Page 163 – Guideposts Articles

General Omar Bradley’s Memorial Day Address

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by General Omar N. Bradley

…It is easy for us who are living to honor the sacrifices of those who are dead. For it helps us to assuage the guilt we should feel in their presence.

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they are provoked, and therefore we who fail to prevent them share in guilt for the dead…For every man in whom war has inspired sacrifice, courage and love, there are many more whom it has degraded with brutality, callousness and greed.

Why is it men cannot live as bravely as they die?

While the American people have within themselves the moral strength, the power and wisdom to marshal their forces against aggression in whatever form it takes…we cannot feign innocence through indifference or neglect of struggles that bring on wars….Non-involvement in peace means certain involvement in war.

Either we shall employ our strength, power and conscience boldly and righteously in defense of human dignity and freedom, or we shall waste these reserves for peace and default to the forces that breed new wars.

(Each soldier) we bury is partly the victim of your folly and the folly of all peace-loving peoples who turn their backs on the ills of the world.

Secure in distant and peaceful towns…clinging to comforts, refusing risks, seeking refuge in words, we recanted power and conscience to side with those who sought peace at any price. Too late we discovered the price was too high; and to keep freedom we paid in the bodies of our young sons….

Now new weapons have made the risk of war a suicidal hazard….Modern war visits destruction on the victor and the vanquished alike. Our only complete assurance of surviving World War III is to halt it before it starts….It must never again be said of the American people: Once more we won a war; once more we lost a peace. If we do, we shall doom our children to a struggle that will take their lives….Freedom when threatened anywhere is at once threatened everywhere.

The American people must demonstrate conclusively to all other peoples of the world that democracy not only guarantees man's human freedom, but that it guarantees his economic dignity and progress as well. To practice freedom and make it work, we must cherish the individual, we must provide him the opportunities for reward, and impress upon him the responsibilities a free man bears to the society in which he lives.

…We have too many men of science; too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the sermon on the Mount.

Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. This is our twentieth century's claim to distinction and to progress!

Democracy can withstand ideological attacks if democracy will provide earnestly and liberally for the welfare of its people. To defend democracy against attack, men must value freedom. To value freedom, they must benefit by it in happy and more secure lives for their wives and children.

Good citizenship is the start of a working democracy. And good citizenship begins at home…from such simple beginnings do we create better communities, better states, a better nation and eventually, we hope, a better world.

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Game-planning for a Successful Life

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Julie Rousseau

Pepperdine might be a Christian university, but there’s nothing quiet and churchlike about basketball games at Firestone Fieldhouse. Our fans know how to make some noise. I’m the women’s basketball coach, and after nine seasons, I still love the way the crowd gets my players—already a competitive and motivated bunch—even more fired up.

I remember when I was their age and all I wanted was to be a top college player and then go on to the WNBA, the women’s professional basketball league. Just because that didn’t happen for me doesn’t mean it won’t happen for some of them. Actually, I did get to the WNBA in a way I had not anticipated at all.

Still, what I think is most important and meaningful about basketball—what I try to teach as a coach—is how it prepares the player for life. Here’s the advice I give my players, lessons I’ve learned myself on and off the court.

Deal with it.
When I was a kid, we moved around a lot—five different cities by the time I was 13. My father was a pastor, and we went wherever he was called to lead a congregation.

City number four was Washington, D.C. when I was at that awkward middle-school age, and painfully shy besides. Why did I have to go through the ordeal again of making new friends, fitting in at a new school and finding someplace to play ball?

One morning I plopped down at the breakfast table, feeling pretty darn sorry for myself. Dad came up behind my chair to fix my hair. I wish Mom were here to do my hair, I thought.

Mom had left the house while I was still sleeping. She got up at 4:00 A.M. every morning to take a 5:00 A.M. bus across town to the school where she taught. Dad was in school himself—a student in seminary—and also the assistant pastor of a local congregation.

That’s when it hit me. My parents never complained about how hard they worked. They just did what had to be done and my brothers and sisters and I benefited from all the sacrifices they made.

Mom made most of our clothes, staying up late at night sewing. She grew her own tomatoes, squash and greens so we would have fresh vegetables.

Today, if one of my players comes to me with explanations and excuses for why something didn’t work, I say, “Let’s go back and do it right.” Feeling sorry for yourself is a dead end. Life is full of challenges. Just deal with it.

Get open…to possibilities.
Baseball was the first sport I loved. Back before Title IX opened the way for girls in Little League, I played on an all-boys’ team. With my hair tucked under my cap, I hoped nobody would notice, although my teammates would sometimes taunt our opponents, “You got robbed by a girl!”

Dad wasn’t crazy about that approach. He said it wasn’t honest; so he insisted on revealing that I was a girl. It forced the League to change its rules and allow me to play. That was a kind of victory that fueled my pursuit of sports even more.

Then we moved to Los Angeles, and Dad’s church, McCarty Memorial Christian Church, had a gym on the second floor. We lived only 20 steps away. By then I’d gotten into basketball and anytime I wanted I could play.

Dad gave me a key to the gym because he was available just a few feet away. Nobody could beat me on that court. I knew every angle, every bounce the ball would take on the hardwood.

Dad brought in gang bangers to play, but they had to follow his rules: no gang clothes, no swearing and prayers before every game. It was amazing how they shaped up—all for a chance to play basketball. It kept many a young man off the streets.

I was good, really good. I figured playing basketball was what God wanted me to do with my life, the way Mom was called to teach and Dad to preach. I got a full scholarship to U.C. Irvine, which I took as confirmation of my calling. Next stop after college? The WNBA.

It didn’t work out that way. I got hardly any playing time, and the coach told me I wasn’t likely to get more. I was devastated. Basketball was my whole identity. My destiny, I thought. What was I supposed to do now? Who was I supposed to be?

I dropped out after freshman year, moved back in with my parents in L.A. and stopped playing ball. For a while I floundered, taking classes at community college, working as a paralegal. Mom’s job at George Washington Preparatory High School kept her busy but not too busy to see how lost I was.

