his life. On some level, those jailhouse sermons had gotten through to me.

I wanted more of that. Unlike alcohol or drugs, God actually filled my deep well of inner need. I wasn’t waiting around for the next fix. His presence was a constant.

I was baptized and started a 12-step program at the church. People kept telling me I should consider a call to ministry. I attended some conferences and shared my testimony at other churches.

At one conference, I saw a video about the Appalachian Trail chaplaincy. Poor guy, I thought, figuring some unlucky pastor got tasked with that ministry each year.

I’d added occasional hikes to my workout routine, and some friends got the mistaken impression I loved being in nature. My main experience with the great outdoors had been passing out on my way home from parties.“

“Matt, you should apply for this trail chaplaincy,” a friend urged.

You had to apply to torture yourself like that?

“You’ll meet people in our conference doing the interviews. Think about it.”

I did want to meet more people in the church. I figured I was such a newbie, I’d never get picked. I applied. A few months later, I was shaking hands with an enthusiastic interview panel and being told to start buying the gear I’d need.

With help from the church, I had almost eight months to prepare. By the time I blundered into that hail-storm on Katahdin, I was physically fit but still very inexperienced in the wilderness—and in ministry.

It was one thing to share my story in a 12-step group or at a church service. I couldn’t picture going up to a stranger and saying, “Hi, want to talk to an ex-junkie about Jesus?” I’d received training in practicing the ministry of presence—getting to know hikers and helping people in need. I planned to lean on that training and share the Gospels when asked.

The day after Katahdin, I set out through Maine’s 100-Mile Wilderness. I vowed to be more careful. And I realized that, no matter how nervous you feel, when you’re hiking, you have no choice but to put one foot in front of the other, a little like sobriety. Life becomes very simple when it’s one step at a time.

Everyone on the A.T. adopts a trail name—a nickname expressing something about you. Mine was Trigger, the name Willie Nelson gave his old, beat-up guitar. I’d beaten myself up pretty good as an addict. I prayed I had what it took to meet this responsibility.

In July, I pulled off the trail to resupply in Stratton, Maine. I ended up eating with other hikers at a hostel. A burly guy struck up a conversation. He was a retired Marine, hiking the trail north with his wife. Because of their early start, they were nearing the end.

“At first, I didn’t know why I was out here,” he said. “In the Smoky Mountains, I realized: I’m looking for a purpose. The military was always my purpose. Now I think I need something spiritual.” He eyed me.

“Cool,” I said, “I’m a United Methodist trail chaplain. The church sends one each year to meet hikers.”

He brightened. “You mean a church cares enough to send a minister to meet someone like me?’

“It’s what Jesus did,” I said.

He blinked back tears. “Thank you, man. I think I just found my answer.”

That was better than any electric charge in the air. This was more than trail magic. For the rest of the hike, I would stumble into many such conversations.

I met people grieving a loved one or wrestling with a big life transition. Many had endured struggles with addiction. They were encouraged to learn that a chaplain had shared that struggle. What I’d always thought of as my weakness turned out to be a ministerial strength.

Not everyone was happy when they learned I was a chaplain. One woman in New Hampshire pushed back.

“I’m Jewish,” she said.

“I’m not here to convert anyone,” I told her. “Just meet people where they are.”

She relaxed, and we discovered a shared love of the musician John Prine. We ended up singing a duet of his song “Angel from Montgomery.”

I hiked through bugs, rain, stifling heat, freezing cold. I got blisters and muscle aches. I was always dirty.

Many days I hiked alone. Each night, I crowded into a lean-to with other hikers to share food, sleeping space and stories.

I wended through New Hampshire’s granite peaks, the old hills of Massachusetts, the mid-Atlantic’s gentle landscapes (notorious for rocks, roots and mud) and the wooded heights of the Great Smoky Mountains.

The trail became its own world. The farther I hiked, the more I felt God was beside me, step by step, guiding my way as he had since I got sober.

Growing up in a chaotic household, I’d always assumed there was something wrong with me. I’d wasted years hiding my insecurities behind a fog of addiction. On the A.T., all I had was myself, the stuff in my pack and God. Life was reduced to its essence.

It was fall as I entered Georgia. The leaves were gone, and nights were frosty. I approached the trail’s end with mixed feelings. A crowd of church people, friends and family would be waiting. Thoughts of a warm bed and a burger were enticing.

I would miss the simplicity of the trail and my daily conversations with strangers. Maybe everyone was right. Maybe I was called to be a minister. I loved talking about God. And for the first time in my life, I’d achieved a big goal without messing up.

I walked the last days with a group of hikers I’d gotten to know. I reached Springer Mountain, surrounded by cheers and hugs. I signed the trail register, and that was it. I was done.

It was hard to convey my feelings. I was glad God knew what I couldn’t express. One foot in front of the other. God always at my side. Those were lessons I would take with me long after the hike was over.

I did go on to become a licensed Methodist minister. Now I help oversee the trail chaplaincy program. I’d love to do another big hike someday, maybe the Pacific Crest Trail.

For now, I minister on a more everyday trail. It’s a different kind of adventure. And like everything else with God, that’s more than enough.

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How Hardship Can Give Us the Tools to Do Good

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Pablo Diaz

If we let them, our negative experiences in life can hold us back from reaching our goals, trying new things and much more. As humans, we have a tendency to dwell on our bad experiences; they can prevent us from moving forward as we fear what has happened in the past. Although we can’t change the past or forget the dreadful things that have happened to us, if we try, we can find lessons within these experiences. How we interpret our hardships shapes how we live today. It doesn’t lessen the pain or suffering, but it can make us stronger.

