Page 154 – Guideposts Articles

His Son’s Brave Battle to Recover from Polio Bolstered a Father’s Faith

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by T. W. Kirkpatrick

Guideposts celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary this year. We’ve been looking back at stories that mark important events during those years, moments when America came together.

In the early fifties, polio was a national scourge. The epidemic peaked in 1952; there were nearly 58,000 cases, with more than 3,000 deaths and some 21,000 people left paralyzed, most of them children.

The next year, Jonas Salk announced his polio vaccine. The first volunteer to test it had been Bill Kirkpatrick, a teenage polio patient. (Someone who’d already contracted polio wouldn’t get the disease again if something went wrong.) In 1954, his father wrote an open letter to his son in gratitude for his role in creating the lifesaving vaccine.

Bill not only recovered from polio but thrived. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College, went to seminary and became a minister in the Episcopal Church. He served in several dioceses, scaling back his work in the 1980s, when he developed post-polio syndrome. He died in 2003.

Here are his father’s poignant words, as published in the October 1954 issue of Guideposts.

Dear Son:
Every father has a special feeling about his son that’s hard to put into words. From the day you were born, back in 1935, and all during your next 19 years of achievement, I saw a little of myself in you—just as I did in Joe, your older brother, during his school days—my hopes, my dreams, my own ambitions unfulfilled.

I was proud of your boyish ability to cast for trout, your skill in other sports. I’ll not forget the football game at Shady Side when you, a 130-pound tackle, kept breaking through the opposing team’s line to down their 175-pound fullback. When you were rushed to the hospital that Labor Day weekend in 1951 and put on the critical list with polio, I couldn’t believe it. In the ambulance, I was too numb to say anything, while your mother kept whispering, “Keep your faith in God, Son; remember the Psalm: ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.…’”

As you fought for life, I tried to put the pieces of my own confused faith back together. How much faith did I have?

Once before I had seen it demonstrated—back in 1928, when your mother was seriously ill. The doctors had given her up. I prayed then that she might live, and my prayers were answered. Had I forgotten in so short a time?

Now, 23 years later, I had to admit to myself that in this crisis with polio, your mother’s prayers and faith were stronger than mine.

While the doctors were fighting for your life during the next weeks, you were more concerned about another polio-stricken boy in the same ward. Remember how he kept saying, “I wish I could die, I wish I could die.…”

The Reverend Mr. Penrose was the only person permitted to visit you while in isolation, and he told me how you repeated the Twenty-Third Psalm to this boy and prayed for him. Also how you led prayers with others who were suffering.

And I heard that the nurses looked forward to going into your ward. They knew that, regardless of your pain, they could always count on a smile lighting up your face and their day.

These reports made me feel more proud of you than any of your football or scholastic achievements.

Then a series of God’s miracles started to happen. Although the doctors thought you would die, you lived. They felt you would never walk again, but in three months you began to sit up with the aid of a steel back brace.

Remember your visit home that Christmas holiday? At midnight that New Year’s Eve, Mother and I held you upright while we all sang “Auld Lang Syne.” She believed that if you stood on your feet at the beginning of the year you would continue your progress.

Three months later, with some help, all 90 pounds of you stood on your feet. Dr. Jesse Wright was amazed but stated that you would probably always have to wear leg braces. “I’ll walk without braces,” you said. Within a year, you did.

Something happened to me during this period. Before you were stricken, I had always considered myself a good Christian, attending church, contributing money, serving on committees.

But I honestly wonder now how much I really believed. At home we were always too busy to have blessings at meals. When you were so helpless, I even questioned God’s existence.

Then you began to recover and credited it to faith and prayer. I felt ashamed.

It was in June 1952, while still badly paralyzed, that you and 40 other polio patients volunteered to help Dr. Jonas Salk in his experiments with a new and untried anti-polio vaccine. We had no idea, until told by reporters in the spring of 1953, that you were listed as the world’s Case History No. 1 to receive the vaccine.

When you persuaded us to sign the consent for the test, we hesitated at first because of the possible danger. Then you talked about your brother. “Joe has two young sons, my nephews,” you remarked. “I’ll do anything possible to help protect them and others from polio.” When you said that, I thought of Christ’s words “Greater love hath no man than this…” (John 15:13).

We don’t have all the results yet, Bill, but I feel sure Dr. Salk’s work may save thousands of lives. Today I can understand clearly how God works through people and how he can use a paralyzing illness such as yours for good.

I also learned about the concern and love of friends. During your illness, our telephone never seemed to stop ringing. Mattie [the Kirkpatricks’ maid] gathered together a group of people in her church and held prayer meetings for your recovery. And your mother never let our spirits lag. How I remember her in those dark days, by the piano, playing and singing her favorite Welsh hymn, “God That Madest Earth and Heaven.”

A father is fortunate when he can learn as much from his son as I have learned from you. You helped me see that the test of a Christian is how he meets difficulties, tragedies and sorrows. You also helped me see the message of triumph in Christ’s experience on the Cross.

Whether you become a doctor or a minister, I know your one concern will be to relieve suffering, to bring help and cheer to those in need.

Your mother and I are very proud of you.

Love, Dad

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His Loving Voice to Guide Me

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Lionel Aldridge

One of the most frightening signs that there was something seriously wrong with me were the voices I began hearing in 1974.

At first they were just stray, nagging worries that dogged me through the day, self-doubts that we all have from time to time. They seemed to rise up out of nowhere—vague thoughts with an accusing edge: You really don’t work very hard, do you? Or I’d be alone in my car and it was as if I overheard someone whisper, Everyone knows Lionel Aldridge doesn’t care about his job.

The fact was I worked hard and cared very much about my job. I was something of a fixture on the Milwaukee scene. After an all-pro career as a defensive end with coach Vince Lombardi’s two-time Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers football team, I’d moved easily into the role of NFL commentator and local TV sports anchor. I had a successful, high-profile life.

That was before the voices.

The voices were very scary and confusing. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want anyone to find out the terrible things happening inside my head. As an athlete I’d been trained to be tough; it was not my nature to seek help. I wanted to be strong.

At first I tried to ignore them. I was just going through a bad period, I thought. But the voices grew more belittling and threatening, more real. I’d be standing in front of the mirror shaving when I’d hear from the next room, You don’t take very good care of your family. “That’s bull!” I’d shout. I’d search the house for my tormentor. “How’d he get in here?” I’d mutter, as my wife, Viki, shook her head in dismay. There never was any intruder.

If a co-worker at the station didn’t smile at me in the morning, a voice would hiss, See? He doesn’t think much of you either. He knows you don’t deserve your job. I became hard to get along with. I started talking back to the voices, bickering and pleading and cursing. I am a large and imposing man; it must have scared folks half out of their wits to see me shouting at people who weren’t there.

Rumors flew around town that I was on drugs. That was completely false, but I was in no shape to prove otherwise. I was getting worse. People wanted to help but they didn’t know how. “He’s under a lot of pressure,” I heard them say.

One night, attending a Bucks basketball game with a friend, I froze with terror as we moved in front of the crowd toward our courtside VIP seats.

“What’s wrong?” my friend asked.

“These people,” I stammered, “they…they know everything I’m thinking. They’re all watching me.”

I was dizzy with panic. I wanted to run.

“Take it easy,” my puzzled friend whispered, looking at me as if he suspected I was playing a gag on him. Then he saw the perspiration drenching my shirt collar. “Maybe you’re working too hard,” he muttered, putting an arm on my shoulder and easing me into my seat.

Soon that feeling of being watched wouldn’t let up, even on the air. Looking into the camera, I could barely hold my composure as I reported the nightly sports scores. The wide camera lens zooming in on me was a glistening, all-seeing eye that could plumb the farthest, most hidden reaches of my soul. Everyone who was watching on their TV sets, I was convinced, could see right inside my brain, where laid bare for all to look on in disgust were the grimmest secrets of my life.

I was sure there was a far-flung conspiracy to destroy me. I fought with total strangers on the street. I separated from Viki and our two daughters, and eventually divorced. I lost my job and my friends. There was nothing left but the voices shouting in my head, as real to me as an opposing 260-pound pulling guard on a goal line stand back in my playing days. My life spun out of control.

One night the voices commanded me to start driving. I didn’t want to leave Milwaukee. It had been my home for so many good years, and a part of me still understood that I needed a home now more than ever. But my state of extreme delusion robbed me of choice.

I hastily packed up the car with some old clothes and a few basics. Almost as an afterthought I threw in a Bible I’d owned since the Packers. I used to take it with me when I traveled with the team. Even now I’d read it to try and drown out the voices. What little relief I could get sometimes came from immersing myself in that old Bible.

I started to drive with no map or plan—I just filled up on gas and went. I tried to turn back; I couldn’t do it.

I crisscrossed the country in a wilderness of interstates. At first I slept in hotels, then motels, then flophouses. I went to Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas, Sacramento, Las Vegas. My funds evaporated and my credit cards were cancelled, so I started living in the car, occasionally washing dishes for food and gas. In Florida I ditched the car for a hundred dollars and hit the streets with just a battered satchel on my shoulder.

Occasionally I hung around a town for a while doing odd jobs, living on the streets and eating at soup kitchens. Quite naturally, people would stare at me, and that would only make my delusions of persecution worse. I never held a job for long. What could you do about a menial laborer who marched and sang for no reason and jabbered at people who were 2,000 miles away? Had I seen such a man on the street in Milwaukee only a few years before, I would have shaken my head sadly and crossed to the other side.

I’d become one of those lost, devastated souls. There were a lot of them out there with me, crippled by mental illness, but as I wandered the country I was only aware of my own haunted, unhappy world a million miles from the life I once had.

One night I slept in a field off an interstate near the Great Salt Lake. I didn’t notice when I woke up, but while I was sleeping my jewel-encrusted Super Bowl ring must have slipped off. Those rings are not easy to come by, and I’d hung on to mine as a kind of symbol of who I’d once been. No one ever questioned me about it. I guess they thought it was just some crazy piece of jewelry that a crazy man wore.

I didn’t think about the Packers much anymore, and when I discovered the ring missing, it was as if I’d been stripped of one final link with my past. I sat in the middle of a sidewalk and wept into my hands.

It wasn’t long afterward that I was gripped by a gruesome hallucination. I was hanging on a cross, like Jesus. Standing in a roadside ditch under a hot white cloudless Utah sky, legs together and arms outstretched, I vividly experienced my own crucifixion. It is hard to explain now, but in my tortured imagination I actually believed that I was living out the event. It seemed so absolutely real.

I remained that way for hours. People shouted from cars whizzing by on the desert highway. A few threw objects at me. But I was anchored to that spot, fully convinced that I could be seen hanging on a cross and no one cared.

“Help me!” I cried out, the sweat and tears streaking my dust-caked face. “Help! I’ll accept help from anyone.”

That night, exhausted and hungry, I huddled beside a bridge and read my battered Bible, the only thing left now from my old life. I still had moments when I could dimly perceive reality. A core part of me knew that I must get well. But that clarity was fleeting, and my madness always took me back in circles and filled me with hurt and fear.