One day she sat me down and said, “Tomorrow, you’re coming to my school and we’re going to put you to work as a teacher’s assistant.” I didn’t know about the job, but after all those mornings I’d missed my mom growing up, I liked the idea of going to work with her.

My first day at the Prep, I was assigned to help an English teacher. She loved her subject and her enthusiasm rubbed off on her students. I saw them soaking up everything she said, and I thought, I want to inspire kids like that. I want to teach. For the first time since I quit basketball, I felt really excited about something again.

Not long after that, the basketball coach, who’d coached me in a summer league a few years earlier, said, “We’ve got practice after school. Why don’t you come to the gym and help me?”

That’s how basketball and teaching came together for me in a new role: assistant coach. It wasn’t what I had planned, but it was what I was meant to do.

Believe in yourself.
Eventually I took over as head coach of the girls’ team at the Prep. One year a very talented freshman came to tryouts. I took her aside. “You definitely have the skills to play for us,” I said. “Problem is, I can’t take you.”

I didn’t have to spell out why. The girl had a one-point-something GPA, which made her ineligible to play, and a spotty attendance record.

But I had this feeling that she came out for the team because deep down, she wanted help. And I’d gotten into coaching to help inspire kids, right? If I wanted to get this girl to believe in herself I’d have to take a leap of faith too.

So I made a deal with her. Three mornings a week, I would pick her up and bring her to school. I’d arrange tutoring and study hall. If she brought her grades up to a 2.0, she could join the team on a probationary basis. “I’m making this commitment to you,” I said. “But the hard work is up to you.”

That left two days a week that she was on her own. At first she didn’t always make it to school or finish her homework those days. It was hard for me not to step in, but I knew she needed to learn to take responsibility for herself. “You’re wasting your time,” one of her teachers told me.

“We’ll see,” I said, praying that my confidence wasn’t misplaced. And what I did see as the semester went on was the girl showing up at school more often, buckling down and hitting the books in study hall. I even caught her in the library occasionally. Progress, I learned, is a process.

Report card day came. She ran into my office and pointed to her 2.1 GPA. I don’t know which one of us was more thrilled. I let her on the team.

“You’re still on probation,” I warned. “Keep those grades up.” Next semester, the girl made a 2.8 GPA. After that, never less than a 3.5. She didn’t make it to the WNBA but she accomplished some thing that makes me even prouder: She went to college, then graduate school, and got her doctorate.

Be there.
Sometimes as a coach the best way to help is to say nothing, give no advice, just be there. After the Prep, I coached in the WNBA and then at the college level, which turns out to be the place I like best.

When I was an assistant at Stanford, a young forward named Nicole Powell was the best player on our team—and one of the best in the country.

She was under enormous pressure to carry the team, and sometimes the demands of being an All-American got to her. On one occasion I saw her struggling during a practice before a really important game.

I walked over to the basket where she was shooting, not sure what to do to help her. Should I have her work on her perimeter shooting? Her ball-handling? Should I say anything?

No, I thought, just be with her. The way my mom would sit with me when I was down or Dad would pray in silence with a church member facing troubles.

Nicole grabbed a ball and hoisted a shot. Swish. I rebounded the ball and tossed it back to her. She shot again. Swish. I tossed the ball back again.

For two hours I threw her the ball, not saying a word. She didn’t need me to hone her technique. She just needed to know that I was there for her, no matter what.

On and off the court, I’ve seen how this is true. People don’t always need us to say anything or fix anything. Sometimes just being with them is enough. It’s like faith—sometimes simply being aware of God’s presence is all you really need.

No excuses.
Every morning at 7:00 I call Mom. Ever since Dad died a couple of years ago, I’ve felt the need to check on her. But then, she checks on me too. We talk about what we’re doing, we pray together and always end by repeating the verse from Psalm 118, “This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

The other day I was complaining to her about all the work I had to do. On top of coaching and teaching, I had gone back to school to get a master’s in psychology. I was working on a paper and couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Mom, I keep staring at the computer and I still have no idea what to write,” I moaned. “I’m ready to give up.”

Mom didn’t mince words. “You signed up for this course, right? You decided you wanted a master’s in psychology, right? Have you prayed about it? Isn’t this what you feel you need to do?”

To every one of her questions I answered, “Yes.”

“Then you’d better sit down and do it,” she said, and hung up the phone. No excuses. Just deal with it. I sat down at my computer and finished the paper. Got an A. Lesson learned… again. But then the best lessons are the ones we end up learning again and again. Even when you’re a coach.

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Friends at the Church Supper

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Judith Hupp

I never liked church suppers.

I went to so many of them growing up, too many. Dad was a pastor and our lives revolved around the church. I had no problem with the faith part; it was eating and making conversation with adults—some of them total strangers—that got to me.

Four years ago, I moved with my sister and our parents to the far eastern tip of Maine, to a cabin in the tiny township of Trescott. We were as likely to see coyotes or eagles out the kitchen window as a car coming down the road.

It was the ideal spot for Mom and Dad to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet of retirement, while we built a second home. Truth be told, though, I savored the solitude more than they did. I might have been in my forties, but part of me was still that shy, tongue-tied pastor’s kid.

Then out of the blue one evening came a knock on the cabin door. It was a white-haired man we’d never met. He got right to the point. “My name is Milo,” he said. “I heard there’s a retired pastor who lives here. Our church is in need of a minister.”

So much for retirement! Not that Dad minded, of course.

On a Saturday night not long after Milo’s visit, we walked into the basement of a nearby town’s Methodist church for—you guessed it—a bean supper. The room was packed, people sitting elbow to elbow at long tables, making the four empty chairs down front particularly conspicuous. Every eye followed us as we took our seats.

Milo clanged a huge kettle with a spoon and announced, “I’d like to welcome everyone and to introduce our new pastor, Dale Hupp, and his family.”

I didn’t realize then that when I stepped into that church basement, I’d crossed the threshold into a centuries-old community’s foundation of family, faith and food. I was too busy feeling awkward, fumbling for what to say. At least no one noticed amid the bustle—ladies in the congregation delivering hot casseroles, tables humming with laughter and conversation.