When I think of people who have suffered great hardships, the writers Victor Frankl and Elie Wiesel come to mind. These two individuals along with many others survived the unimaginable evil and sufferings of the Holocaust; yet, they have greatly impacted thousands of lives since. Frankl said, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” Though this is true, living with the past wasn’t an easy task for those who survived this tragic time in history, but they continued to live their lives with purpose and helped others.

After several months in concentration camps, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he developed and lectured about his own approach to psychological healing. He believed that people are primarily driven by a “striving to find meaning in one’s life,” and that it is this sense of meaning that enables people to overcome painful experiences. Wiesel continued on to become a professor of humanities, help establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., campaign for victims of oppression in places like South Africa and Nicaragua and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Thankfully, most of us have not faced the devastatingly cruel conditions that those imprisoned in the concentration camps did. But each of us has faced our own hardships in life, and if we can find lessons within these experiences and discover our “why” to live, we can flourish because of them.

Lord, help us to turn our pain and hardship into tools to do good.

How ‘Hamilton’ Star Leslie Odom Jr. Almost Missed His Shot

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Jessica Toomer

Leslie Odom Jr. has both a GRAMMY and a Tony award sitting on his shelf. The singer is fresh off of a role in the international box office success Murder on the Orient Express. Oh, and he played Aaron Burr in a tiny Broadway show you might have heard of called Hamilton.

The 2016 Tony award-winning musical – which used hip-hop to recount America’s earliest beginnings through the eyes of one of its founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton — became one of the best-performing Broadway shows in history. It was heralded as a cultural achievement. It spurred an interest in America’s legacy. It had young kids rapping about historical figures like George Washington, John Laurens, and the Marquis de Lafayette.

And Odom almost wasn’t a part of it. Battling depression after a decade of acting with no big success to his name, Odom almost quit the profession before he got his biggest roles.

Thankfully, he stayed the course and, these days, Odom’s plate is more than full. Guideposts.org caught up with Odom just a few days before the release of his new book, Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning. The new father of a 1-year-old girl with his wife Nicolette Robinson, is in the middle of reshoots for his upcoming movie with Kate Hudson and preparing for his first book tour. In fact, it’s all this success that ultimately pushed him to pen a book about failure.

“I started from nothing,” Odom tells Guidepost.org. “It was a really tough road to get to this very fortunate position that I find myself in now. I think there’s something that’s important in holding your private struggles and your battles, holding that up against the triumphs; it makes the triumphs sweeter.”

He’s hoping that sharing his struggles will inspire those who aren’t yet where they want to be.

For Odom, his inspiration to ultimately become an actor began with his social studies teacher back when he was an unruly ten-year-old growing up in Philadelphia. Miss Turner, he recounts in his book, urged him to become an orator, competing in school and regional competitions and eventually inspiring his passion for the stage.

“I was a kid with some behavioral issues and discipline issues. It could’ve gone [another] way for me, really,” Odom says. “I met a woman who turned things around for me at that time. Miss Turner is unique to me, in Philadelphia. I know that not everybody has as supportive a network as I had, but in the book, I do challenge the reader to point out three people. I know that there are three people on this planet that care about you, that love you, that want you to win. It’s really about identifying those three people and allowing them to help you.”

When Odom was considering quitting acting for good, another mentor, Stuart Robinson, stepped in. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and moving out to L.A. to pursue acting, Odom fell into a depression after failing to get the roles he was hoping for.

“I was about to turn 30 and I really was going to quit,” Odom says. “This was six years ago, so this is before Hamilton, before Smash, Person of Interest, Law and Order SVU, some of the biggest things that I have done, I would’ve never made it to, but I was really tired of the up and downs,” he says.

“I dealt with depression on and off, certainly in my twenties when I was starting out. Part of that was because of the aimlessness and the insecurity and the instability, but I was just sick of it.”

He sat down with Robinson to see what else he could do and was given some much-needed tough love.

“He heard me out,” Odom recalls. “He heard me in the state that I was in and he said, ‘We can talk about that. We can talk about other things you might do, and things you might do with your life, but I’d love to see you try before you quit.’”

Odom felt taken aback.

“At this point, I had been a professional actor for a decade, so I was confused. I thought you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody who tries harder than me,” Odom says. “When the phone is ringing, when I get an opportunity, I knock the ball out of the park. The phone’s not ringing. [Robinson] said, ‘Exactly. So what did you do today, for yourself, in the absence of the ringing phone? Did you call anyone? Did you email anyone? Did you read anything? Did you practice? Did you study?’ He just opened my mind up to all the possible ways that I could fill a day for myself.”

It was that proactive way of thinking about pursuing his passion, reaching for his goals, that changed the course of Odom’s career.

“My life changed,” he says. “I was sitting on the couch. I was waiting for things to come to me and sitting on that couch, I was ignoring at least half of my responsibility as a businessman, as a freelance artist, as a person who was on a path. I had to get off that couch.”

Once he began actively campaigning for himself and his abilities, he found himself with a new problem. He was in New York working with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on the musical that would eventually change his life. He was involved in the production from the beginning, reading for the part of Burr who also serves as a pseudo-narrator of the show, but he hadn’t been promised anything. There was no official offer, no steady paycheck, just a dream shared by Odom and the rest of the cast.

Around that time, a new TV series he auditioned for wanted to bring him out to L.A. to begin filming. It would add plenty of money to his bank account and maybe, if it did well, make him a household name – two things most actors can only hope for.

Odom turned it down.