I was reading Paul when I came across a passage that stopped me: “Earnestly seek the higher gifts.” I’d been taught that these gifts were spiritual, given by God to lift us up. Were they still there for me? I wondered what gift could be found in the demented chorus that chased me across the country. Those voices were so angry and critical.

Yet didn’t I know all along that there was one voice with me my whole life, a flowing, wordless voice that said, You are loved? It was the voice of God, a voice for all of us to hear in our own way. I’d never stopped believing in God, but His voice had been drowned out by my illness. When I stopped long enough to listen, I knew that with God I had hope, I had love. That was what Paul was talking about.

Eventually I wandered back to Milwaukee. The voices still besieged me. I lived on the streets. Being back brought me in contact with old friends. I was ashamed for them to see what I’d come to. I tried to hide. Yet for some reason I’d come back here. I knew that.

Finally, through the repeated intervention of people I’d known for a long time, I was committed to a hospital. I didn’t want to go in—I thought it was all part of the big conspiracy. Commitment is difficult legally, and I made it harder. Yet it marked the start of the road back.

I learned that I had paranoid schizophrenia, a physical disease that affects the mind. Hearing voices was one of the symptoms. Slowly the doctors hit upon some drugs that helped. Little by little my condition improved, the voices gradually subsided.

At first it was horrifying. It was an awful thing to face, like seeing a crazy man on the street and suddenly realizing that you are looking into a mirror. One day during therapy, I begged the doctor to show me one person who’d recovered from paranoid schizophrenia.

“Well, Lionel,” he replied, “statistically many people do recover partially, even fully.” He went to quote all the facts and figures.

“No,” I interrupted, “I want to actually meet someone who’s beat it.”

There was no one to show me. People who recover from mental illness rarely divulge that devastating stigma. It would have helped me to see someone who’d come back. “If I get out of here, Doc,” I promised him, “I’m going to make a point of talking about it.”

I did recover. Not without setbacks and relapses, not without moments when I thought I could never again face life, but I did get well with the help of friends, doctors who found the right medication to help me and the voice of a loving God.

I discovered new strategies to cope with the world. For a while, symptoms sometimes came back. Like one night after I got out of the hospital. I was walking up to a cafe near my apartment for dinner when suddenly I knew that every patron inside was saying terrible things about me. I stood at the door, terrified, my heart pounding. I was about to run home and lock myself in when I thought, No, you’ve got to do this. You’ve got to go inside and face these people.

Still I was convinced they were all talking about me. Well, I figured, maybe they’re saying good things like, “Hey, there’s Lionel Aldridge. He used to play for the Packers and then he got sick. Look how good he’s doing now.” If people really were saying bad things about me, I would have to forgive them. Forgiveness made what they said harmless; it didn’t matter whether it was real or imagined.

I went inside, sat down and ordered my dinner. The room was alive with chatter. I was almost too nervous to eat. Then slowly it dawned that these people were talking about everything in the world except me.

It worked. From then on when I thought strangers were talking about me, I always convinced myself that they were saying good things, or forgave them for the bad things I imagined them saying. And through the whole process I never stopped asking God’s help or listening for his voice.

In time the voices went away. I still see a doctor and take my medication, like anyone with a serious illness, but I am well again, well enough to keep a promise. Today I travel the country speaking to groups about mental illness and recovery. It’s vital for patients, families and even doctors to see someone who’s actually made it back.

In January 1985, the anniversary of the Packers’ first Super Bowl win 18 years before, I got a card in the mail from a bunch of my old teammates. They’d gotten together and commissioned an exact copy of the missing victory ring to give to me.

I knew that day that I had returned. Even when you think you’ve lost everything in your life, there is always hope of finding a way back, sometimes to an even better place.

I found my way, with the loving voice of God to guide me.

His Faith Overcame His Pride

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Bill Irwin

I could hear the inspector cutting into the walls of our half-finished, handcrafted log home, muttering under his breath. “Hmm,” I heard him say. “Uh-huh.” More scraping, each scratch more excruciating than the last, as if he were slicing into my heart.

It was frustrating to not see his face. To be in the dark. Literally. I’d been blind for 40 years, over half my life. Most of the time I more than compensated. But then there were times like this.

I’d spent over a decade building this log home in rural Maine. You bet I wanted to see everything he was doing, to see if his expression was as grave as his voice. To see if this dream had gone horribly wrong.

“Is it bad?” my wife, Debra, asked. For months she’d been telling me the wood was rotten. But I’d stubbornly refused to believe her. We’d suffered so many setbacks already. I couldn’t accept that God would have this in our plans too. No way. But finally I’d agreed to call this inspector.

I heard his feet shuffling toward me. “The logs are rotten,” he said. “I’m guessing you used an inferior preservative. I’m sorry. I wish I had better news.”

I held Debra, her body slumped against me, long after he’d left. I’d gotten bad advice on the preservative. Not that it made any difference now. “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “I’ll figure something out.”

“It’s too late,” she said. “Didn’t you hear him? It’s too late.”

I’d heard him. But this was my grand plan. I couldn’t let it die.

Okay, so maybe I am a little strongwilled, but it’s important to me to do things on my own. I never wanted my blindness to be a barrier. I’d proven that. Twenty years before, in 1990, I thru-hiked 2,167.9 rugged miles of the Appalachian Trail. It took nearly nine months, three months longer than average.

I fell thousands of times, even with the aid of my guide dog Orient. But I persevered, reaching the end here in Maine at Mt. Katahdin the day before Thanksgiving. There I dropped to my knees and thanked God for the chance to glorify his name. He’d shown me not what a man can do, but what God can do with a man.

I met Debra just a few years after my epic journey. Eager to start a new life together we moved from North Carolina to Maine after we married, not far from the trail’s end. We had a new dream, a challenge beyond anything we’d done before, to build our own home, log by log, like the pioneers.

In my mind I could see it perfectly, a beautiful, rustic cabin, made of timbers notched and fitted by hand—our hands. Debra would be my eyes. Externally. Internally my vision was perfect. It would be just the two of us, building a dream together. Literally.

On a cold, snowy October day we took possession of 72 acres of beautiful timberland and one long-abandoned tumbledown shack. “We can tough it out for a couple of years,” I told Debra.

Come spring, we bought plans for a big, two-story house and 200 white pine logs. We’d work at it between my engagements as a motivational speaker.

I taught Debra how to use a chainsaw. She made a rough cut for each connecting notch then used another tool to outline where the edges should be. I chiseled out the wood until I reached her mark. “Do you really think we can do this all on our own?” Debra said as I chipped away. “It seems like a lot of work.”

“One step at a time,” I said. “We have to be patient and believe in ourselves.”

We’d studied DIY videos over the winter. Plus we’d taken a home-building course, working with our classmates to construct a house using beams, posts and prefabricated panels, a process known as timber framing.

It was slow going. It took us nearly two days to finish a single log. Once the notches were cut out I had to plane the wood with hammer and chisel, following Debra’s indentations, until it fit perfectly against the log above it.

The final piece was putting the log in place using a forklift. Debra wasn’t strong enough to pop the clutch, so she guided me while I drove and maneuvered the lift. That’s right. A blind guy driving a forklift with a 2,000-pound log on it. We made it work.

By fall, walls nearly four feet high surrounded a beautiful, tongue-and-groove wood floor. We were on our way.

In March the floor collapsed, buckled by five feet of frost underneath it—like nothing we’d ever experienced in balmy North Carolina.

“That’s okay,” I told Debra. “We can fix it.” I knew from hiking, when you stumbled you just had to get up and keep going. Stumbling is part of learning. I drove in deep support posts that held until the next winter, when heavy snows crushed the floor again.

So much for learning! A thick steel I-beam ultimately proved the solution.

As the walls grew higher the work of fitting the logs together grew ever more difficult. Debra and I were short with each other, our halcyon days when everything was new and exciting fading as time went by. We spent the next 10 years slowly working on the log home whenever we could.

There were frequent interruptions. Between work and day-to-day life it was hard to dedicate the time that was needed. Still, we kept at it. I’d thought we were near the end.

Now, the inspector’s words still burning my ears, I paced around our home, feeling the logs with my hands, digging into them with my knife. There was no saving them. I climbed the ladder to the top of the scaffolding and jerked the starter cord to my chainsaw. It was late evening when we toppled the last wall.

That night I lay in bed thinking. The vision had been so clear. To build a home by hand from scratch. It would be almost an extension of my soul. I’d seen it so clearly in my heart. Now all I could imagine was a pile of rotting debris. It was a blessing I couldn’t see it. I might just give up.

The next day friends invited us to their house for lunch. The husband, Sam Francis, was a builder. I dreaded telling Sam what had happened. We weren’t five minutes through the front door when Sam asked, “How’s the log home coming?”

“I cut it down yesterday,” I said. “The wood rotted on us.”

The room went totally silent. “You must be devastated,” he said.

I shuffled my feet. “What if you tried another approach?” Sam said hesitantly. “You could use beams and posts, prefabricated panels for the roof and walls.” I knew that. Everyone knew I knew that.

But that wasn’t my dream. And the panels were huge, unwieldy. No way could Debra and I handle them on our own. Pioneers didn’t use panels!

“I can knock out some plans for you on the computer today,” Sam said. I heard Debra clear her throat. She might as well have punched me in the back. Lord, I prayed, if this is your will…

Somewhat reluctantly, I followed my friend’s advice. Debra and I worked nearly every day that summer, cutting notches in the beams and putting them in place with a hoist, one every couple of hours. We quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm. It was fun again. A labor of love.

By fall our home’s beautiful exposed wood skeleton was nearly complete. One chilly afternoon I bolted in the last roof beam. Time for the panels. It was critical to get them on before winter. Yet we had not made any arrangements.

What now, Lord?

Again I tossed and turned in bed. I thought of those hard days I’d spent on the trail. The worst was near the end, winter closing in. For three days Orient and I were trapped in a snowstorm near Mt. Washington.

I’d taken comfort in the words of an old hymn, “Count your blessings,” and began thanking God for all the people who’d helped me on my journey. Then I’d heard a voice: “Bill Irwin? Boy, am I glad to see you!” God had sent rescuers. Someone had always been there for me.

The house was no different. There’d been Debra, of course. And Sam. And me. I was always there. Maybe too much there.

The next day, like heavenly clockwork, a friend called. “Say, could you use an extra hand or two on your house?” he asked. There was a note of hesitation in his voice, as if he half expected me to blow him off.

“Uh, sure,” I answered, a little ashamed at the surprise in my voice. “Actually that would be great.”

A few weeks later a convoy of pickup trucks drove up our road, bringing 19 men and women. It was amazing, an old-fashioned barn-raising just like pioneers used to hold.

This fall Debra and I hope to move in—our dream home nearly complete at last. When I walk through it I see every beam, every post in my mind, the floor to ceiling windows, snow-capped Mt. Katahdin in the distance.

Once I stood atop that peak with Orient, blind but feeling I could see for miles. All that long hard journey I’d kept my eyes focused on a light that burned inwardly, brighter than any I’d ever known when I could see, the light of the Lord. It had not failed me.