Soon I was invited to join the kitchen crew. I had to admit I was curious. Everyone at the first supper was friendly, happy, full of life. Was there some
secret recipe, some special dish, I didn’t know about?

Saturday afternoon I walked into the church kitchen. The rest of the crew stood around the big table peeling, slicing, mixing and yakking. I hung back, feeling like a stranger crashing a family reunion.

Not for long. “I’m Janice,” a woman said. “Ready to work?” She handed me a knife and pointed at the mound of potatoes in front of us. I got to slicing.

Everyone introduced themselves, then Janice launched into a tale about the time the brown bread exploded and shot through the ceiling into the Sunday school classroom above. Soon I was so caught up in conversation, I forgot about being nervous.

Alice checked the slow cookers of yellow eye and red kidney beans, salt pork and onion, and doctored them, adding a glug of molasses, a handful of sugar or a sprinkling of pepper. She knew exactly what each pot needed. A few of the women put finishing touches on cakes. Casseroles lined the counter, waiting for their turn in the oven.

As suppertime approached I got keyed up again. This time I wouldn’t be a guest. I would be waiting tables. Milo banged the pot and Dad said grace. I wished I’d paid more attention to the waitresses at that first supper. But I needn’t have worried. Gladys and Cindy and other women were near me anytime I faltered, effortlessly dishing up small talk, salads and casseroles. They made me look like a pro.

I marveled at how guests requested dishes by name: Janice’s Texas hash, Alice’s baked mac and cheese, Brenda’s clam casserole. People were talking and laughing, leaning in to hear one another. I could only catch bits and pieces of the chatter and yet with each dish I brought out, I felt more a part of everything going on around me. Like I belonged.

And I do. I’m now a proud five-year veteran of the kitchen crew. I’ve swapped a lot of recipes and even more stories working around that big table. I liked the nickname my friends and fellow waitresses gave Dad—the Big Dipper, for his Saturday night job ladling beans into thick china bowls. I know the regulars and their favorite fare (like Fred, who always makes me promise to save him some of Mom’s meatballs).

I look forward now to our church supper every month. People, regulars and strangers, come from all over to visit and happily crowd into the dining room. It really is a family reunion—a family drawn together not by blood but by God’s warm embrace, where the not-so-secret recipe is sharing food, faith and a part of ourselves.

Try these Baked Beans at your next supper!

Free from Guideposts: A Daily Devotions Booklet on Recovery

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

In Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12^th step encourages us to “carry the message” to other suffering alcoholics, both for the benefit for our own sobriety (you must give it away to keep it) and to reach those who are still suffering from the disease of addiction.

The founders of AA, the granddaddy of 12-step programs, knew the power of personal connection and shared experience to transform hopelessness into hope, brokenness into healing. Bill Wilson was only sober a short time when he found himself in Akron, Ohio, on a business trip in 1935, fearing he’d pick up a drink in the hotel bar.

Instead, he picked up the phone and cold-called several local pastors until one connected him with Dr. Bob Smith, a congregant with a terrible, intractable drinking problem. A good man whose life was slipping away. Bill’s meeting with Dr. Bob, and Dr. Bob’s subsequent recovery, was the beginning of the 12-step recovery movement. One addict carrying the message to another. It started with those two men, by the grace of God.

Our booklet of 60 devotionals for recovery, Daily Guideposts for Recovery, is how we help carry the message to you, whether you’re in recovery, struggling to recover or are a family member. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, our founder, was a great friend and supporter of AA. He and Bill Wilson shared a spiritual affinity for connecting people with a message of hope and inspiration.

Some 40 years ago their combined influence reached a man in early recovery named Jim Nelson as he walked along the Mississippi River wrestling with the demons of addiction. He’d been “white-knuckling” his sobriety, unable to feel fully connected to his Higher Power, just hanging on day by day.

His discovery of Dr. Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking, combined with his renewed determination to work the 12 steps, helped him turn the corner spiritually and catalyzed his recovery from alcohol addiction and his mission to reach others with a message of hope.

Our booklet could not have been possible without Jim Nelson who generously supported this work. This is Jim’s expression of gratitude for his own many years of sobriety, the privilege of carrying the message, and the call to help others who are struggling. And struggling people there are, millions of them. In this time of the pandemic another epidemic worsened—addiction. Hospitalizations and deaths have risen dramatically since COVID struck. It is the hidden tragedy of this plague.

Jim speaks of walking with his Labs in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains near his home in Wyoming, feeling a peace no drink could ever give him. In the program we call that serenity. I know that feeling when I walk my own dog through the Berkshire Hills or even in Central Park on a flawless summer day. A peace I would never have known if I hadn’t found the gifts of sobriety through the grace of God and the experience, strength, hope and wisdom of those who carried the message to me, and to people like Jim Nelson.

Order your free copies of Daily Guideposts for Recovery today!

Four Steps to Banish Anxiety

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Norman Vincent Peale

Of all the thousands of letters I have received, the problem of worry is most frequently presented. The following verses helped many to gain victory over worries. Hence we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid; what can man do to me? (Hebrews 13:6).

Nobody can really hurt you. We do not stand alone in this world for we can turn to God and He will always help us. Fill your mind with thoughts of God; get in harmony with God’s will; eliminate from your mind all feelings contrary to love; practice simple trust. God then can help you.

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Practice thinking less about your worries and more about God. Instead of thinking how difficult your problem is, think how great and powerful God is. This will change your psychology; but more than that it releases spiritual power into your mind. That will enable you to meet your situation intelligently and creatively.

Always repeat this text when you are afraid: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).

The method outlined in this verse for casting out anxiety is fourfold: prayer, supplication, thanksgiving and just telling God what you want. When you are worried, stop thinking emotionally and talking in an anxious manner, and pray. Ask God to relieve you of your fears and show you how to handle the problem that causes the fear. Then, immediately upon asking Him, give thanks, thus expressing your belief that He is answering your prayer, for He is.

“If you sit down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet” (Proverbs 3:24). It is important when dealing with worry to go to sleep at night in the right manner. If you retire with a mind filled with fear thoughts you will have only superficial sleep, for beneath the surface, anxieties are disturbing you in the deep subconscious.