“There was a lot of money that that TV show was offering me, and my family certainly needed it,” Odom says. “There were no guarantees with the Hamilton thing. There was no guarantee that, even if Hamilton was a success, if it made it to Broadway, I didn’t have anything in my contract that would guarantee that they would take me. I turned that TV show down, but in my heart, there was no other option. That was the only option that I was going to be able to sleep at night. That was the only option I was going to be able to live with. It sounded a little crazy to people as I was telling them what I was looking to do, but, it paid off.”

Odom shares that story in his book in the hopes that it might motivate someone else to make a life-changing decision, and pay attention to their intuition, that inner-voice that can guide you to seemingly impossible opportunities.

“The people that I respect the most, the people that I revere and sort of look up to, the careers, especially, that I look up to, there’s a tremendous amount of risk involved in those careers,” Odom says. “I share it, only because that’s going to help somebody. Somebody’s going to be like, ‘You know, that’s a crazy story that I heard and maybe this is my moment to do something crazy.’”

Odom ends his book by sharing another personal moment, reflecting on the way the world has changed since he played Burr at the Richard Rogers Theater in New York just two years ago. He recounts his experience performing at the University of Virginia’s bicentennial celebration in Charlottesville, Virginia, just weeks after a white nationalist rally injured over 20 people and ended with the deaths of one civilian and two police officers. It marked a shift in the country, one that was hard to believe after the success of Hamilton and the progress Odom felt the show was partly responsible for.

“There was something about Hamilton that felt like the world had changed, and we were on a path to a certain kind of inclusion, and a certain kind of hope, and a certain kind of, you know, America. It just felt like, ‘Wow, things have really turned a corner,’” Odom says.

“I think, without being too political, [there’s been] a resurgence of a certain kind of hatred, a certain kind of ugliness in this country. A major, emboldened, undeniable, and unashamed bigotry and prejudice that we’ve seen in this country, has been unleashed from somewhere. I needed to hold both of those things at the same time,” Odom says of ending the book talking about Charlottesville.

“I needed to reckon with this moment in my life that happened right after this other moment,” he continues. “I performed at the White House. Hamilton performed at the White House. A year or two later, [in today’s political climate] it’s almost unimaginable.”

Still, Odom hopes that by balancing out the more inspiring parts of his story – the Broadway success, the accolades, the personal moments of joy – with some of the harder truths about the struggles we all face living in the world today, people will find a relatability and a sense of hope after finishing the book.

“I never want to be too far from the lesson and the struggle of my journey,” Odom says. “I know how fleeting these moments are. The bad moments are fleeting, and the good ones are fleeting too.”

Still, he has hope that people can achieve what they were created to achieve.

“I just believe so strongly that there is no dead end when you are actively following your passion and actively putting one foot in front of the other to make a dream come true,” Odom says. “You will be guided. Whether it’s mentors and teachers and friends, or whether it’s universal laws showing up to push you forward.

How Gratitude Helps Roberta Messner Cope with Chronic Pain

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

Hi Guideposts, I’m Roberta Messner.

The most important thing I have actually learned on the journey of pain and healing, I’ve learned through sciatica. That was not a welcome visitor, I will tell you.

I had been divinely healed from a lifetime prison of pain, and I thought my life was going to be just seamless from then on out. No problems, everything would just go swimmingly. That did not happen.

Now, in the past I’d had all this intercranial pain and facial pain, sciatica steals you. You are a prisoner in a chair, a bed, whatever. You cannot get out of pain. So what happened with sciatica was, pain made me pause. I could not move like I did before, and I had to think.

I began to just let myself go back in time, and I would think of a really difficult time on a pain journey that helped me, and it would always be a person. There were real unexpected people sometimes, and yet they can turn around your life in just an instance.

And all during Covid, every day, I wrote a letter to one of those people who helped me at a critical time. Sometimes it was the first time I had ever said thank you, because I didn’t even know until I developed sciatica that I didn’t even acknowledge the blessing. And so I did that everyday, and sometimes I gave people a second thank you.

Unknowingly, what happened was gratitude tapped into my being. That is the most profoundly life-giving thing there is, if we can just be grateful. This really has been a key for me, that you just go back and realize you were never alone. And really, you will never be alone.

And that has really taught me to really trust God in those unanswered questions. To trust that He is going to send the exact people we need. Just as people, earth angels, whatever you want to call them, showed up at the right time way back when, they are going to right now and in the future. And then the next thing that happens is, you realize that you have the power to be that person for another person.

You never know a life that you will touch in just one comment, and to just realize the stunning power of that, I think that is the most important thing, if you have to live with pain.

How Gratitude Helped Him Stay Sober

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Bob L.

I was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer two years ago. I felt all the emotions you’d expect. Shock. Dread. Grief. Self-pity. One emotion surprised me. Even more surprising, it turned out to be the emotion that outlasted all the others, growing stronger as the reality of the diagnosis took hold.

That emotion is gratitude.

I’m not grateful that the cancer might take my life before I even reach my sixty-fifth birthday. The gratitude I’m talking about is my astonished thanks for the happy, stable and emotionally abundant life I will leave behind. A life I certainly did not deserve and never could have expected during the decade I squandered as an active alcoholic.

Back then, I burned through two marriages and came close to wrecking a promising law career. I manipulated people, abandoned friendships, treated women like emotional props and scorned help. It was another form of terminal illness.

Today I am married to a woman, Alice, who is more sensible, generous and spiritually mature than I could ever hope to be. We celebrated our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary this year. We have three children. I recently retired as partner of a New York City law firm.

None of this was foreordained. Especially not my marriage to Alice, which I consider foundational—after my relationship with God—to so much of my unexpected good fortune.