Now, though, I had almost failed it, blinded by my own will, and willfulness, possessed of a dream instead of possessing it. I could not build my house until I got right with God, with Debra, with my friends and neighbors. Yes, I am like the beggar in John. I was blind but now I can see.

Read Bill’s account of his thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

Download your FREE ebook, The Power of Hope: 7 Inspirational Stories of People Rediscovering Faith, Hope and Love

His Caregiving Journey Led Him on a Path of Spiritual Growth

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Carlen Maddux

For five years, I’d been dealing with the fears as best as I could: prayers, books, Scripture, retreats, talking to people. Now I was at the end of my rope. I had to do something, something different, even if it meant traveling halfway around the world. I wanted to meet the one person whose words had made the biggest difference. For both my wife and me.

Martha had been 50 years old when she got the diagnosis, devastating both of us: early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Martha had always been a force of nature, her energy level twice mine. “What’s next?” was her response to any challenge, whether it was raising our three children or working with me at the magazine I’d started or serving on the St. Petersburg city council. Then in 1997, something went wrong. There was a creeping listlessness about her, a blank look on her face, the inability to remember something I’d just asked her. She laughed less and less and was checking off fewer items on her to-do list.

At my urging, she made an appointment with a neurologist but walked out before even meeting with him. “I got tired of waiting” was all she would say. The second time around, I went with her and sat in the waiting room while she went through a battery of psychological and memory tests. The weeks crept by as we waited for the results. I already feared the worst.

Still, hearing the doctor say “Alzheimer’s” was a shock, even if it wasn’t a surprise.

“Are you sure?” I said, my question unconvincing even to me.

“There’s no mistake,” he said.

A disease that steals your memories, your personality, everything that makes you who you are…how were we going to get through the years ahead?

We talked to our Presbyterian minister, the man who’d married us and baptized our kids. His usual booming voice became hushed. Tears crept down his face—I’d never seen him cry. He had one suggestion: that we go on a retreat with the Catholic Sisters of Loretto in Kentucky. There was one nun in particular he felt we should talk to: Sister Elaine. “I’ve never met another person with Elaine’s gift for discernment,” he said.

So began our spiritual journey, one set out on in desperation. At the retreat house, Martha kept practicing responses to all the diagnostic questions that had stumped her. What was her birthday? What was today’s date? Who was president? Could she count backwards from 100 by sevens? As though, by memorizing the answers, she could reverse her fate. Her struggle broke my heart.

We told our youngest daughter first. She was a junior in high school and still living at home. She’d noticed the signs. Our other two were away at college, and we made a trip to see them both. The four of us cried together.

I kept focused on the internal work I needed to do to get through the day, what Sister Elaine had told me at the retreat: “Your main calling at this time is to trust that you belong to God and not to yourselves. And to deepen your love for God and between yourselves.”

I took over more and more of the household chores. Food shopping, getting breakfast ready, figuring out what to make for dinner before I headed to work. We managed okay for a while. Martha took an art class with her sister-in-law, painting watercolors. I carved out some dedicated prayer time, trying to do what Sister Elaine had said.

Then one day, Martha’s art teacher called me at the office. “Carlen, Martha walked out of the art class.” Where had she gone? She could be anywhere. I got in the elevator and stepped out into the lobby of my office building. Just in time to see Martha walk in the door.

After that I had to hire caregivers to watch over her when I wasn’t there. Our older children—now graduated from college and living on their own—came up with a plan to take over one weekend a month, giving me precious time off. They’d help Martha dress, take her out to eat, go for walks, see a movie, visit friends. Meanwhile I’d go off on a retreat, to vent and seek solitude.

I read all I could about how faith could heal, not just for Martha but for me. The small Tennessee town where I’d grown up saw its share of tent revivalists and faith healers. They were expert at two things—shaking fear into you and shaking money out of you. But the people I read now were different, credible. In particular I was drawn to Canon Jim Glennon, an Anglican priest from Australia and a spiritual healer. I read his book Your Healing Is Within You and listened to all his tapes.

One thing he suggested was turning physically away from fear, rotating your body 180 degrees from the fearful thoughts. I’d do it at my desk at work or at home. Sometimes I did it so much it actually made me dizzy. If only it banished my fear.

I got Jim’s number and called him in Australia. “I’m enjoying your book and tapes,” I told him. “But I’ve got to tell you I’m scared. Really scared.”

“We all get scared,” Jim replied. “That’s not the issue. The issue really is what we do with the fear.”

Martha and I had met back when we were in college. We connected again when I was coaching football and teaching at a high school in Atlanta and she’d just moved there to work at a different school. After helping her unload her things at her new apartment, I asked very casually—hoping against hope—if she wanted to come with me to scout a football game and then “grab something to eat.”

“No, thanks,” she said.

I did a double take.

“Okay…well, then, can I come by and see you after the game is over, Martha?”

“Sure, that’d be great.”

I got in my car and sat there for a minute, then went back to her apartment, knocked and asked, “Out of curiosity, if I’d asked you to the downtown Hyatt for dinner tonight, would you have gone with me?”

“Of course,” she said, her blue eyes dancing. I laughed. This was a woman who knew her mind.

“I just needed to know what the rules are,” I said. Martha and I got married 10 months later.

Now, five years since the diagnosis, that sharp woman I’d loved for 30 years, who knew exactly what she wanted, was gone. She resisted my help every step of the way. It took me forever to get her dressed in the mornings. On our evening walks, she literally dragged her heels. I would have to pull her, step by step. Is there any part of her left to love me or for me to love? I wondered.

I listened to Jim’s tapes over and over, but it wasn’t enough. I decided I needed to see him face-to-face. I called him, telling him I wanted to come to Australia. I arranged for the kids and caregivers to be with Martha. For a week. The longest we’d ever been apart.

I got off the plane in Sydney, picked up my bag and caught a taxi to the retreat center where Jim worked. Jim left a note saying he would meet me at 10 o’clock the next morning. I showered and fell fast asleep, jet-lagged.

I ate breakfast with a handful of guests and staff, then waited for Jim in a large drawing room. The door opened and he entered. I’d seen pictures of him, but they didn’t come close to conveying the presence that filled the room. We both sat down. “Why have you come?” Jim asked.

I thought I’d made it clear on the phone. I needed healing from the worry and pain. I fumbled for an answer. Jim said nothing. There was silence. And more silence. I found it hard to catch his eye. Maybe it’s his age, I thought. He was 82, of my parents’ generation. Finally he broke the silence, launching into a story about a couple whose young daughter had a severe case of scoliosis. Severe scoliosis can be disabling, causing heart and lung damage. The doctors said that her prospect for growing into adulthood was dismal.

They went to their pastor, looking for a healing ministry, and found nothing. They decided to study the New Testament, highlighting all of Jesus’ healings. They began to focus their prayers and thoughts on God’s gifts and promises rather than on their daughter’s problems. When Jim met the couple many years later, their daughter had grown into adulthood, her spine fully straightened.

I’ve already heard this story, I thought. In fact, I must have already heard it half a dozen times on his tapes. “Why ask for what you’ve got?” Jim would say, just as he said to me now. The healing that the girl’s family needed was there all along. Sure…but wasn’t there some fresh insight he could share? I waited all week. In the meanwhile, Jim was both spiritual guide and tour director. He showed me Sydney’s iconic opera house and its fabled surfing beaches. He arranged for me to meet with friends of his who’d been healed in their own right. He sat back and listened as they talked.

“If you’re fighting with your problems,” he emphasized, “you’re already on the losing side.” I was reminded of all my wrestling with Martha’s symptoms and the fear they engendered.

On my last day in Sydney, I was stirred awake early in the morning. I found myself praying the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” Something jarred me. In my mind’s eye, I saw God step down from his throne in heaven and unfurl a tent over me. It covered my dear Martha, our children and me. But it was more than a tent. It was as though God was unfurling his name over us. We were protected; we were his.

Back home in St. Petersburg, things were different. Martha began to relax during our short evening walks, holding my hand. Changing her into her nightgown was no longer a wrestling match. An empathy that I thought she had lost for good returned. “I love you, Martha,” I told her. She looked in my eyes and said without hesitation, “I love you too.” Was it my change in attitude that had changed her? I couldn’t be sure, but I knew the fear had faded.

Martha stayed in our home for another six years and then entered a nursing home. I visited her there almost every day. I know people wondered: Why see her when she can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t feed herself, rarely recognized me? “Because Martha is still the woman I love and our children’s mother” would be my response.

I would sit beside her and take her hand, which I’d often find clenched into a fist. I’d envision Christ spreading his cloak over us. A stillness from somewhere beyond Martha and me would descend upon us. The tension in Martha’s body would relax. My heart and my mind too would settle. And our hands would soften and gentle within each other’s.

Martha died in 2014—16 years, nine months and one week after she was diagnosed. She was 66 years old. In the viewing room at the funeral home, I sat beside her one last time, held her hand as I had so often before and said the Lord’s Prayer—“hallowed be thy name.” Once more I sensed the tent that covered us. It had always been there. For Martha, the children and me.

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Hidden Treasure

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Sabra Ciancanelli

“Team Ria will find the loot!” my niece Regina declared.

She brandished a compass and a journal, items from the treasure-hunting kit her mother, my sister Maria—Ria for short—had assembled as a Christmas gift. Now we were putting them to good use.

Somewhere amid the browning oak trees and rocky shores of Catskill Point Park was a golden doubloon that had lain hidden for 17 years—and we wanted to find it. We needed to.

God, we need something to keep our minds off missing Ria, I prayed, holding back tears as I watched Regina look under benches and picnic tables with my sons and my brother’s children.

Had it really been six months since Ria died, so suddenly, so utterly unexpectedly, in her sleep? I took a deep breath of the chill autumn air and touched the photograph of her that I kept in my coat pocket. How I wished she were still here with us. Ria was all about treasure hunts and family time.

A few days earlier, my sister Laura had sent me an e-mail with the subject “Want to look for treasure?” I followed the link in the e-mail to a newspaper article “Treasure Hunt Unsolved For Nearly Two Decades.”

Officials in nearby Greene County had created the treasure hunt back in 1991 to promote tourism to Catskill, New York. Although there had been plenty of interest at first, over the years the treasure had been forgotten by all but a few dedicated hunters.

The prize that Greene County had put up for finding the golden doubloon—a specially made jeweled crown valued at over ten thousand dollars—seemed like it might never be claimed.

Ria would have loved this! I thought. She loved everything about the ocean, waves, seashells…but especially pirates.

Every summer our families rented a cluster of cottages on the beach in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, and on our last vacation, Ria planned an elaborate treasure hunt for the kids, burying clues and making a large X in the sand with rocks and flotsam above a big treasure trunk filled with goodies.

She even threw Mom a pirate-themed birthday party complete with skull-and-crossbone hats, swashbuckling outfits and plastic swords. It was nutty…but that was Ria. Life was one big adventure, full of hidden clues and joyful surprises.

The picture in my pocket was from Mom’s party—Ria dressed like a regular Captain Hook. It seemed like her goofy ideas and energy were what brought our family together, our center of gravity.