Therefore when you lie down to sleep, think of God as being with you and watching over you. Place the cares of the day in His hands. Every night say this verse to yourself before you go to sleep. Then, instead of fears in your subconscious, faith in God’s presence will develop a confident approach to your anxiety.

Four Little Girls Lost: Faith, Forgiveness and Healing

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Carolyn Maull McKinstry

I sat nervously in the waiting room of a psychologist. My husband Jerome’s plea for me to see a doctor had finally sunk in, yet not even Jerome knew the depth of my misery, how the sadness never went away, no matter how I tried to numb it with alcohol.

These feelings had been a part of me since I was 14, throughout high school and college, going on 10 years now. I kept to myself. Rarely did I talk to other people. I was afraid something terrible would happen if I got too close to anyone, even Jerome, our daughters and other family members. I didn’t know where these feelings were coming from. That’s what made them so frightening.

I picked up a magazine and flipped through it. The pictures that stared back at me were white smiling faces. Their lives were nothing like mine. I had grown up in Birmingham, Alabama, during the height of the civil rights struggles. Our city had been nicknamed Bombingham, because of all the bombs that had destroyed black homes, churches and businesses.

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My parents had done their best to shelter my brothers, sister and me. They may have talked with their friends about segregation and racism, but not with us. Daddy told us places we weren’t to go, like across the railroad tracks, and insisted my brothers escort me everywhere. I questioned why there were so many rules. But I didn’t know to be afraid, not then.

Church was the one place I was allowed to be on my own. We went to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church downtown. I’d met Cynthia, my best friend, there.

I remember being baptized at 13. When the pastor lifted me from the water I blinked and looked up into Jesus’ tender face in the stained-glass window above the baptismal font. It seemed as if he were telling me, “I’m here, watching over you.”

Now I wondered if that was true. No matter how I prayed, God hadn’t eased my suffering. Lately I slept only a few hours at night. By morning I was exhausted. I picked at my food. I lost a lot of weight. My hands were always breaking out in rashes. How could I go on like this?

Jerome was constantly asking me, “What’s wrong?” But I couldn’t put the darkness inside of me into words. We’d been married six years now, with two beautiful girls. Why was my head filled with thoughts of death?

Jerome’s job had recently transferred us to Atlanta, Georgia. The only person I’d met was our next-door neighbor. I found myself drinking more and more.

A week earlier I’d mixed a mid-morning drink and sat down in front of the TV, just trying to get through another day. The girls were outside playing. A commercial came on: “Are you confused about life? Need someone to talk to?” It seemed to speak directly to me. “Call this number. Counselors are waiting to take your call.”

I dialed the number. A woman answered. She was explaining the services they offered when Jerome came in. He’d forgotten some papers he needed for work. “Who are you talking to?” he asked. “It’s really early to be drinking.”

I told him I was talking with someone from a suicide hotline. “I just wanted someone to talk to,” I said. “I was lonely.”

“I think you need to see a doctor,” he said. I agreed.

My doctor referred me to a friend of his. I didn’t know initially that the friend was a psychologist. That’s how I ended up in a psychologist’s waiting room. A door opened next to me.

“Mrs. McKinstry,” the psychologist said. I wondered what he would ask me. Nobody I knew had ever been to a psychologist.

He led me back to a small office. He was a kindly older man. I told him I wasn’t sleeping, that nothing made me happy. He listened intently, nodding and taking notes. He asked what I did during the day and if I was drinking. Finally his eyes locked on mine.

“What you’re dealing with is called depression. It’s treatable, but you won’t survive if you keep on like this. You need to face your feelings.

“I can’t help but think there’s something, maybe in your past, you need to let go of,” he continued gently. “We need to figure out what’s bothering you.”

Driving home I heard his words repeat in my mind. What had happened to me? I remembered how happy and carefree I’d been as a child. Where had that girl gone?

Fact was, Daddy hadn’t been able to shield me from all of the violence that had happened in Birmingham when I was 14. Nearly every day I thought about my friends, the girls who’d been killed when our church was bombed. I tried not to dwell on the past, but it was always there.

I picked up my girls from the neighbor and got them settled playing in our yard. I went into the house, then to a closet where I had a box full of keepsakes.

There on the top was an old black Bible. My parents had given it to me the day I was baptized. I had always carried it to church. I had brought it with me that awful day, September 15, 1963…

It was Youth Sunday. I was laughing with Cynthia, Denise, Addie and Carole while they primped in front of the restroom mirror. I needed to leave. I was the Sunday School secretary. I had to get my attendance and offering report in by 10:30 A.M.

I ran up the stairs. The phone in the church office rang. I held the heavy black receiver up to my ear. A man’s voice said, “Three minutes,” then he hung up. What was that about?

I remembered I still needed to collect the report from the adult classes. I walked into the sanctuary, toward the stained-glass picture of Jesus.

Boom! The floor swayed. But the sound was muffled. Thunder? Glass fell at my feet. Someone shouted, “Hit the floor!” I dropped, flat on the ground. Silence. Then a stampede of feet. Police sirens.

I had to get outside. I looked up. There was a hole in the stained-glass window where Jesus’ face had been.

The streets were filled with people screaming and crying. Finally I saw Daddy behind a police barricade. We drove home in silence, too scared to say a word. How could anyone bomb a church? I only hoped no one had been hurt.

Late that afternoon our phone rang. Mom answered it. She was quiet and solemn as she listened to the caller. Then she hung up and turned toward us, her face filled with sorrow. “There were four girls in the restroom who never made it out,” she said.

My friends. It felt like my heart had stopped.

“It can’t be true,” I whispered.

Mom nodded. “I’m afraid it is,” she said. “They died.”

I remembered the strange phone call at the church. Had someone been trying to warn us? Or taunt us? Over the course of the evening—through friends and neighbors, the radio and the evening news—we pieced together what had happened.

But each bit of information only left me more stunned and frightened. There were people out there who wanted to kill us. They’d taken my friends from me. Bombed my church.

That night in bed I burrowed deep under the covers, but it was hours before I was able to sleep. It seemed there was no place safe anymore. An awful emptiness opened up inside of me.