I am grateful for Alice. And I am grateful for what I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous that enabled me to have my relationship with Alice. AA taught me how to find and rely on God, live with integrity and think of others before myself. It taught me how to love unselfishly.

Those gifts helped keep me sober. They also made me a better husband and father. Now that I am dying, I can approach the end of my life in peace because of who I have become in sobriety.

I share my story in hopes that others struggling with addiction can find the connection and purpose that saved my life and filled me with such gratitude.

I started drinking heavily in high school. I can’t pinpoint why. There was nothing traumatic in my childhood. I’d grown up in a small town in north central Pennsylvania. Alcohol provided a respite from an undercurrent of insecurity I’d felt from the time I was little. I sought that respite often enough to get arrested for drinking at school in tenth grade. By the time I graduated high school, I couldn’t have fun—couldn’t get by, really—without alcohol.

I managed to graduate college and did well enough on an entrance exam to start law school. I paced my drinking, staying more or less sober during the semester, then cutting loose the minute school ended.

I got a job as an attorney representing a motorcycle company facing multiple safety lawsuits. The best part of the job? Some of the clients were heavy drinkers, and my expense accounts paid for our booze. Eventually I could no longer pace the drinking. My life spiraled into alcoholism’s inevitable chaos and self-destruction. I drank to overcome insecurity, but of course alcohol doesn’t solve problems. It just distracts from them while making them worse. I got so anxious and stressed at work, I seriously contemplated quitting the firm and moving back home. There was no legal work there. It would have been professional suicide.

My insecurities showed even more in my romantic relationships. I was terrified of rejection and gravitated to emotionally needy women, many of them fellow drinkers. I’d get infatuated, then recoil and move on—or she would.

My first wife, fed up with my drinking, walked out on me, leaving her wedding ring on the bathroom sink. My second wife, a fellow alcoholic, lost interest in me before the wedding.

The events that led me to Alcoholics Anonymous—the collapse of that second marriage, my denial that I had a problem, the night I gave in, got on my knees and begged a God I did not yet believe in to free me from the desire to drink—are variations on a theme known to many who have struggled with addiction.

The hopeful part is what happened after I entered recovery. Alcoholism, I learned, is a disease of isolation. I thought alcohol made me more sociable by compensating for my debilitating insecurity.

What it really did was interpose a veil between me and other people. Alcohol numbed my fears and insulated me from the hard work of building real relationships.

As I began to work the 12 steps of AA, I was surprised to discover how many of them directed me toward relationships with a higher power and with other people.

Steps two and three required me to surrender to a relationship with God. Steps four and five required a searching moral inventory and then admitting my character defects to God and to another person. The following steps went deeper. I had to make amends to people I had hurt, ask God to remove my shortcomings, pray often and share with other alcoholics what I had learned in recovery.

On top of that, I had to attend meetings and be honest with the people I met there. It felt so daunting after years of avoiding exactly this kind of connection and transparency.

I had no idea whether I could do it, much less progress from sobriety to forging authentic relationships with friends and coworkers—or maybe, one day, a spouse.

Here’s what happened. AA doesn’t just teach people how to forge relationships. In AA, you become a person who connects with others by doing it. The steps aren’t just suggestions. Following them forces you to act. The meetings throw you together with people from all walks of life with one thing in common—addiction. What’s left to hide?

Day by day, step by step, I opened myself to other people, admitted my most shameful acts and offered support to other alcoholics. After all those years of posturing and deflecting, I discovered a world I hadn’t known existed. A world in which people didn’t reject me when they learned the truth about me. A world in which love meant more than my need for affirmation.

I met Alice two years after my first AA meeting. We were both on vacation in the Caribbean. Alice was pretty, like other women I had been attracted to. But Alice was also strong, independent, smart and practical—and a woman of deep Christian faith. Even as we began dating back in New York, where she also lived, I found myself assuming she’d quickly see through me and dump me.

That’s where my AA experience kicked in. In my drinking days, I would have avoided someone like Alice or tried to manipulate her into falling for me. Now I simply acted like myself and hoped for the best.

I was driving Alice home one evening. Her face was unhappy, and the chorus of old insecurities started up: Here we go. She’s made up her mind. She’s about to dump me.

I caught myself. Through experience in AA, I’d learned it wasn’t healthy to try to read other people’s minds. “Everything okay?” I said. “What are you thinking?”

“Oh,” said Alice, “I was thinking about my younger brother. He’s not happy in his job.” Surprise! She wasn’t thinking negatively about me. She wasn’t thinking about me at all!

She gave me a sweet good-night kiss when I dropped her off, and we made plans for another date.

My foundation in recovery kept supporting me as things with Alice got more serious. In AA I already had friends and an outlet for my hang-ups. I loved Alice, but I didn’t need her like I’d needed women before.

After we got engaged, she moved temporarily to Hong Kong to work as a foreign correspondent. Before recovery, I would have been devastated. This time, I prayed things would work out, relied on my AA friends for companionship and support, and made plans to visit. Alice came home, we married, and my initial decision to trust her turned into a habit that has sustained our marriage.

Early in recovery, a speaker told me that if I truly wanted a happy marriage, I should focus not on finding the perfect mate but on becoming the sort of person who would be attractive to a good partner.

I’ve since learned the underlying lesson: Make room for God to act.

In addiction—and maybe this is true for all unhealthy lifestyles—I assumed I was the center of my own universe. Recovery requires a different assumption: that we are not alone and that we are not in charge.