Who else but Ria could get us all digging through sand for clues to buried treasure or wearing eye patches, laughing as we did our best pirate shouts: “Avast Matey!”

Now that she was gone, every family gathering was tinged with sadness. Her oldest daughter’s graduation, Regina’s birthday. I even dreaded Christmas, because we always spent it at Ria’s.

The treasure hunt was the first thing we’d gotten excited about in a while. We were all in: my husband, Tony, my two sons, Solomon and Henry, my brother, Paul, my sister Laura and their families. Even Mom, who had been hit the hardest by our loss.

As the kids searched, decked out in pirate swag, I thumbed through the treasure story concocted by the tourism office, which held the clues to finding the now-legendary doubloon.

Mom, Laura and I had read it earlier. “Captain Kidd and The Missing Crown” was filled with details of the infamous pirate’s travels, and about the cargo, crew and supposed longitude and latitude of his stops.

I reread the ending, which said the treasure was buried “somewhere on the banks of the Hudson River.” The hand-drawn map depicted Catskill Point but lacked the usual X for buried treasure.

All day we scratched around in the dirt. Lifted up rocks. Searched behind buildings and through bushes. But every shiny glint turned out to be a crushed soda can, a penny, a gum wrapper.

“That doubloon could be anywhere,” Mom said. I nodded. In 17 years, no one had found it. Had it been washed away somehow, irretrievably lost like Ria?

We resumed our search the next weekend. Team Ria gathered at a restaurant called, of all things, Captain Kidd’s. We’d learned from the locals that the restaurant had once been owned by an organizer of the treasure hunt. Aha! Was the doubloon hidden on Captain Kidd’s property?

Regina tore ahead to a larger-than-life statue of the captain himself. Pushing aside leaves, we looked to see if there was a hidden compartment. “Is that a doubloon on his boots?” Solomon asked excitedly. No, just gold-colored buckles. We joked at how silly we must look. How would we explain ourselves if the owner came out?

Laura was sure she had it figured out when she spotted a big pig statue across the bridge from Catskill Point. The clues were filled with references to St. Anthony, who, according to our research, was often accompanied by a fat pig.

But we checked it out and discovered that the statue had been a promotion for the movie Babe…and had been placed there seven years after the hunt began. “Arrgh,” we said.

Later that week we got together at Laura’s and went over the story, map and our notes. “Maybe there’s a hidden code,” someone suggested. Taking out Scrabble tiles, we rearranged the letters of the names of the story’s characters. Among the many combinations possible, one stood out: “low tide marker.” We decided to zero in on the Hudson’s shoreline at low tide.

The next few weekends were filled with trudging the shoreline of the park and even taking kayaks out on the river, searching land only accessible at low tide. The kids splashed each other and had a great time, but we still came up empty.

It’s just a silly treasure hunt, I tried to convince myself. Inside though, I ached for Ria’s presence in my life. Lord, will it always feel like this? I asked.

I came home from hunting one day to find my refrigerator on the fritz. Great, just what I need. Tony pulled the refrigerator away from the wall and fiddled with the back.

“Look what I found!” he said, holding up a postcard. On the front was a treasure map, on the back, “We already miss you guys! Can’t wait for next year. Love, Ria.” She had sent it from Cape Cod last summer.

I shook my head and smiled. “Who else would send a postcard to the people she had just vacationed with as a surprise for them to come home to?”

All of a sudden the fridge hummed back to life. Tony scratched his head and looked puzzled. “I didn’t really do anything yet,” he said. I stuck the postcard to the front of the fridge with a magnet. We had to keep looking. Ria would have wanted it.

By our next outing, only a few stray leaves still clung to the trees as our crew of 15, ages two to 62, hiked through a nature preserve just north of Catskill Point.

The sun retreated behind a steel gray cloud, as if to hide from the rain that soon began. We trudged along, tugging our hoods over our heads, and I couldn’t help but laugh. What other family does this?

The laughing spread to my brother and sister. Ahead on the trail, Regina giggled with her cousins. Hiking in the rain in search of buried treasure? We had to be nuts, as nuts as Ria.

Oh, Ria!

It didn’t feel as if we were missing something. We were celebrating all the joy and optimism that was my sister. It didn’t matter if we found the doubloon. This was the way to get past the sadness: living our lives a little bit like Ria had.

Back at the car, sopping wet, I whispered a prayer of thanks.

A few days later Laura called. “Are you sitting down?” she asked.

Her husband, Michael, was walking their puppy that morning. “He felt guided to look under a big rock buried in the riverbed,” Laura said. There wasn’t any one clue, any logical explanation as to why he picked up that particular rock of the hundreds of large rocks on the edge of low tide. But when he did, the doubloon—worn and blackened by years underwater—was underneath.

Our family was awarded the jeweled crown right before Christmas. It had been kept for 17 years in an old cake box under the bed of one of the organizers of the hunt. It’s in a safe-deposit box now, though Mom keeps the box it was stored in at the top of her stairs. “It makes me smile every time I see it,” she says. Me too.

Hunters who had searched for years sent us e-mails and phoned us, from as far away as California. “How did you find the treasure?” they asked.

“We had lots of help,” I tell them. A sister nuts for pirates and treasure hunts. An encouraging postcard at the right time. A nudge toward a certain rock.

And the crown wasn’t the most precious treasure we found. We discovered Ria’s joyous spirit, alive in all of us.

He Stopped Running from His Past to Head Toward God

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Mitchell Hollis

There I stood in a small classroom at church, about to make a fool of myself.

I was supposed to be teaching a class about running and faith, a class I’d organized. But I had no idea what to tell the people who’d signed up.

I didn’t know much about what the Bible has to say about exercise. I didn’t know much about the Bible, period.

I was a runner, yes. But that didn’t qualify me to teach this class. Running was my spiritual problem. I ran too much. Focused on it to the exclusion of everything else. Up to now, running seemed to be leading me away from God, not toward him.

So what was I doing here? Why had I organized this class, and what could I possibly say that would help these good people spiritually?

Great questions. I wished I had answers. Stalling for time, I started the class by asking a question of my own.

“What brings you here?” I asked the dozen or so people facing me. “What do you hope to get out of this class?”

What happened next changed the course of my life.

Let me back up and tell you how I got to that moment.

I am not a professional runner. I wasn’t even a particularly athletic kid. I did two sports in high school: golf and bull riding. Really, I just liked to have fun.

My dad built homes. My mom sold insurance. Financially my parents did okay, but my dad had an alcohol problem, which slowly cost him his marriage, his profession and ultimately his home. Disorder and dysfunction were two words I knew well growing up.

Maybe that’s why I took to running in my twenties. It started with a joke. Some buddies and I dared each other to enter the annual Peachtree Road Race, an 10K race in Atlanta on July 4. They say it’s the largest 10K in the world, with about 60,000 runners.

None of us was in shape or had any idea how to train for a race. It was a painful 10 kilometers, let me tell you. But something indescribable happened as I ran the course.

The feelings of anxiety and inadequacy I’d carried from my childhood seemed to fade with each kilometer. An uncanny serenity and focus came over me. Was this what they called the runner’s high? I wanted more of it.

I began running every day. I completed my first marathon in January 2008, just six months after the Peachtree race. Soon I was doing triathlons, then Ironman triathlons, grueling events that combine a 2.4-mile swim with a 112-mile bicycle ride and a 26.2-mile run.

Along the way, I settled into a career building homes just like my dad, married a wonderful woman named Holly and had two boys, Lane and Landon.

You’d never have known about those other parts of my life from talking to me, though. All I cared or talked about was running and triathlons.

“How’re you doing, Mitch?”

“Great, I just beat my personal best time at the triathlon last weekend. Now I’m training for…” Blah, blah, blah.

My day was planned around workouts. The minute I finished a race, I began prepping for the next one. I researched exercise and nutrition techniques to get faster. I was obsessed.

One day, I was chatting with a friend after church. H.R. was 30 years older than me and a runner. I liked that he ran, but what I really admired was H.R.’s faith. He was a plainspoken believer who lived with integrity and called things as he saw them.

I was bragging about my son, who’d just completed his first triathlon at age six. Suddenly H.R. stopped me.

“Mitch, don’t let this become your God,” he said.

I stared at him. What was he talking about? What right did he have to meddle in my faith? Irritated, I wrapped up the conversation, found Holly and the kids and headed home.

I tried to brush off H.R.’s words. Yet each morning, when I laced up and headed out for a run, that simple phrase—don’t let this become your God—wouldn’t leave me alone.

Was there something wrong with my approach to exercise?

I had to admit, my life centered on running. And no amount of racking my brain turned up any obvious connection between improving my time in a marathon and growing closer to God. I thought about running more than I thought about God. Way more.

Why did I love running so much anyway? What was I running toward?

Maybe the better question was, What was I running away from?

Exercise instilled discipline and gave me a feeling of accomplishment, two things in short supply during my dysfunctional childhood.

But if I craved structure and a sense of self-worth, shouldn’t I be getting those things from God? Maybe H.R. was right. Maybe exercise was taking God’s place in my life.

I knew what I had to do. Give up this sport I loved or give it to God.

You hear that a lot, from pastors and such: “Just give it to God.” How was I supposed to put it into practice?

A couple days later, I remembered something. Years ago, when I was starting out as a runner, I’d been doodling during a church service. (Sorry, Pastor.) I drew a funny-looking stick figure running. Next to the stick figure I wrote, “Run for God.” I stuck the paper in my Bible and for some reason filed it in a drawer at home.

I rummaged through my files and found the drawing. I took it to a print shop and had it printed on a dozen T-shirts. I pictured myself wearing the shirt and being forced to explain to people what it meant to run for God.

People did ask about the shirt, especially at church. I told them my story and what H.R. had said to me, that running had become my idol.

“I’m trying to do this thing I love for God instead of myself,” I said.

“Sounds like a subject for a class at church,” someone said.

“Definitely,” I said. “I would take that class.”

“No, I meant you should teach it.”

Me—teach a class? The guy who doodled in church? I didn’t know enough about the Bible to teach anyone about faith!

People kept asking. Finally I went to my pastor for confirmation that I was not qualified. “Sounds like a great class,” he said instead. “When do you want to start?”

I couldn’t argue with that. Holly and I prayed about it. I put up a few signs and talked to some church friends. I tried to make a lesson plan, but all I came up with were vague ideas about the relationship between faith and endurance.

That’s why I stalled for time by asking everyone why they were in class.

A woman named Gaye Coker raised her hand. I braced for a biblical question I was unprepared to answer.

“My husband and I need this class,” she said. “We’re in a rut. We’re both overweight. All we do is work, come home, eat, watch TV and go to bed. We’ve had some parenting challenges, and we’re depressed. We don’t think we can run, but maybe this class will kickstart something.”

Other people told similar stories. No one asked a theological question. Everyone had a spiritual need that they thought exercise might help with.

I didn’t have to be an expert. These people probably knew more about the Bible than I did. All I had to do was be myself, share my story and guide people to a level of exercise they could manage. We would pray and explore Scripture together.

We would run for God.

God can do amazing things when you let him lead.