The next morning Daddy made breakfast, like every morning. No one asked, “Carolyn, are you okay? Do you miss your friends? Do you want to talk about what happened?” Back then, there was no grief counseling. Loss was a part of life and you were supposed to stoically push through it.

I went to school on Monday and laid my head on my desk wishing I could block out the sadness, anger and confusion.

Now I knelt on the floor next to my closet. My body shook with emotions that had simmered inside of me for years. How could someone have bombed God’s house? Killed four innocent little girls? What kind of person was capable of such evil?

They had caused so many people so much pain. I’d never even gotten to say goodbye to my friends. My parents had asked if I wanted to go to the funeral. I said no, twice. I wanted to remember them as I had last seen them. But I did want the killers to hurt. I wanted them to feel the same pain that I felt inside.

God, I prayed, I am in so much pain. Please fix my body. Take away my cravings for alcohol. Please touch me with your healing so I can go forward.

I picked up my Bible, felt the weight of it in my hands. It fell open. There was an old church bulletin tucked inside. I looked at the date: September 15, 1963, the day of the bombing. I read through the hymn selections for that fateful morning, read the page numbers and spoke the names of the people who were to give the prayers.

Halfway down the page I saw the pastor’s sermon title: A Love That Forgives. There was a scripture reference, Luke 23:34. I flipped to the passage and slowly read the words: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

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Tears streamed down my cheeks. I thought of that stained-glass window, of Jesus reaching out to me. All these years I’d carried this burden inside me, without ever once… Forgive me for not coming to you before now, for not trusting you.

I tried to see the bombers as God saw them. I wept, thinking of someone so fearful that killing seemed the only option. Forgive them as you have forgiven me. I could feel the hardness in my heart melting, anger and bitterness flowing out of me.

Then the tiniest sensation—one I barely recognized. I ran outside to my girls, held them tight. I wanted to remember what it was like to be young again, carefree, life full of possibility.

My depression didn’t lift overnight. I’d taken only the first step of a long journey. I still had a lot to learn about the healing power of forgiveness. I kept returning to God in prayer and met again with the psychologist.

From that point on I stayed as busy as possible. Every day the girls and I went bike riding. I bought cookbooks and taught myself to bake. We joined a church and I raised money for a new nursery.

Slowly I began to see the world with new eyes. I reached out to others, even strangers, listening to them. I’d believed we’re all God’s children, and it became real to me—how loving and warm people are, how much we have in common, how it’s mainly ignorance that separates us.

Later I enrolled in divinity school so I could bring God’s message of love, forgiveness and reconciliation to the hearts of all, allowing God to use me—my experiences and voice—to deliver his words.

We moved back to Birmingham in 1978 and again became members of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Every day visitors come from around the world to remember and reflect on the pivotal moments that changed a nation.

They come to see the place, to physically touch it and spiritually connect with it. The church holds a special status in the history of the civil rights movement. It remains a symbol of faith and hope for all who enter its doors.

For me it will always be a reminder of God’s infinite grace and love for all his children, and how we are given that love in order to forgive what seems unforgivable and release our burdens to him.

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

Fortune for Good Health

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by theresa-rowe

Can you picture a Chinese fortune cookie that you’ve snapped it in half to get the message out?

That’s what many people’s approach to health looks like. Two separate pieces.

We go to church for spiritual inspiration…we go to the gym to work out.

Many of us read a daily devotional at home, or go to a small group Bible study to learn how we can be transformed by God.

To improve our physical health, we go on a diet, see a medical doctor…or watch The Biggest Loser to see what dramatic change is possible for our bodies.

Even people that have risen to the top of their profession often have a broken approach to health.

I can think of several well-known Christian pastors and authors who are very overweight. They seem to skip over the parts in the Bible about taking care of the physical body. I am not judging them, but I notice they do not take care of their health.

Then, there are those in the health community that have powerful bodies but do not share any spiritual wisdom. Take, for example, the celebrity trainers we see on television. They look great, but don’t give glory to God for their healthy, strong bodies.

The spiritual and the physical are two facets of us that fit together perfectly, just like the broken pieces of a fortune cookie. That’s the philosophy behind Shaped by Faith, my work in which I help people to use their faith to inspire fitness and their fitness to strengthen their faith.

Here are two easy ways to put your spiritual and your physical parts together.

1. When you are in church, breath deeply and evenly from your belly during the sermon and Scripture reading.
Oxygen will flood your bloodstream—giving you more energy, and you’ll exhale carbon dioxide—decreasing your fatigue and mental fog.

2. While you exercise, repeat a prayer or Scripture verse to yourself as you walk, cycle, or lift.
Your focus will broaden and God’s strength and power will support your physical exertion.

Back to that fortune cookie—here is God’s message for you, from 1 Timothy 4:8, “Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever.” (The Message)

Blessings,
Theresa

—–

Get more advice from Theresa!

Find all you need to know on whole-person
wellness in Shaped by Faith.

Theresa is a former model and nationally certified fitness professional who teaches people to use their faith to inspire fitness and their fitness to strengthen their faith. She is the author of Shaped by Faith: 10 Secrets to Strengthening your Body & Soul, and two exercise DVDS: Pilates for the Soul

She and her husband, Robin, have seven children and live in Calhoun, Kentucky.

You can email her with any questions or concerns.

Fortunate Fall

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

Summer ended this week and I was glad to see it go. Of course it’s not really over. Real autumn is weeks away and it’s still warm. But for the past few days the humidity departed and that’s what matters.

East coast humidity destroys all joy for me. I never knew it growing up in California. When Kate and I moved to New York four years ago in the middle of a sweltering, oppressive, leaden July, I mourned all summer long, wondering what on earth I had done moving to a place where the simple act of going outside feels like being encased in a greenhouse coffin.

Then came September and the first tantalizing crisp days. The sun brightened, as if stepping from behind a steamy window. The world looked as I remembered, clean, clear lines.

It’s that feeling of restoration I like best about fall. Here in the east I dread spring because it announces summer, that alien season taking from me the air and light I love, taking even my body, which endures the ensuing months in a permanent, hateful sweat.