It’s a great foundation for marriage. The more I trust God and focus on following his direction, the easier it becomes to love Alice without stifling her and to be loved without fearing the love will get yanked away. None of the usual stresses that can break a marriage—work, children, finances, big decisions and the daily interactions that build up or grind down a relationship—have managed to shake that strong foundation in God.

Not even my cancer diagnosis has shaken it. Alice and I have cried together. We have prayed together. We have done our best to be realistic with the kids and prepare them for when I am gone.

We have experienced the deepest grief. Our marriage has survived. And I am still sober.

I keep thinking I am lucky to have been blessed with and loved by this woman and by the family we have raised together.

It’s not luck.

I was a self-destructive drunk, driving my life into a ditch. I let go of the wheel, reached out to God and gave in to recovery. I did the hard, halting work of learning to live in a new way.

I made room for God to act. He’s not done with me. I am grateful. And together with Alice, I am ready for what comes next.

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

How God’s Mercy Helped This Pilot Through Addiction

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by David Loe

Sometimes in church I glance over at my wife and still can’t believe how fortunate I am. Then I look down at our twin girls, five years old, and their little sister, a year old. Every time I look at them, I’m overcome with gratitude, and I think, This is more than I prayed for—a beautiful wife, three darling daughters. But I never deserved them, never deserved any of what I have, not one bit. God, how merciful You are. That thought comes to me a lot, more so than with most people. For the truth is, if it had not been for God, and for the faithful prayers of my parents and sisters, I most likely would be dead, or at least in prison. That’s what I really deserved.

Today, 11 years after my old life ended, I still get flashbacks and feelings of revulsion. And regret. A lot of regret. Even though I’ve given my life to the Lord and I know I’m forgiven, I can never forget that night back in October 1981 when it all came to a head. I remember looking at my wristwatch… It’s almost 10:00 p.m. By now I should be dead drunk and fast asleep. But after 12 hours of drinking, down to the last bottle of Jack Daniel’s in my friend’s liquor cabinet, I’m still wide-awake and alert. A shiver runs through me—and not just because of the chilly autumn air. I’m holed up in a condominium outside of Atlanta, hiding from the law. The feds have been looking for me for eight months. They arrested the guy I was working for. On a tip they’d come to the airport in Mississippi just after I flew us in from Colombia. I managed to get away, but they got my name. Now I’m tired and I’m scared.

I think of my parents and my two sisters down in Florida. They must be worried sick. If only I could call. But it’s too risky. I know they must be praying… I’m a pilot. I’ve been in love with airplanes ever since junior high, when I had model planes hanging from the ceiling, sitting on shelves, everywhere. I’d got my pilot’s license while in college majoring in aerospace technology. Then in the mid ‘70s I landed a job flying for a small company out in Arizona. But the company went under and I was unemployed. I kept hanging around airports, but there just didn’t seem to be any jobs for unemployed pilots. Money got scarce and the bills were piling up.

That’s when I was offered a quick $5,000 to fly down to Mexico in a rented plane to pick up a 600-pound load of marijuana. Since I’d smoked a little pot myself, I said okay. The job turned out to be easy—until I went to collect my pay. “Here’s five hundred,” the boss said. “You’ll get more as we move the product.”

The next day he gave me $1,000. Then later another $1,000. When he asked me to go on another trip, he still owed me. I told him so. “Yeah, I know,” he said, “but as soon as we get some more product, I’ll pay you in full. In fact, I’ll give you another thousand as a bonus next trip, ‘cause you’ve been so patient waiting for your money. What do you say?”

That was how it all started. From then on, despite the risks, I was hooked on the adventure and the cash. Although the boss always held a little bit back, I got paid regularly, enough for me to begin living it up. Wanting to get out of the business before I got busted, I moved back to Florida, where I had grown up. But Florida had become the country’s main port of entry for marijuana, and soon I was back into running drugs. I began to live in the fast lane: allnight parties, expensive clothes, antique cars, a waterfront house, a sailboat. My family was not impressed. I recall the time I bragged to my older sister, Marcia, “This is the life.”

“You mean all the parties?” she responded. “All the drinking? Is that what life is about?” I can still see the fear in her eyes. “David, you need to get your life right with Jesus.”

Here in the condo I check my watch again: 10:30. I lie down and gulp some Quaaludes. They usually knock me right out. But 10 minutes pass, then 20…This is crazy, scary. I’ve downed enough alcohol and drugs to knock out an elephant, but I’m still awake. And I keep thinking of Mom and my sisters, and those prayers…

The guy I worked for made bail and was already putting toget her new drug deals. On a prearranged day I called him periodically from a pay phone in Fort Lauderdale. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I got the best lawyer. He thinks he can get the whole thing thrown out on a technicality.”

“What am I supposed to do till then?” I asked.

“Look, Dave, I’ll send you another twenty-five hundred. Don’t lose your cool, okay?”

Twenty-five hundred…never the full amount. It’s just like always. And if he gets convicted, I’ll get nothing. I lie here wondering, is this the way it ends? I can’t bear the thought of my family’s having to visit me in prison. Mom, Dad, Marcia, Ellen…if ever I needed your prayers, I need them now.

I used to make jokes about those prayers, especially after a close call. For instance, there was the time my plane, overloaded with gasoline, had an engine failure and crashed on the runway. The plane didn’t explode and I walked away without a scratch. And the time in the mountains when I got lost in the fog without any radios: I could have slammed into a mountain but flew out of the soup in one piece.

“I think it’s all those prayers my family is saying for me,” I’d said. We all laughed.