What happened with that class? First, everyone took up running. We started with walking, then slowly built up to running three times a week. By the time the class was finished, everyone was ready to run a 5K race.

We discovered the Bible actually has quite a lot to say about running. As the book of Hebrews puts it, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” There’s more where that came from.

People at our church heard about the class and asked for another one. Other churches in the area soon did the same. I was asked to write a curriculum that other churches could use. I published the curriculum, and soon I had a nonprofit ministry called Run for God that was helping thousands of people around the country learn to run and deepen their faith.

Guess who works for Run for God? Gaye Coker. She went on to run half-marathons, and her husband became a marathoner.

“Running changed my life,” she tells people who sign up for our groups.

It changed mine. Or maybe it’s better to say God changed my life when I turned my love for running over to his care.

Today Run for God has been taught in more than 6,500 communities around the world to more than 200,000 people. Our organization’s small team (my wife, Holly; Gaye; local running legend Dean Thompson; and me) offers programs from beginner to marathon. We are passionate about sharing God’s love through fitness.

A life of faith is indeed a life of endurance. Some days we may find the incredible serenity and focus I remember feeling during the first 10K I ran. Other days, we might struggle to take another step. But with God leading the way, we are sure to finish the race that has been set before us.

* * *

Deepen your faith and your joy of running with Running in Faith—a 52-week devotional for runners, created in partnership with Run for God. Every week, you’ll be encouraged by inspiring stories of ordinary people who have become spiritually and physically fit. Plus, expert tips and observations to help boost your joy of running. Enlightening Scriptures that will guide your steps and draw you closer to God. Penetrating questions to help you reflect on and apply what you discover each week. For a free preview and gift, go to shopguideposts.org/run.

Her Son Helped Her Learn to Cope with COPD

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Candyce Norris

My husband, Jim, added another pill to the pile of meds on the kitchen counter. Ever since my release from the hospital two days earlier, he’d kept careful track of which ones I needed to take and when. It was overwhelming, everything I would need to do to recover. And most of it was on me. It’s not as if Jim or anyone else could breathe for me. This is hopeless, I thought. I’m never going to be able to do this.

Just then, my youngest son, Jeremey, walked into our apartment. “What did the doctor say?” he asked. Jim had taken me to a follow-up pulmonologist appointment earlier that morning.

“He wants me to go to pulmonary rehabilitation,” I said, trying to sound more positive than I felt. “It meets two or three times a week about managing COPD, learning to monitor and better control breathing, managing stress and exercising. It sounds great, but with your dad out of work, we just can’t afford it. I asked him if I could do it on my own.”

I’d started smoking when I was 16. I loved everything about it: the nicotine rush, the taste, the feel of a cigarette between my fingers, how smoking kept me slim and especially how social it was, hanging out with other smokers. My parents smoked; so did nearly everyone I knew back then. Jim included. I quit smoking while I was pregnant with each of our four kids, but I always picked it up again afterward.

I started having breathing difficulties, frequent colds, lung infections. No big deal, I told myself. At 41, I was hospitalized with pneumonia. That’s when a doctor told me I had COPD, an incurable, chronic lung disease. I’d shrugged that off too. Until both my parents died from COPD-related causes. Even so, it took me another six years before I was able to quit for good. By then I was landing in the hospital regularly.

I figured I was headed down the same path as my parents. Nothing I could do to stop it. I hated thinking I wouldn’t be there for the kids and grandkids. But God hadn’t saved my parents. I couldn’t imagine him working some miracle for me.

The spring of 2013, I started coughing all the time. I would come home from my job as a night manager at Denny’s, my head swimming from lack of oxygen. One night, I felt so weak I begged God to get me back to our apartment safely. I figured I’d be okay after a few hours with my nebulizer. But the next morning, I collapsed. I was in the hospital a week. The doctors told Jim I wasn’t going to make it, but I’d pulled through—barely. At 58, I felt more like 88.

The pulmonologist’s words from this morning rang in my ears. “This is serious. You need to be in a treatment program. Immediately.” I’d meant what I said about doing a program on my own. But I had no idea where to begin. Just walking across a room made me feel as if the wind had been knocked out of me.

There in the kitchen, my son looked at me, his eyes pleading. “Let me help you,” Jeremey said. “Tomorrow before you leave for your shift, we’ll go down to the fitness room.” Our apartment complex had a fitness room, where Jeremey worked out. I was proud of him, especially how he and his siblings had quit smoking, but he couldn’t understand what I was going through.

“Maybe in a few days,” I said. “I have to get my strength back.”

“We’ll go slow, Mom,” he said. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. You can’t put this off.”

Just getting to the fitness room, I had to stop several times to catch my breath. I felt the sweat trickling down my face.

Finally we got there. “Let’s try the treadmill,” Jeremey said. Couldn’t we just call it a day?

I stepped on the machine gingerly, and Jeremey adjusted it to its lowest speed. “You’ve got this, Mom,” Jeremey said.

Within seconds, I was gasping for air, gripping the bars on either side for dear life, my feet straddling the belt. “I can’t do this,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Jeremey said. “Take as many breaks as you need to.” He was so patient, so eager to help. I didn’t want to let him down. This time, I made it an entire minute before stopping. Finally, after I’d walked a total of 10 minutes, with plenty of breaks, he let me stop.

“That was great,” Jeremey said. “I want you to work up to an hour of exercise a day.” An hour? Was he nuts? My lungs burned. Maybe if I were younger. There were limits to what someone with COPD could do.

Jeremey never let me miss a workout. At the end of the first week, I’d gone 12 minutes before I even realized it. “You rock, Mom!” Jeremey said. Every few days, I made it another minute. To 15, 20. At the end of the first month, I was walking 30 minutes a day. I was still taking breaks but far fewer than when I’d started. Jeremey walked on a treadmill beside me.

Every session felt like an eternity. But I looked forward to spending time with Jeremey, having something to share, that thing I’d always liked about smoking. The rest of my family cheered me on: Jim, my other children, even my oldest granddaughter, Ashlee.

In two months, I was up to an hour on the treadmill. Amazing! Jeremey was as pumped as I was. I said a prayer of thanks that he wasn’t pushing me to do more. My breathing was easier, and I had more energy than I’d had in years, but it wasn’t as if I were an athlete or anything.

I still had bad days—days when I felt winded, when I strained for each breath. I’d been able to get off some medications, but I still depended on steroids. The side effects sometimes made it impossible to sleep.

One night, I was in the living room, well past midnight, watching television when Jeremey got home from his job at a window manufacturing company. Jim had gotten hired there too.

Jeremey sat down next to me. A commercial came on for a local charity race, a 5K.

“You and I should do that!” he said. “It’s not much longer than what you’re already walking.”

I stared at him. “No way,” I said. Walking on a flat treadmill was one thing, but going up and down hills? I’d be in the way of the actual runners. Jeremey’s encouragement could take me only so far.

“We’re doing this, Mom,” Jeremey said. There was the same determination he’d had from the beginning. I took as deep a breath as I could manage.

“Okay,” I said to him. “As long as you’re there to carry me when I can’t go any further.”

With Jeremey, I trained for months, starting with walking around the block and then graduating to hills. With the slightest incline, I was bent over, catching my breath. When it got too tough, Jeremey supported my hips and literally pushed me to the top of the hills. Slowly, I felt myself getting stronger. My confidence grew.

The time I spent exercising with Jeremey was the best part of my day. I started wearing a pulse oximeter, a fingertip blood oxygen saturation monitor, so I could see when my oxygen level was getting low and rest before I was out of air, managing my breathing, as I would have been taught in pulmonary rehab.

Race day. A year ago, I had nearly died. Now Jeremey and I were standing amid a throng of people, all eager to take on this challenge. Except me. I took some comfort in spying a few other nervous faces. My whole family, including my grandkids, had come to watch.

“Remember, this was your idea,” I muttered to Jeremey.

“I don’t think I can do it,” he said. I thought he was joking, but he was doubled over. “I’ve got a stomach bug or something. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.” I did my best not to look disappointed. Behind me I heard a voice.

“I’ll do it with you, G’mama,” said Ashlee, my 19-year-old granddaughter. I hesitated. I hadn’t trained with her. She didn’t know my pace. What if I had problems?

“G’mama, we are doing this together,” she said. Jeremey wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The starting gun sounded, and I felt a surge of adrenaline. One step at a time, I told myself. I thought about the past year, that scary night driving home from work, begging God to help me breathe. I was here because of him. He’d given me the best coach and trainer I could’ve asked for in Jeremey. A whole family of cheerleaders. God had always wanted me to be healthy. I just needed to want it too, enough to do something about it. I took a bigger step. Then another, my pace quickening.

Ashlee was wonderful. She sensed when I was tiring and when I needed to push myself. We crossed the finish line in less than an hour—57 minutes to be exact. Less time than I walked on the treadmill.

My family rushed to me and gave me a group hug. “I’m so proud of you, Mom,” Jeremey said. I knew it had been a team effort—Team Norris. I sure liked the sound of that. My legs ached. My breathing was ragged. But I felt great inside.

“The next race,” I told Jeremey, “we’re doing together.”

That was six years ago. Since then, Jeremey and I have completed seven 5Ks and two obstacle courses. I’m taking up yoga and doing calisthenics every day. COPD is chronic and incurable but not untreatable. In fact, I feel more alive than ever.

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

Her Mother With Alzheimer’s Sang ‘Silent Night’

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Kristen Kemp

In my mother’s room at the memory care center, I dug through the clothes piled on the floor looking for a sweater and scarf. Her closet had plenty of hangers, but Mom, who’d always been tidy, no longer remembered to use them.

“What’s happening, dear?” she asked, fuzzy on my name.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” I reminded her. “We’re going to church. One of your favorite places.”

“We always go to such fun places,” Mom said, smiling vacantly. It was unclear what, if anything, she had understood.

I glanced at my watch. “We need to hurry.” My dad, husband and three kids were meeting us at church for the afternoon service. Even though I wanted to get Mom settled in a pew early, everything, even the simplest tasks, took longer now.

When I was making the 700-mile trip from my home in New Jersey to southern Indiana, where my parents lived, getting Mom to church had felt like my top priority. This would be Mom’s first Christmas at church since she’d gone into memory care. The Christmas Eve candlelight service was one of our traditions, and I’d wanted her to have something familiar to hold on to.

But now I wondered. Mom’s Alzheimer’s disease had advanced. She’d barely left the facility in months. The church would be packed, and crowds sometimes overwhelmed her. Did Christmas have any meaning for Mom anymore?

As a long-distance caregiver, I’d had to let go of so much over the past 10 years, so much of the relationship I’d cherished between Mom and me. I’d even struggled to admit that Alzheimer’s could be the cause of her slipping memory, as if denial would somehow keep the demon at bay.

We’d talked on the phone every day back then. “I’m forgetting things,” she’d said during one call. “I think something is wrong with me. I’m going to see the doctor.”

“Mom, you’re just doing too much,” I’d insisted. She was only 69, a retired teacher with a sharp mind. “You’re so busy gardening and volunteering. All your activities at church.”