Fall’s arrival plunges me into memory, down far enough to be home again. I’m talking about the body’s memory, the kind you experience when you smell cut grass and remember childhood baseball games, or you return to your old elementary school and the past momentarily overwhelms you.

I had that feeling the other morning coming out of the swimming pool. It was a little after seven, the sun just clearing the upper Manhattan skyline. The air, heavy and dead all summer long, smelled suddenly alive. The light was magnetic, isolating and enlarging everything it touched. Apartment windows across the Hudson gleamed like polished bronze.

It was California light and for a moment I was back there, time stopped. Or rather time was compressed, all times gathered in one time. I was in college, biking up the Berkeley hills watching fog creep across the San Francisco Bay. I was in high school driving bleary-eyed to rowing practice, sunlight just cresting the ridgeline of the San Gabriel Mountains. I was on the beach playing in sand, at the park in late afternoon, on the bluffs above tossing whitecaps, cresting a freeway interchange enclosed in the endless, silent, radiant grid of Los Angeles.

Do you have those moments of compressed time? Do seasons restore you, too? I take such moments as evidence for the essential mystery and unknowability of human life. There are depths within us we rarely access, riches we are content to ignore. And I think, if we don’t even know ourselves, how much less must we know the world around us.

Time, eternity, death, life. All words trying and failing to capture that mystery, to make sense of yearnings so powerful I think we ignore them because to admit them would invite paralysis. Regardless, the taste of fall leaves me wanting more. I get myself back and with it intimations of joys and realities larger than any self could imagine. Happy fall!

Jim Hinch is a senior editor at GUIDEPOSTS. Reach him at jhinch@guideposts.org.

Former NFL Star Ben Utecht on Dealing with Memory Loss

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Ben Utecht

I should have known there was something wrong with me when I sustained my fourth concussion. It was the 2007 season, my fourth year in the NFL as a tight end for the Indianapolis Colts. We were the defending Super Bowl champs. In a game against the Denver Broncos, I was blocking for our running back. A Broncos defensive back leaped over me, trying to get to the ball carrier. His foot clipped the back of my helmet.

I only know what happened next because I watched it on film. I crumpled to the ground. Ten seconds later, I jumped up and sprinted to the sidelines, where I talked with my teammates and a doctor, who pulled me from the game. I had no memory of any of it.

Light for Life NASB Study Bible in Article

I’d never experienced amnesia. Still, when I told my wife, Karyn, I didn’t make a big deal of it. I’d had concussions before. I’d always bounced back.

READ MORE: STRUCK FROM ABOVE

I needed to bounce back. My contract was up at the end of the season, and I wanted to sign a long-term deal. It would mean financial security for Karyn and me and the family we hoped to start.

My list of injuries went back to junior year of high school: broken pelvis, ankle and foot; fractured ribs and vertebrae; torn abs. To borrow an expression from Karyn’s sport—she was a captain of the women’s golf team at the University of Minnesota, where we met—getting banged up is par for the course in football.

Four weeks later, I passed the Colts’ post-concussion protocol and was cleared to play. During the off-season, I signed a three-year contract with the Cincinnati Bengals.

Leaving my friends in Indianapolis was hard. I also left my mentor in the career I dreamed of having after football: music. I’m a big guy—six foot six and 250 pounds—and I have a big voice. My dad is a Methodist minister. I sang in his church as a boy. In high school I was in more choirs than sports teams. In college I sang at churches with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I did the same in Indianapolis.

My rookie season I spoke at a youth event. A woman in a Colts jersey ran up afterward and asked for my autograph. She was none other than Sandi Patty, a huge Christian music star. I wanted her autograph.

Sandi took me under her wing. In December 2007 I joined her onstage at the Indianapolis Festival of Lights. Singing with a Christian music legend in front of more than 100,000 people while wearing my Super Bowl ring was a dream come true, something only God could have orchestrated.

READ MORE: BY FAITH ALONE

I should have known there was something wrong in spring 2008, when I had trouble learning the Bengals playbook. None of it stuck in my brain, which was weird, because I’d always had a phenomenal memory. I didn’t connect it to my concussions, though. Concussions weren’t in the news back then. Two sets of doctors—on the Colts and the Bengals—had cleared me to play.

The 2008 season wasn’t a good one. I broke my sternum and tore my plantar fascia. But I went into the 2009 training camp in the best shape of my life. I had extra motivation: Karyn and I had had our first child, our daughter Elleora.

I should have known there was something wrong when I was knocked out on August 5, 2009. It was the first week of training camp, a routine blocking drill. I was supposed to handle the outside linebacker. That’s all I remember. The rest I pieced together from my teammates and from film (HBO’s Hard Knocks covered our camp).

The linebacker’s helmet came up under my face mask and hit me on the chin. I was out cold. Coaches, trainers and camera crews ran over. I came to before the ambulance got there. Hard Knocks showed my teammates praying for me. Paramedics rushed me to the ER. Doctors cut off my uniform and pads. Little did I realize that I would never wear a uniform in competition again.

I went through a bunch of tests. I had practically every symptom of post-concussion syndrome. Headaches, dizziness, sleeplessness, night sweats, sensitivity to light, loss of balance, fatigue, nausea, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, irritability.

I should have known there was something wrong when those symptoms didn’t go away. When every doctor I saw—including a neurosurgeon and concussion expert, Dr. Robert Cantu— told me I should never play football again. The Bengals cut me in November.

Still, I made one last attempt to resurrect my NFL career. In April 2010, I finally passed the return-to-play protocol and tried out for the New England Patriots. I killed the workout but the Patriots didn’t sign me. Too big a risk with my concussion history, they decided. The end had come for me as a football player.

The question was: Who was I now? I thought I’d find the answer in music. We moved to Nashville in May. A few months later we found out Karyn was pregnant with twins. I’d felt so unsettled about the future, yet here was God with a double blessing. A reminder of what my parents had always taught me—to trust my future, my family, everything, to the Lord.

The birth of our twins, Katriel and Amy Joan, confirmed that trust. So did meeting Jim Brickman, the great adult-contemporary musician. Jim hired me for his Christmas 2011 tour.