Even this last time, when our plane was so overloaded with Quaaludes that I couldn’t get the nose up—I’d finally jammed the throttles so far forward I thought the engines were going to come apart. Yet we made it. Was it their prayers? Why would God protect me? I’m not laughing now. Why doesn’t He just wipe me out like a cockroach?

I ponder that for a moment. Despite the alcohol and the drugs, I’m still thinking pretty clearly. I just can’t understand it. My life, that is. All those times I could have been killed…but wasn’t.

Like the time a year ago. I was piloting a twin-engine 10-passenger Aero Commander out of Haiti. We’d had the fuel system fixed several times. Then secretly we took out all the passenger seats and put in an extra fuel tank—actually a huge rubber bladder filled with 100 gallons of aviation gasoline. Taking off from Port-au-Prince, we arrived at Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula at dusk to pick up 2,500 pounds of marijuana.

The shipment wasn’t there. So we waited. And waited. Finally, as darkness fell, our contact ran over. “The army intercepted the truck! Get out of here—now!”

We took off in the dark without the drugs. An hour later, cruising at 13,000 feet over the Caribbean, heading for Florida, we began to lose power in one of the engines. I knew immediately what it was: the fuel system. “I’m going to have to leave on the auxiliary fuel pump,” I told my copilot.

But by 11:00 p.m. the pump had burned out and the other engine was acting up. Far below us were 20-foot swells; if we were forced to ditch, the plane would break up. We would die. I flipped the radio to the international emergency frequency.

“No one’s answering,” I said to the copilot. “I’m heading back to Haiti. But we’ll have to blow the plane. Can’t let ‘em see it’s been outfitted to haul pot.”

We were steadily losing, altitude. We were down to 5,000 feet and losing the radio navigation signal. In the dark we could miss Haiti completely. Then, up ahead, we saw lightning flashing. A thunderstorm. “That’s Haiti!” I cried.

“You sure?” the copilot asked.

“Yes. This time of year, thunderstorms form over land.”

After landing on the runway, the copilot unhooked the extra fuel tank and sprayed gasoline inside the cabin. “Jump!” I yelled as I tossed a burning match in. There was a tremendous explosion. I found myself lying at the edge of the airstrip, half my hair burned off, my flight jacket melted. A group of soldiers was running at us, shooting. They must have thought we were an invasion party.

The next morning we were set free by an official we’d paid off earlier. But I kept thinking, We ought to be dead. It must be those prayers…

In the Atlanta condo I try to fit it all together. It’s as if something is holding on to me, and the only thing that adds up…

Marcia’s words keep pounding in my head: “You’ve got to get right with Jesus.” How can I, after all the things I’ve done? I’ve run from God for so long, but now…now…Is it too late? Can even a drug runner be forgiven? I feel as if I’m coming apart inside. I can’t stop the tears. “God!” I cry aloud, “God, do what You want with me! Do something! Anything!”

A short time later I turned myself in to the federal marshals. That was 11 years ago. Tears still come to my eyes when I recall all that happened. A lot of people think I got off easy: five years’ probation and a $10,000 fine. From a human perspective they’re right. But God is merciful. When I repented, when I got right with Jesus, I didn’t get the punishment I deserved. Instead I received total forgiveness.

But I can never forget the harm I did, and I know I have a responsibility. Especially to kids. These days I often speak in churches, and I counsel and pray with those who want to get off drugs. I do it out of gratitude. And I keep telling myself I’m here because of only three reasons: God loves me, Jesus died for me, and my family kept praying for me.

This story first appeared in the September 1992 issue of Guideposts magazine.

How God’s Love Helped This Country Singer Out of Addiction

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

There was a time a few years ago when I was writing really negative songs about couples “slippin’ round” on one another, drinking and being miserable. Back in those days I was pretty miserable myself.

I was in Nashville, the capital of country music, where I’d come from my home state of Mississippi to try my luck as a songwriter. By the late ‘70s I was beginning to make a living from music, but I was also making a mess of my life.

I was a Christian—or at least I said I was—but you couldn’t tell from the way I acted. I got into booze and drugs and had all sorts of tawdry affairs.

Finally I hit rock bottom. I was on the road playing guitar at a club when the club’s owner saw what bad shape I was in. One night she confronted me and made me look at how I was destroying myself.

I sat there, half-drunk in that noisy, smoke-filled room, pondering her words. Right there I prayed, “Lord, if You’ll get me out of these bars, I’ll live my life for You.”

Three weeks later I got a call from a friend back in Nashville wondering if I’d be interested in a job with a song publisher. The Lord kept His end of the prayer, but it was still years before I kept mine.

That was the beginning of my long road back. Eventually I gave my life to Him and allowed Him to start His work in me. Because of Him I was able to stop doing the things that were doing me in and started writing songs for Him.

In the lyrics of one of those songs, a husband asks his wife what he should give her for standing by him—diamonds, furs? And she replies with the title of the song, “I won’t take less than your love.” Then a son asks his mother what he owes her for everything she’s done for him. And he gets the same answer.

Finally, a man asks the Lord how he can repay Him for the life He’s given him—what is the price? And God gives the same reply: “I won’t take less than your love.”

The man who asked that question was Paul Overstreet. I’d found that it wasn’t enough just to say I believed in God, or even tell others about Him, while going my own way. I had to give Him everything—no more, no less. God said to me, “I won’t take less than your love.”

This story first appeared in the November 1988 issue of Guideposts magazine.

How God Helped Her Overcome Alcohol Addiction

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Carol Howard

Nine-thirty. Late again! I ducked past Mr. Clayton’s open door. He was just back from a two-week business trip. And maybe I had been slacking off a bit. I wondered if he saw me come in. Still I was a pretty good executive secretary. I had worked 15 years at the world headquarters of International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation in New York, and I knew my way around.