Faith. That was one of the big differences between us. Mom rarely missed Sunday services or Bible study. She prayed often. When I was growing up, it was a given on Sunday mornings that Mom and I would be in a pew at our Methodist church in Jeffersonville, sitting beside her mother, whom we called MeMe. (My much older brother had already flown the nest when I was little, or he would’ve been there too. )

“Your faith will always be something you can rely on,” Mom told me. “You need to know God will be there to catch you when you fall.” For MeMe, church was a social event, but for Mom it was about feeling close to God, basking in his loving spirit. Even as a girl, I could see that.

I loved listening to Mom sing the old hymns in church, her voice soaring. The song coming from her lips was so joyful, as if she were one with the music. It was amazing.

Even so, after I left Jeffersonville to follow my dream of becoming a writer in New York City, I left church behind me too. I was focused on building my career, getting married, having kids.

Mom hated that her own children lived so far away; my brother had moved to Texas. I came home as often as I could. Mom and I even took a girls’ trip to England, Wales and Ireland. Mostly I stayed close through our daily calls.

MeMe had developed Alzheimer’s, and Mom had cared for her until the end. Mom was terrified that she too would fall victim to it. She didn’t want to be a burden to my father, my brother and me. I knew I couldn’t be the caregiver she had been. Not from New Jersey, where life was filled with responsibilities, a mortgage, young children.

“You don’t have dementia,” I’d told Mom over the phone. Was I trying to reassure her or myself?

Days later, while driving to nearby Louisville, Kentucky, to a doctor’s appointment, Mom got totally lost. She’d had to call Dad; he drove to her so she could follow him home.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she said. “I’m scared, Kristen.”

The doctor’s diagnosis was inconclusive, but I grew more anxious with each passing month and with each troubling call with Mom. I was no longer in denial about her condition. I’d slipped into a kind of depression at the thought of losing Mom bit by bit to a disease that steals who we are. And of not being able to be there for her when she needed me most.

One Sunday morning, I decided to go to church alone. I picked a mega-church I’d often walked by. I remembered how loud and joyful the music had sounded, even from the street. The parishioners seemed happy and animated as they streamed outside after services. I wanted to feel what they were feeling.

I took a seat in a crowded pew. “We all suffer physical and mental health crises,” the pastor said. “Believe in God, and he will produce miracles.”

What kind of miracle could I hope for? I wondered. There’s no cure for Alzheimer’s, after all.

Still, when the service was over, the people around me greeted me with such genuine warmth and caring. I went back the next Sunday and the one after that.

I kept going. I learned the words to the praise songs. I started reading my Bible and praying, devoting time each day to nourishing my long-neglected spiritual side.

Mom declined slowly yet inexorably. Dad hid her car keys. Not being able to go out by herself devastated her. I pushed to get Mom into a memory care facility. I called facilities across southern Indiana. But Dad and my brother felt it was too soon.

I poured out all my frustrations, my fears, my grief to God. My pastor spoke often about how faith could take the place of worry. Letting go, living in the moment and trusting the future to God. The more I grew spiritually, the more I wanted to learn. I started practicing yoga, then eventually trained to become a yoga teacher, exploring even more deeply how to stay present.

My daily conversations with Mom were becoming more one-sided. I would tell her in detail about my family, the kids’ sports, my writing assignments, the TV shows we were into, what we ate for dinner, the songs I sang at church. It wasn’t always clear how much she registered, but Mom and I were connecting. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

One day, while I was at the yoga studio where I taught, Dad’s number popped up on my cell phone. Something’s happened to Mom! I thought. But it was Dad who needed help. He’d gone to the VA hospital with chest pain. The doctor had ordered emergency quadruple bypass surgery for the next day.

Dad was scared for himself and even more worried about Mom. Could I come home? I raced to my house. My husband booked me a ticket for the next flight out.

I stayed in Indiana for two weeks. My brother also came to help. Mom was confused and upset by everything that was happening. I called eight agencies and found a home health care aide who could put in a full day with Mom and Dad after I’d gone back to New Jersey. She was a sweet woman older than my parents, who were in their late seventies by then.

Meanwhile, I put Mom on a waiting list at a memory care center. I didn’t want to upset Dad by talking to him about it, but there was no doubt in my mind that Mom needed 24/7 care.

A room became available in January 2018, just as Dad arrived at the same conclusion on his own, surely an example of God at work. I went back to Indiana to help with the move. We packed Mom’s clothes, family photos and favorite coloring books. It was hard for everyone, but Mom was safe, which was the best I could hope for.

I couldn’t call her every day; a conversation didn’t hold her attention for long. Instead, I took to calling Dad every evening. In a way, it felt like honoring Mom. She’d been devoted to him for their 60-year marriage.

Through it all, I held fast to my faith, to the support and friendship I’d found at church. One Sunday, I stood to the strains of a praise song I’d come to love, “The Great I Am.” I raised my arms high, my body moving to the music, letting the words wash over me. “I want to be near, near to your heart. Loving the world, hating the dark.”

The voices around me lifted, joyous. It reminded me so much of childhood Sundays in Indiana, sitting beside Mom in church, listening to her sing out her love for the Lord. In drawing me back into his house, closer to him, God had given me a way to draw closer to my mother, a connection that went beyond words.

The faith that had sustained her had finally taken hold in me, and I couldn’t help but think this was what she would have wanted. Though we were separated by the miles between us, by her loss of memory, here in church, basking in the light of God’s love, I felt so close to my mom. This was my miracle.

That Christmas Eve in Indiana, after Mom had gone into memory care, I got her dressed and drove us to church just before the candlelight service. Our family filed in. “Take our seats,” a young couple with a baby said. They were in the back row. Mom could sit near the end of the pew between Dad and me. Perfect.

We got settled, and the music—all the familiar carols—began: “The First Noel,” “Joy to the World,” “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Mom hummed and even sang some of the lyrics. She held Dad’s hand and mine. Then she closed her eyes and bowed her head.

“What is she doing?” Dad whispered to me.

“She’s praying,” I said. Dad had tears in his eyes.

Did Christmas still have meaning for Mom? I didn’t have to wonder anymore.

At the end of the service, as the sanctuary went dark and the congregation began singing “Silent Night,” I lit her candle. Mom’s eyes never left the flame as she mouthed the words. After the final verse, she puckered her lips and blew out her candle.

“Thank you,” she said. “That was beautiful.”

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Her Mom With Alzheimer’s Still Inspires Her

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Miriam Green

If there was a way to capture the essence of my mom, Naomi, it was through her cooking. My childhood was filled with bountiful family dinners, especially on Friday nights, when we celebrated Shabbat, and mouthwatering holiday feasts. The kitchen was Mom’s domain, the same way the lab was my scientist dad’s.

Both had grown up in the rough East End of London. My dad, Jack, had been as skinny as a rake. Mom’s cooking soon fattened him up.

My brother and I were born in England. We were toddlers when our family moved to the U.S. for Daddy’s career. We had a typical American childhood in Bethesda, Maryland. We went to the local synagogue, where Mom eventually became executive director. In our house, the kitchen was the best place to be. We each had our assigned seats around the butcher block table in the breakfast nook. I would sit for hours in my heavy oak chair, reading all manner of books. The radio was tuned to rock or classical, depending on who got to it first. And Mom was always there by the counter, cutting, chopping, stirring.

Mom’s chicken soup was her expression of love for our family. She cooked this dish with only fresh herbs (don’t even think of using dried herbs!) and vegetables cut into big chunks. We delighted in the clear golden broth, the tender strands of chicken, the soft celery and aromatic dill. It was the highlight of every Shabbat dinner.

I moved to Israel with my husband in 1991. Jeff and I made our home in Beer Sheva, in the Negev desert. My parents soon moved to Israel as well, to the Mediterranean resort city of Netanya. Jeff and I traveled with our kids to Netanya to share Shabbat with my parents. We’d walk together along the beach, then feast on one of Mom’s amazing Shabbat dinners—roasted meat and eggplant, hummus, challah, plum pie and, of course, chicken soup. The kids always asked for seconds, sometimes even thirds, of the fragrant dish.

In 2010, at the age of 69, Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She remained bubbly, talkative and good-natured. She could make jokes and sing along to her favorite songs. But she could no longer manage cooking those tremendous meals. A huge part of her identity—the nurturing mother and wife who gave love through her cooking—was lost.

For the first time in his life, Daddy started cooking. We joked that he had found his true passion. He brought his scientific expertise into the kitchen.

Every Tuesday, I’d make the two-and-a-half-hour trip to Netanya. Mom and I would roam the bustling streets, window shopping and telling jokes. We’d drink coffee at a café with a view of the sea. I tried to keep our outings stress-free. If that meant bending the truth to fit Mom’s reality, that’s what I did. Sometimes she informed me she was 46, which made me older than she was. I’d just go along with it.

I knew the longer I could keep Mom active and involved, the longer we would have her around with us. I took her grocery shopping and had her help me choose ingredients, even if she mixed up tomatoes and red peppers. When we made soup, I’d help Mom cut vegetables so she could still take part in cooking.

Sometimes she wanted to be held. The first time she came into my arms, I felt awkward. I comforted her, but I knew that what I wanted—to remain her child—could not last. Even the Jewish grace after meals became problematic. Sitting at my parents’ table, I recited, “God of compassion, bless my father and my mother, my teachers, hosts of this household.” I felt sad saying the words. Mom had taught me many things over the years, some practical (how to check eggs before you buy a carton), others intangible (that children thrive when you love them unconditionally). Was she still my teacher?

As a way to cope, I stationed myself in my kitchen and focused on cooking, incorporating recipes from Mom and borrowing from the cultures around me. Mom gave me all her cookbooks, and I studied the notes she’d made in them. I found her handwritten recipe for sesame green beans taped inside Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book and added it to my repertoire.

My kitchen experiments brought back memories that turned out to hold new significance—for instance, my favorite cake Mom used to make when my brother and I were kids. Failure cakes, we called them. I don’t recall why she let us eat the first one. Had she left out an ingredient? Misjudged the baking time? The batter rose to a rich, wine-sweetened cake with a hint of nutmeg. Delicious! We begged Mom to make more. She did, just for us. The flaw turned out to be what made the cake special. Failure cakes are an apt metaphor for Alzheimer’s. I try to find a success within the limitations the disease has put on her life. Take my Tuesdays with Mom—it didn’t matter how many times we drank coffee in the same café or window-shopped at the same stores. What mattered was that we were together. Each visit was new for her, and I loved those moments of joy and laughter as much as she did.

Then there were the meals that Mom used to patch together from leftovers—they were legendary in our house. She’d bring to the table a pan brimming with chicken or beef cut into small pieces and sautéed with as many vegetables as would fit. Onions, peppers, maybe green beans and cauliflower. She’d add soy sauce, tomato paste or leftover gravy to create a delectable sauce. I can’t say there hasn’t been grumbling from my kids when dinner appears on the table as a reinvented version of yesterday’s fare. But as when I was growing up, every time we make Mom’s Leftovers Supreme, it turns out different and delicious. It’s all in the quality of what you’ve got to put in it. And the amount of love you add. Sort of like our lives. Even as Alzheimer’s claims more of her abilities, Mom is still teaching me.