We moved home to Minnesota that summer. Karyn would have help with the girls while I was on tour, and the girls would be close to their grandparents.

One night we went to see our good friends Matt and Kim Anderle. Matt was my teammate in college. He mentioned something about their wedding some years back. Karyn wanted to hear more. So Matt and Kim started telling stories.

With each story, I got angrier, wondering why I hadn’t been asked to the wedding. My NFL schedule had been crazy, but I would’ve made time. “Why didn’t you invite me?” I demanded.

At first they all thought I was joking. Then Kim got out their wedding album. “You’re right there, Ben,” she said.

“You weren’t just a groomsman,” Matt said. “You sang for us. Don’t you remember?”

The photos didn’t trigger the faintest recollection. I had absolutely no memory of their wedding. They all stared at me as if I was somehow fragile and broken.

That was the first time it hit Karyn and me that something was terribly wrong. I hadn’t really shared my memory problems with her. I didn’t want to burden her. Now it was clear I wasn’t just forgetful. Memories had been erased. My brain had changed.

On the Jim Brickman tour I couldn’t remember lyrics, not even to old Christmas songs. So I taped the words to the stage. Still, I loved being on tour. Concert night felt like game day. It gave me the same rush.

Maybe that’s why I sank into a depression when the tour ended. Karyn, the girls and I had settled into our dream home. I should have been happy.

Instead, most mornings I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t have a job to go to anymore. Not in football. Not in music. I’d been reading about the effects of concussions on former NFL players. Some were legends, others were journeymen. They all suffered alarming memory problems and behavior changes. Some died young and tragically, many by their own hand. Is that going to be me? I thought.

Karyn would ask quietly, “Are you going to come down? The girls want you.”

One day I forced myself downstairs. We were potty-training Elleora. Karyn asked me to take her to the bathroom. I put Elleora on the toilet and sat on the edge of the bathtub. “I’m done, Daddy,” she announced.

“Did you go potty?” I asked.

“I don’t need to.”

“You need to try,” I said.

She frowned. “I can’t.”

I stood, looming over her. “You are going to sit there until you go.” My voice rose. “Do you understand me?!” Elleora burst into tears and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. What have I become? Someone who scared his daughter. Someone who scared himself.

Karyn comforted Elleora. I went into my study, closed the door and fell to my knees. I’ve let this brain injury get the best of me, Lord. I surrender. I give it over to you. The best and the worst.

Something hit me at that moment. The Lord freed me from the anger and self-pity that were suffocating me. And he opened my eyes to the people, the blessings, around me. The world as it was in this moment.

After that, I got up early every day for time with God. One morning I was in my study when the door creaked open. “Daddy, can I come in?”

“Of course, Elleora.” She was still in her pajamas. I pulled her up onto my lap.

She snuggled close. “What are you doing?”

“Reading my Bible.”

“Will you read to me too?” “I sure will.” I wrapped my arms around Elleora and read.

“Can we do this again tomorrow, Daddy?”

It has become our morning ritual, one that anchors my day.

I poured my feelings—my love for my wife and daughters, my fear that I would not remember them one day—into a song I wrote and released in 2014. “You Will Always Be My Girls” has had more than 1.25 million views on YouTube. I think people respond to the truth in it.

The truth I should have known but tried to avoid for so long: Everything that I am, the person I’ve been, the man I hope to be, all comes down to my ability to remember. That is why I speak out about brain injury. Why I get up every morning determined to make the day count. Why I’ve been doing a new kind of training, for cognitive fitness.

Last summer I took part in a program that was as hard as any NFL training camp. At the start, I tested in the seventeenth and twelfth percentiles for recent and long-term memory. Very poor. I did 120 hours of work with a brain trainer. By the end, my scores jumped to the seventy-eighth and ninety-eighth percentiles. It was like moving from the bottom of the football depth chart all the way to the top.

Isn’t it awesome what the Lord can do when you let him make the best of you?

Did you enjoy this story? Subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

Sports and Brain Injuries

Recent news stories and a 2015 Hollywood film, Concussion, have brought to light the dangers of brain injuries in contact sports, especially football. In organized high school sports, football accounts for more than 60 percent of concussions. The NFL reported 271 concussions in 2015, and nearly 40 percent of retired NFL players have described symptoms of traumatic brain injury. After football, hockey has the highest concussion rate. College basketball has also seen steady increases in the injury.

Repeated concussions have been linked to memory loss, problems focusing, dementia, fatal blood clots and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. The American Academy of Neurology concluded in 2014 that wearing a helmet reduced the risk of traumatic brain injury by only 20 percent.

With milder concussions, symptoms like dizziness, blurred vision and headaches can last up to a week. With severe injuries, when consciousness is lost, recovery can require limiting activity for up to a year. The good news is that, as Ben Utecht describes, programs are being developed to treat brain injuries, and sports programs are addressing the issue.—Tyler Burdick, Editorial Intern

Former NBA All-Star Vin Baker’s Journey to Sobriety

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Vin Baker

What’s the best job I ever had? The answer might seem obvious. From 1993 to 2006, I was a professional basketball player, a four-time NBA All-Star. I went to the playoffs multiple times with the Seattle SuperSonics and the New York Knicks and won a gold medal representing the United States in the 2000 Olympics. I earned millions doing what I loved.

A no less worthy answer might be the jobs I held after my NBA career was behind me. For three years, I was a youth minister at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, one of New York City’s most vibrant places of worship. Two years ago, I joined the staff of the Milwaukee Bucks, the NBA team that had drafted me right out of college. I’m now an assistant coach.

Illustrious career, right?

As seen on the cover of the January 2019
issue of Guideposts magazine

Well, maybe. But you could make a case that the best job I ever had wasn’t related to basketball at all. That was the year I spent as a barista making lattes and macchiatos at a Starbucks.

I held that job from 2015 to 2016. At the time, I was a recovering alcoholic looking for a new direction in life. That NBA career? I was cut from the last team I played for in 2006, after it became clear to coaches that I couldn’t get a handle on my drinking. My struggle with alcohol began during my earliest days as a pro player and lasted until I hit rock bottom in 2011. By that point, I was broke and living at my parents’ house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, drinking a gallon of cognac a day and waiting for the alcohol to kill me. How did I sink so low? How did serving gourmet coffee help me climb back? The answer to those questions is a God story, pure and simple.