Mr. Clayton had warned me about tardiness before. So when he called me into his office, I expected another reprimand. I liked him. We got along. Yet he looked embarrassed. His words stunned me.

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“While I was away, Carol, you were reported to the head of personnel. Someone said you were … tipsy on the job.”

My mind reeled. (Who could have turned me in?) True, I liked to drink. But I never let it affect my work.

Mr. Clayton continued. “I don’t know if that’s true or not. But under the circumstances I want you to see Jeanne Conway, the director of special programs. If there is a problem, she can help you.”

He must have been reading the apprehension in my face (my first thought was, I’m going to lose my job) because he said, “Don’t worry about anything, Carol. You know the company has a program to help people on the job.”

I had seen the memos about the ITT Alcoholism Program. I’d thrown them in the wastebasket. They didn’t apply to me. I agreed to see Jeanne Conway just to humor Mr. Clayton.

I had a love affair with liquor for 25 years, since I was 20, but I thought I handled it well. I had few close friends; just drinking buddies. I drank mostly on weekends with my boyfriend Greg and my father. Once in a while I had a little too much. Thanksgiving weekend just two weeks past, for instance, a little too much celebrating and I blanked out, exhausted, on the couch. But that was a special occasion and very rare. Though I now attended Mass only occasionally, I figured I still had enough credits with God to get me out of any jam.

At work, with my private office, I never worried that anyone would notice if I had a drink or two at lunch. Sometimes I might have three, four, or once in a while five drinks … Then, of course. I knew I wasn’t myself. But I worked harder the next morning to make up for it. There were occasions when I couldn’t transcribe the sloppy shorthand notes I took in the afternoon. But after 15 years I knew my boss’ writing style. And he never complained. Except for often making me late, my drinking never was a problem on the job. Until today. And somebody else was making the problem.

In the afternoon I went to see Jeanne Conway—just once. I figured that would be enough. I tried to slip into her office without being seen. ITT had thousands of employees in New York, but if anyone I knew saw me, nasty rumors might spread.

“Sit down,” Jeanne said softly, when I went into her pleasant, warm-colored office. What am I doing here? I wondered. After we talked for a while, Jeanne asked straightforwardly, “You seem to be troubled, Carol. Let’s discuss it.”

Something in the gentle way Jeanne spoke made me open up. Maybe I just wanted to get our meeting over with. So I told her all about my drinking. about Greg and about Dad—even telling her how much Dad and I quarreled lately whenever we drank.

For the first time in years I had met someone who understood about drinking, someone who wanted to listen. When I finished, I felt refreshed. There, I thought, that’s all I needed. I don’t really have a problem. I expected Jeanne to make a few suggestions, maybe warn me about keeping up my job performance, then send me back to Mr. Clayton.

Instead she pulled some brochures from her desk. “I know of places that can help you,” she said. “Chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous meet all over the city, at night and on lunch hours. Or perhaps you would want to get away from New York, where no one would know you. There’s a lovely rehabilitation center in Pennsylvania, highly regarded.You would go through a twenty-eight day program …”

“Twenty-eight days!” I exclaimed. I’d never gone anywhere for 28 days. I certainly wasn’t going to some place for drunks. “Wouldn’t that be a waste of the company’s time and money?” What were they trying to do to me?“Not at all. Studies show that a company will save money, save time, increase productivity and decrease workers’ compensation by getting treatment for employees. Catching little problems before they become big ones,”Problems! I didn’t have a problem!

Jeanne handed me the brochures. “Think about it. Let me know what you decide.”

Wrinkling the brochures in my tightly clenched fist, I walked back down to my office. I felt insulted. She was telling me I was an alcoholic.

“Look what she wants me to do,” I snapped at Mr. Clayton, showing him the material. “Wants to send me to a rehabilitation farm…”

“I can’t tell you what to do,” my boss said. “But Jeanne’s a professional. I’d do what she recommends.”

He does want to get rid of me, I thought, and this is how he’s going to do it.

Five o’clock couldn’t come soon enough. I had a few drinks that night. At home, I argued bitterly with Dad about household chores. About nothing really. For the next couple of days my mind was in turmoil. I didn’t think I needed rehabilitation. Yet something in me wanted to trust Jeanne, to do what she and Mr. Clayton thought was right. Maybe I could think of the 28 days in Pennsylvania as a vacation —away from Dad, Mr. Clayton and everyone at ITT.

On Thursday I went to see Jeanne. “I’m going to Pennsylvania,” I said.

“Good,” she replied, “I’ll make all the arrangements.”

The rolling, snow-covered hills surrounding the Rehabilitation Center would have been a lovely spot for a winter vacation. But I was too scared to enjoy them. What was going to happen to me?

Fortunately, the staff was wonderful. One doctor explained that medicine would help ease me through withdrawal. I was hospitalized for five days of detoxification. I didn’t even know what the word meant. It’s the “drying-out” period.

Friendly nurses served me three solid meals a day, plus snacks, and gave me lots of vitamin shots. By Saturday, I had survived six days without a drink…for the first time in years.

At last I was ready to begin rehabilitation, which included group therapy, work therapy (I was a waitress in the Center’s dining room), lectures and movies.

The fears I had brought with me to the Rehabilitation Center gradually eased. In time I began to enjoy talking to other patients. I likedbeing able to get up early without a headache and get to my waitressing job on time.