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Her Loving Grandpa Saved Her From Addiction

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Kristine E. Bixel

Something brushed my hand and I stirred awake. There was my beloved grandpa Kegg beside me. He was holding my hand. “Honey, wake up,” he said. I glanced around. I was in a hospital bed. What was happening? I felt panic until I looked at my grandfather’s face. He always made me feel better, no matter what.

Family meant everything to me. I learned that growing up in Johnstown, Pa. I had love and support from my parents, my three brothers, and especially my grandfather. I believed Grandpa Kegg knew everything, and he didn’t mind a bit that I thought so. He lived right next door, so we kids were often at his house. Grandpa took a morning walk and sometimes we’d trail along. He had a favorite hat—a red plaid hunting cap—and he wore it year in, year out. “Guess what’s in my pocket?” he’d ask. He might have had gum or a shiny nickel or a stone he’d rubbed till it shone. If one of us was worried about homework or trouble with a friend, he’d make silly noises to get us laughing. “Quack, quack!” he said once when I was feeling low. My mood brightened instantly. Whatever was wrong, Grandpa had that effect on me.

Still, I had trouble with my moods. My teenage years weren’t easy. I was changing from a girl into a woman, and I didn’t understand what I was feeling. Happy one minute, sad the next. Excited to be growing up and afraid of it at the same time. I was confused and somehow uncomfortable in my own skin. What was happening to me? Was I normal? In some ways my family all felt like strangers to me. I could talk with Grandpa Kegg about almost anything. But these feelings were something I couldn’t express—to anyone. I kept everything bottled up. Kids at school made fun of me because I was withdrawn. I felt different, and I thought it was all my fault. I didn’t know the word for it back then, but I was depressed most of the time.

“Something wrong with my little girl?” Grandpa Kegg asked one day. “No, I’m okay,” I said, and turned away. Grandpa put his hands on my shoulders and pivoted me back around. He could see that I was too old for silly duck quacks to cheer me up, and that my troubles these days were more serious than a tiff with a friend. “Oh, honey,” he said, and hugged me tight. God and his angels could see me from heaven, but more than anyone on earth my grandpa understood me. I felt close to heaven in his arms.

As soon as I graduated from high school I decided to strike out on my own. “I think I’ll go live in Florida,” I said to my parents. “Just for a while.” They thought maybe a change of scenery would do me some good.

I flew to Tampa, found a job and a room to rent. I liked the Gulf Coast and the warm, tropical air. One morning I walked along the bay, thinking of Grandpa in his red plaid cap. Life seemed very different here in Florida. Maybe I can be different here too, I thought. More like the little girl who used to laugh at Grandpa’s silly duck quacks.

But I hadn’t left my depression back home. Being on my own only made it worse. I looked for friends to fill my time between working. “Let’s party!” a girl said to me in a bar one night. Turned out she was as troubled as I was, but she knew how to escape—alcohol and drugs. “Come on,” she said. “Try it.” I did. What would Grandpa Kegg think of his little girl now? I wondered. Before I knew it, I was “partying” every night. Instead of an escape from depression, my new lifestyle became another kind of trap.

By this time I’d become an expert at covering things up. I learned to hide my drinking just as I’d hidden my depression. No one knew the real me. I found a new job whenever I lost one, and got through my twenties. But I couldn’t hide from myself. I missed Grandpa. I missed my family. Finally I went back to Johnstown. But all the old insecurities waited for me there. Moving to Florida hadn’t cured my depression, and it looked like moving back home wasn’t going to cure my drug and alcohol addiction. Grandpa could see I was in more trouble than ever. I was grown up now, but the little girl in me still struggled for help.

One night I drank myself to the lowest point I’d ever known. I didn’t want to go on with my life. I stumbled into the bathroom and opened the medicine chest. A full bottle of pills stared back at me. I filled a glass of water and swallowed every last one. I lay down on my bed. “Please, God, I can’t fight anymore. Let me go to sleep and never wake up.” I hoped the people I loved would forgive me.

Now, with Grandpa Kegg there beside me I wondered how I’d wound up in this hospital bed. Grandpa was wearing his red plaid cap. He’s out for his morning walk, I thought. But why am I here?

Grandpa looked very sad, and kept patting my hand. “Honey, you have to wake up,” he said. “Your life isn’t over yet.” Then I remembered what had happened. I was so embarrassed. Did Grandpa know what I’d done? I wanted to tell him everything. I knew he’d understand. I knew he’d still love me. And that—more than anything else—made me want to change my life. Looking into Grandpa’s loving face, I knew I could do it. I had so much to say to him, but I was so tired….

I must have drifted off to sleep. Mom was holding my hand when I woke up again. My whole family was there, everyone except my grandfather. “Where’s Grandpa?” I mumbled.

“You’ve been asleep for three days,” Mom said softly. “Your grandpa’s been so afraid you’d never wake up, he hasn’t left the house once.”

I didn’t argue. I knew in my heart that Grandpa had come to comfort me. As soon as I was discharged from the hospital I went to see him. He hugged me so tight he took my breath away. It was heaven to be in his arms again. “Your visit to the hospital changed me,” I said. “I’ll be the Kristine you’ve always known and loved. You’ll see.”

Grandpa looked at me with tears in his eyes. “But, Kristine, I didn’t go to the hospital,” he said. “I just couldn’t.”

“You must have gone during your daily walk. You wore your favorite cap.”

“You know I couldn’t have walked all the way to the hospital,” Grandpa said. He was quiet, trying to make sense of what might have happened.

“I know it was you, Grandpa. You told me to wake up and I did.”

Grandpa’s eyes twinkled, as if he’d found an answer to our riddle. “Heaven wasn’t ready for you,” he said. “I suppose God sent an angel to tell you so.”

Chills ran over me. My grandpa did know everything. And he knew that the heavenly angel who appeared to me in the hospital was meant to remind me of the earthly angel I’d loved and trusted all my life. And the angel was right. My life wasn’t over. In fact, every day feels like a brand-new beginning.

This story first appeared in the July 2008 issue of Angels on Earth magazine.

Her Husband Was Addicted to Meth. Could She Find the Strength to Leave?

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Erin Leonhardt

Midnight on New Year’s Eve. I was in a rental car in Denver, Colorado. My 10-year-old son, Rylan, was sitting beside me. A flurry of fireworks exploded in the sky above us. Rylan gazed up with tired eyes. It was late, and we’d just gotten off a plane from Washington State, where we’d been visiting my parents.

My husband, Heath, should have been at the airport to pick us up. We lived 70 miles away in Estes Park, a small town at the foot of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Heath was in jail. He’d been arrested for stealing copper from construction sites, where he worked as a heavy equipment operator. He sold the copper to pay for drugs. He’d called from jail while Rylan and I were on our way to the airport in Washington.

A meth addict. That’s what Heath was. Dropping Rylan and me off at the start of our trip, he’d given us big hugs and assured me he’d be fine. He couldn’t join us because he had to work. Or so he said.

I should have known better. Heath had been abusing drugs on and off since before I met him, though it took me—so naive!—a long time to figure that out. He’d spent most of our marriage promising to get clean, relapsing and promising again, begging me to believe him.

Now, heading out of Denver on the interstate, I knew I had a decision to make. Heath wanted me to bail him out. He expected to see me at the jail in the morning. He’d sounded frightened and confused on the phone. “I can explain everything,” he’d said. “This’ll never happen again, I swear.” I glanced over at Rylan, who was now asleep. Heath was his father. My husband. The thought of breaking up our family was unthinkable. Or it had been until now. We couldn’t keep going on like this.

What made it all even harder was that, when he was sober, Heath was a wonderful man. Funny. Charismatic. Loving. Devoted to his mother and grandmother. A great dad to Rylan—when he was around.

We’d met in our twenties, after I moved to Estes Park for an elementary school teaching job. I’m from Wisconsin. The beauty of Colorado took my breath away. I wanted to be outside all the time. Heath loved the outdoors too—hiking, fishing and hunting.

I liked him the second I saw him at a music club. He was cute, a funny dancer, but he didn’t seem to care what people thought. The two of us hit it off and started dating. Soon we were living together and I got pregnant. Heath was ecstatic.

I had a different reaction. I knew I should want to marry Heath. I loved him and could tell he loved me. We lived together. We were going to have a child together.

But something felt wrong, and I couldn’t bring myself to commit. Heath wasn’t the most reliable guy. I knew he worked in construction, and he always seemed to have steady income. But his hours were irregular. He never had pay stubs. Some nights he’d come home late, and the reasons he gave sounded implausible. Suspicious, even.

He’d done a lot of partying in high school and college, but he swore those days were behind him. Still, some part of me didn’t fully trust Heath. Though I loved him, I held something back. Not long after Rylan was born, I was doing laundry when I found something in one of Heath’s jacket pockets.

A small glass tube with a globe on one end. I had no idea what it was. I didn’t ask Heath; instead, I showed it to a friend the next day. She didn’t know either, but her teenage son did.

“That’s a meth pipe,” he said.

I confronted Heath. He was defensive but then broke down and admitted he smoked meth. He’d tried it in college and still did it sometimes.

“But I’m not an addict!” he protested. “I can stop. I will stop.”

I was so scared, I told Heath to move out anyway and took Rylan with me for a few months to Wisconsin, where my dad and stepmom lived. I told Heath we were done—and definitely not getting married—until he was clean.

I thought for sure his love for me and Rylan would motivate him to give up the drugs. But Heath seemed to get worse. Once we were back in Estes Park, he drifted in and out of our lives, sometimes sober, sometimes not. My parents kept telling me to let him go for good, but how could I do that to the father of my son? Plus, I’m a teacher. I look for the good in people. I was sure I could fix Heath. I mean, if I couldn’t, who could?

Heath insisted he could fix himself. He never entered a 12-step program— “I don’t need that, I can do it on my own”—yet eventually he managed a year of sobriety. I agreed to get married. Our wedding was three months after Rylan’s ninth birthday. Heath moved back in with us, and we started talking about having another baby.

Then, one day, I noticed a pair of skis missing from our storage shed.

“No idea,” Heath said when I asked where they went. “Maybe someone stole them?”

More things disappeared. Heath started coming home late again. I discovered thousands of dollars missing from our savings account. He fell back into the old cycle of drug use, promises to quit and relapse. Now that we were married and Rylan was old enough to want his dad in his life, I found it harder to leave. I did everything I could to get Heath to quit.

I covered up for him with bosses. Lied to my parents and friends. Filled out job applications for him.

The end result of all that? A New Year’s Eve phone call from jail. And now here I was, pulling up to our condo in the rental car. I woke Rylan, and we went inside. The condo was a disaster. Dishes and food everywhere. Our Christmas tree tilted over in the living room.

I tucked Rylan in and collapsed on the couch. I felt alone. Terrified. “God, help me,” I whispered even though I hadn’t been to church in ages. Then I went to bed.

I woke up the next morning with the same pit in my stomach. But something had shifted. I knew what I had to do.