In therapy sessions, seven or eight of us were supposed to share our feelings and experiences, about drinking, family, friends, work. At first it was difficult for me. I wasn’t used to this. I’m a private person, and as a secretary, I’d learned to keep secrets. But the therapists helped us all relax and told us not to be ashamed of our alcoholism. We came to see it as a disease —one that could be overcome.

Finally I was able to admit to myself that drinking had been making my life unmanageable and narrower and narrower.

Christmas was approaching, and I realized with some trepidation that this would be my first Christmas without family, and my first Christmas without booze. Would I make it? I found I was praying again—very simple prayers: “God, help me make it through the day. Let me be satisfied with daily bread, not daily booze.”

When I heard about the Rehabilitation Center’s Christmas Eve Mass I decided to go. I was lonely and feeling a little sorry for myself. Something had to make this seem like Christmas.

During the Mass, a Jewish man sat next to me. At a social hour after the service I met a Protestant woman who mentioned that this was her first Mass. I looked around at these people whose only common bond had been the bottle. Suddenly I felt a closeness with everyone. God was at work in all of us. This Christmas, the Rehabilitation Center, not home, was where I belonged.

From then on I attended Mass at the Center regularly. For the first time in years. I wanted to be in church. It struck me, almost shocked me that getting free of booze—the time-consuming tasks of wanting it, buying it, drinking it, recovering from it —automatically left more real time for me…and for God.

God helped me—just as I had prayed—to make it through rehabilitation, one day at a time. And that, I discovered, is the way alcoholics recover and stay sober—by concentrating on today, by staying sober today.

Even when I left Pennsylvania I knew I could stay sober—one day at a time. But what kind of problems would I face at ITT? Would my job really be waiting for me, as Mr. Clayton and Jeanne had promised? Would I be able to hold my head up working with people who knew or guessed where I had been for a month?

That first day back I was almost as nervous as my first day on the job. In the halls people greeted me with friendly “hellos.” They’d missed me; they welcomed me back.

Mr. Clayton seemed a little distant. The look on his face registered uncertainty. He was strictly business.

“I’ll have some letters for you later. Now I’d like you to type this report, then…” He listed a string of things to do. Finally I looked up at him, smiled and said, “You haven’t changed a bit have you?”

He laughed. It had broken the ice. We talked awhile, and just before he went back into his office he said “You know, Carol. you look five years younger. You have changed.”

Yes, thanks to God and the people and programs He used to help me, I have. My world was opening up again. I would make it one day at a time.

This story first appeared in the April 1980 issue of Guideposts magazine.

How God Delivered Her from the Grip of Opioid Addiction

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Rhonda Rush

I grew up in a very rigid, dogmatic space. Mistakes and imperfections were unacceptable. I was programmed to believe I could never measure up and that God would punish me severely if I stepped out of line—and I stepped out of line a lot.

My dad was a preacher, who spewed fire and brimstone messages from the pulpit each week, and then at home, made life for me very chaotic. I was abused—slapped, hit with any object within his reach—and shamed for the slightest indiscretions.

My father found forgiveness with me, his family and with God before he died. I have no resentment or bitterness towards him at all.

But before reaching that pivotal point, the abuse left me wary and with a spirit of rebellion. For a very long time, I would say, “If that is what being a Christian is, I don’t want any part of it.”

My concept and understanding of God, and what I learned about religion from a very early age, was distorted. This confusion followed me well into adulthood.

It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties, when a friend of my family invited me to a church that my perspective began to change. I was married then, to a wonderful man. For the first time in my life, I began to experience God’s love in a way I never had before; his kindness, compassion and mercy became very real to me. In this church, I started unlearning everything I thought I knew about God.

Although from the outside, my life seemed happy, the trauma from my childhood was unhealed and unresolved. It wasn’t until my husband died—weeks before our 20^thwedding anniversary—that it all started to unravel. I started questioning my relationship with God again.

Instead of relying on Him, to help me deal with the gut-wrenching grief and overwhelming sorrow, I relied on pills. I was prescribed pain pills in my early twenties and taking them became a part of my daily routine for years to come. Because I didn’t understand addiction, I didn’t realize I was living as a functioning addict.

Within the next few years, things got really out of control. I was charged with my first driving under the influence (DUI) at 50-years old. But a mere slap on the wrist allowed me to continue using pills, piling on the DUIs until eventually I ended up in jail.

My first response was to ask God one question: Why? Why did He let this happen to me? I was in denial of anything I had done wrong and refused to take responsibility for my life or my actions. But God did not and would not give up on me, nor would He let me go.

In His sovereignty, and His passionate pursuit of me, I entered a program where the focus was on recovery through the power of Jesus Christ.

That is where He finally got my attention and something in me started changing. Slowly, the layers of hurt, bitterness, betrayal, grief and denial started to peel away like an onion. I realized that it wasn’t God who did this to me, it was me! God had protected me; not only me, but He protected others from me, too. I could have easily hurt or killed someone driving under the influence.

I learned all I could about addiction while in the program. I also healed my broken spirit, ultimately surrendering the power of pills in my life to the power of God. Upon my release from the recovery program, I was determined to live my life differently. I started living out the word of God, reciting verses like Isaiah 58:9-11: “Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness. And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

I used to tell myself I couldn’t live without pills. Today, I can’t imagine going back to that life. I am the Recovery Director at my church. I’m a life coach and mentor at a transitional living facility for women who have struggled with addiction and are getting ready for life outside of prison. I go back to the jail where I served time to share my story and give others hope that change is possible. God has blessed me with the gift of a new life and freedom from the grip of addiction. I use that gift to tell my story and to glorify Him. I am proof that with God, nothing is impossible.