“Erin, where are you?” Heath said when he called. “When are you coming to bail me out?”

“I’m not bailing you out, Heath,” I said. “I’m not staying in Estes Park. I’m taking Rylan, and we’re moving to Washington. When you’re clean, you can call me and we can talk. But I can’t take this anymore. I’m leaving you.”

Heath was angry, but I didn’t stay on the phone with him long enough to let him change my mind. I called my mom and told her everything. “About time!” she said.

I resigned my teaching job and started packing up the condo. Mom flew down to help out.

The day before my thirty-ninth birthday, I was unloading a rental truck into my mom and stepdad’s garage. It felt like the worst day of my life. My marriage was probably over. I had no job. No place to live. Rylan, desperate not to lose his father, was confused and angry, lashing out at my mom for encouraging us to move.

A few days later, I called Lynne, a friend and fellow teacher back in Colorado. Lynne’s son had struggled for years with addiction to opioids.

“I feel lost,” I told her. “I don’t even know if I did the right thing coming here. Rylan is furious. And I’m so depressed. I can barely get out of bed in the morning.”

“You were very brave,” Lynne said. “Maybe you should try going to Al-Anon. It’s really helped me.”

Lynne meant the 12-step program for loved ones of addicts based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t know much about it, but I was willing to give it a try.

I said nothing at the first meeting I attended, just listened to stories that sounded like mine. Exactly like mine. The feelings if not the facts.

At the second meeting, I heard a word I’d never heard before: enabling. It meant helping an addict in all the wrong ways—ways that hurt not only you but the addict too, even if you think you are helping.

Was that what I’d been doing with Heath? Enabling his addiction? But I wanted him to get sober!

The more Al-Anon meetings I attended, working the 12 steps, the more I realized I’d been making mistakes from the minute I discovered that meth pipe in Heath’s jacket pocket. Again and again I’d let hope triumph over reality. Rather than committing Heath to God’s care and protecting myself and Rylan from the damage of my husband’s addiction, I’d tried to fix Heath. At Al-Anon I learned the hard truth that you can’t fix an addict. Only the addict—invoking the help of their higher power—has the ability to do that.

Heath called every day. I kept those calls brief—Heath was still mad. Then gradually, I noticed, things changed. Heath was routed into a drug court program that required him to attend a 12-step meeting every day. He checked into a 30-day residential rehab program. He went to church.

I found a church too, headed by a wonderful pastor named Abby, who was my age. Pastor Abby invited me out to coffee and encouraged me to join the women’s group. I sang in the choir. Rylan started school, joined a soccer team and made friends.

Heath began working the 12 steps. He made amends to Rylan and me and told me getting arrested was the best thing that could have happened to him because it forced him to take inventory of his life and addiction.

“I was so mad at you when you said you wouldn’t bail me out,” he said. “But that’s what saved me.”

I found a job teaching fourth grade. Rylan and I moved into a small house overlooking the ocean, and I spent a lot of prayer time walking along the water, my footsteps in the sand.

Near the end of his drug court program, Heath got permission to serve the last few months of his probation in Washington. He moved in with Rylan and me, and a year later he’s still here. Still sober.

A foundational principle of 12-step programs is One day at a time. Neither Heath nor I take his sobriety for granted. Relapse is always a threat. Each day we do what I did the night Heath got arrested—ask God for help. Addiction is a disease you can never turn your back on.

I know it was God, and only God, who gave me the courage to leave Heath. Only God could fix Heath. Like Heath said, my decision saved his life.

It also saved our marriage—and our family too.

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Her Husband Had a Stroke When He Was 30

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Allison Pataki

Dave, my husband, was working crazy 18-hour days. I hardly saw him. But there was no reason to expect otherwise. He was a doctor in his third year of residency in orthopedic surgery at Rush University in Chicago. He had to work hard. He’d always worked hard. That’s who he was. Type A all the way. Focused, driven.

All the more reason we needed this vacation, a babymoon. I was five months pregnant with our first child, and we figured we’d give ourselves a trip to Hawaii before things got even more crazy. Just the two of us. Time together.

The last thing we did before leaving our apartment was say goodbye to our dog Penny. (A friend was going to pick her up later.) Penny wagged her tail and went around in circles. Dave gave her a hug. “We’ll be back soon. You’ll see us again, Penny.” That was Dave, the man I married. Affectionate and reassuring, seeing to the needs of the ones he loved. Even Penny.

We jumped in a taxi to O’Hare International Airport. As soon as our flight took off, Dave got out his laptop. Some medical article he had to read, I figured. “Don’t work too hard,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I’m taking a nap.”

The next thing I knew, he was giving me a nudge and asking me to look in his eyes, his right pupil so dilated, I couldn’t even see the iris. Fear rushed through me. “Are you having a stroke?” I asked.

“I think so,” Dave said. Then he lost consciousness.

I rushed to get help. There was a nurse in the row in front of us, soon joined by a doctor and an EMT also on the flight. They stretched out Dave’s unconscious six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame across a row of seats. “He needs to get to a hospital immediately,” the doctor said. We made an emergency landing in Fargo, North Dakota.

At the hospital, Dave was intubated but didn’t wake up. Family flew in. I looked to Dave’s dad—a neurologist—for some sign of hope. Surely he would know what to do. But the diagnosis was anything but reassuring: an ischemic midbrain stroke, one of the worst kinds. All I could do was pray and ask others to pray.

That night I had a dream that Jesus was with Dave in the hospital, telling him about all the prayers coming his way. “I’m on the case,” Jesus said, sounding just like a doctor. Like Dave.

After three days, my husband was transferred by air ambulance to Chicago, still unconscious. Best to get him back at Rush, close to home, with doctors and nurses who knew him. If only he’d wake up.

That first full day at Rush, I showed up in his room and was amazed to find him sitting up in bed, alert, smiling. I grabbed his hand. The nurse asked him who I was. “Alli,” he said. Who was she? “My wife.” How long had we been married? “Four years.”

I was overwhelmed with relief… briefly. Dave’s father took me aside and let me know just how complex Dave’s case was. The part of the brain damaged by Dave’s stroke, the thalamus, did not regulate his basic motor skills. Soon enough he would be moving around. He’d look normal, but his cognitive deficits were the most worrisome. The thalamus, my father-in-law explained, is like a microprocessor, coordinating everything the brain does, including thinking and personality.

“He might not be the same man, Allison,” my father-in-law said.

Every day, I was with Dave at the hospital and then at the rehab hospital, working with the doctors, the nurses, the therapists. Trying to be positive. Holding on to hope. But at night, home alone with Penny, I found it harder to keep the faith. Would I ever get my husband back? Would he ever be the same? His conversation was an incoherent babble so much of the time, this brilliant man who never used to stumble over a word.

Friends tried to reassure me: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” “Take it day by day.” “It will be a long road.” “Two steps forward, one step backward.” What they said might have been clichés, but there was a truth to them: It would be a long road; it would be a marathon. I had to accept that.

Yet not even the top neurosurgeons could say whether my Dave would emerge from his damaged brain. Control was an illusion that had shattered into a million pieces. What would happen when Dave came home? How would we manage when the baby arrived?

One day in speech therapy, Dave was asked to name as many fruits and vegetables as he could in one minute. He named three. He was supposed to come up with a woman’s name for each letter of the alphabet. He couldn’t get past the letter A. My name begins with A.

So much of our relationship had been based on unspoken signals. Dave was intuitive. He knew when I hurt, when I needed quiet, when I yearned for a hug, when it was time to laugh. Gone. Everything at home reminded me of how far removed our former life had become. The dishes we had received as wedding presents, photos of us on trips, notes we had written to each other and tucked in random places. Would my husband ever be the same man, or would he stay a stranger? The thought rattled me to the core.

I told myself I should be grateful that Dave was still alive. But this man, this stranger working so hard with therapist after therapist, was not the man I married. “I’m on the case,” Jesus had said in my dream. Was this as far as the case would come?

My friend Marya came from Washington, D.C., to help out. I was in my sixth month, the fatigue all-encompassing. Our unborn daughter. I could feel her kick and squirm. Would she ever know her father the way I had known him? What kind of parent could he be?

Marya came up with a plan to cheer us both up. She would bring Penny down to the rehab hospital, and I’d bring Dave outside to greet her. He hadn’t seen Penny since we left for our aborted vacation, weeks earlier. I could still picture her wagging her tail, turning in circles, as Dave knelt down to hug her. One of the last moments of our previous life.

The two of us went down to the street and stepped out of the hospital. There was Penny on her leash. Dave didn’t even recognize her. More shocking, Penny didn’t seem to know him. She cowered between my legs as though he were a complete stranger, a confirmation of all my deepest unspoken fears.

Dave came home. He transitioned to outpatient therapy. He slept for hours. I drove him back and forth as if he were a kid. Those clichés were proving all too true. A marathon, not a sprint. One step forward, one step back. Any day would see the birth of our daughter. We’d gone to classes; we’d done all the preparation. Dave would be my coach. But that was the other Dave; the old Dave, my partner.

His rehab doctor assured me that Dave would be able to participate in the birth of our daughter, but I wasn’t so sure. I just couldn’t see how Dave would be able to focus on everything happening at the hospital that day, much less the tasks of caring for a newborn. No matter how much I prayed, I worried. How were we going to manage?

On a Saturday in October, I went into labor. We hung out at home for as long as we could, then got a ride to the Northwestern Prentice Women’s Hospital, where I was admitted. At least it was a different hospital than the one where Dave had been.

The Chicago Cubs were playing that evening, hoping for a long-awaited chance to go to the World Series, the entire city in a postseason frenzy of red and blue. The game was on TV in the background, Dave turning to it in between contractions. Was he incapable of concentrating on my labor? More interested in a simple baseball game? No. No, I sensed, this was more like the old Dave—relaxed, confidently multitasking, monitoring my contractions, cheering me on, bringing me damp washcloths to swab the sweat from my face, squeezing my hand just when I needed it. Me squeezing back, just as I’d done on the plane right before the stroke.

Our baby made her entrance. Dave himself cut the umbilical cord. The moment he took our little girl in his arms, I could see the pure love in his soft green eyes. It was that part of him, his soul, divinely given, that still burned bright. That part of Dave—of all of us—that remains intact, no matter what.

There were still many more months of rehab to go, and none of it was any easier with a newborn around. The sleepless nights, the challenge of taking care of our daughter while also taking care of Dave and cheering him on at home and at rehab. Sometimes the fears got the better of me. But my faith had grown. I’d always thought that what you believed would shelter you from the worst. Now I knew: Faith was the companion that sustained you through the worst.

One year after the stroke, Dave returned to his residency. He is a doctor today, although not a surgeon—he works as a hospital consultant. He’s bright, committed, maybe a little less type A than he used to be. He has changed, but I have too. I think of a line I’ve circled and underlined in one of my favorite devotionals: “The truth is that self-sufficiency is a myth perpetuated by pride and temporary success. Health and wealth can disappear instantly, as can life itself. Rejoice in your insufficiency, knowing that God’s power is made perfect in weakness.” It is indeed.

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Her Husband Had a Stroke When He Was 30