I have no excuses for the addiction that wrecked my basketball career. I had a happy childhood in a stable home. My father worked as a mechanic and as a Baptist minister. My mom worked for a cosmetics company. My loving, faithful, no-nonsense parents didn’t even push me into basketball.

I was a standout at a small college—the University of Hartford—and was the Bucks’ first-round draft pick in 1993. I was 22 years old. Six feet, 11 inches. A center and power forward.

I was also plagued by anxiety. I’d grown up straitlaced and attached to my parents. I often went home for the weekend in college. The swagger of some athletes didn’t come naturally to me, especially under the glare of the NBA spotlight.

It didn’t take me long to discover the cure for my on-court nerves and off-court shyness.

It probably will not surprise you to learn there is a widespread party culture in the NBA. Many players are young, insecure and thrust into a world of sudden wealth, fame and public scrutiny. They deal with the pressure by drinking, smoking marijuana and throwing around money at clubs.

I was a faithful, churchgoing Christian through college. Those habits began to break down as my basketball career took off. Soon I was joining other guys on the team for postgame all-nighters, drinking and smoking weed at clubs.

The first time I drank hard with the guys, I made a wonderful discovery. My anxiety disappeared! I became the life of the party. I came to the conclusion that alcohol and marijuana were perfectly acceptable ways for a pro athlete to relieve the stress of a high-pressure job.

The path of my addiction was all too predictable. I went from partying occasionally after games to drinking almost every night. Somewhere along the way, I discovered I actually played better while buzzed (or so I thought). So I drank before games. Soon I was drinking every day, just to stave off the agony of hangovers and withdrawal. I was a hard-core alcoholic.

I bounced from team to team. Gained weight and got sent to rehab. Was suspended, then reinstated. Developed a gambling habit. Became addicted to anxiety pills. One Xanax-fueled night in Las Vegas, I blew $100,000 at blackjack.

I had children but didn’t get married. At best, I was an absentee father. When I was let go from my last team—the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2006—I had little savings. A disastrous restaurant venture left me essentially broke. My house was repossessed. I moved back to my parents’ house and waited to die.

So where does Starbucks come in? I entered rehab for the fifth time in 2011. My father drove me. There was no reason for him to hope. Except this time I had begged God for help.

And God answered. I found a commitment to sobriety I’d never experienced before. I returned to my childhood church—my dad was still a pastor there—and threw myself into Bible studies and volunteer work.

There was just one problem. I needed income. And now that I was reaching out to my children and trying to repair the relationships I had destroyed, my financial obligations were growing.

Out of inspiration, I called Howard Schultz, the founder and CEO of Starbucks. Howard had owned the Seattle SuperSonics when I played for them. He was someone I admired who could give me advice about my future.

Howard gave me more than advice. First he set me up with Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. He was friends with Dr. Calvin Butts, the pastor. I worked as a youth minister while attending Union Theological Seminary. I had thoughts of going into ministry, though I wasn’t sure.

After returning to Old Saybrook as a licensed minister and marrying the mother of my children, I once again needed income. And once again Howard Schultz came through. I was mystified by his offer: train to become a Starbucks manager. My previous attempt at business—the restaurant I opened—was a spectacular bust. I’d never worked behind a counter in my life. And I knew nothing about coffee. But I needed a job, so I said yes.

It was the best decision I ever made.

Here’s the thing about the NBA: It’s not real life. It’s hard work on the court. But it’s a collective fantasy. A place for fans, for entire cities, to project their aspirations. The wealth is mind-blowing. The schedule is grueling. Players travel all the time. It’s hotel rooms and luxury lockers and pulsing arenas and media glare. For young players, it’s easy to confuse the fantasy with reality.

Working retail? That’s reality. Especially when you work your way from barista through all the jobs you’ll eventually manage—if you make it.

I was given an easy shift at first—8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., avoiding the morning and evening rush. Still, the work exhausted me. I had no idea there are so many variations on coffee. I had to learn them all. How to make them and customize them. How to work the register and keep the store supplied and clean.

Soon I was waking up earlier than I ever had in my life to open the store. Getting behind the drive-through microphone was like strapping in for a road race. Orders came fast. Every one was different.

I made a lot of mistakes. Once, an impossibly complex order came in. I was reduced to punching random buttons on the register and hoping for the best. When the customer drove up—it was my training supervisor!

“Gotcha!” she shouted. I was relieved to see her smiling. Because I had messed up that order, start to finish.

Working at Starbucks was the hardest job I ever did. I loved it. All I had to do was win the day.

I loved waking up early—and sober—and heading to work like everyone else in the world. I loved being part of a team that was working to serve other people.

“Look, I know I’m supposed to be your boss,” I told employees when I took on more management duties. “But I realize you know more about this place than I do. Let’s just help each other out and work together.”

Help each other out. Work together.

On my best days in the NBA, life felt like that. But I didn’t have many best days in the NBA. Mostly I was so lost in my own insecurity, so weighed down by vanity and ambition, I sought release in all the wrong places.

Howard Schultz is a wise man. Working at Starbucks showed me that a life of service—the life Jesus wants us to live—can happen anywhere. In the NBA, I’d been the fantasy Vin Baker, the basketball star pouring alcohol into an inner void. At Starbucks I was just Vin Baker. And I loved it. I needed it.

Eventually basketball came calling again, and John Horst and Mike Budenholzer, the general manager and head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, gave me an opportunity to be on the staff of my first NBA team. It was a God-given chance to take what I had learned at Starbucks and in recovery and offer it to young players in desperate need of a veteran’s hard-won wisdom.

I’ve been sober for seven years now. I thank God for every sober day I live. I thank him for the many opportunities I’ve been given—especially the opportunity to live again after so much self-destruction. To live at last in the realness of God.

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to Guideposts magazine.

Forgiving the Sins of the Father

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Margaret Berberich

How did Mom ever put up with all of this? I wondered, not for the first time since my husband, Mike, and I had moved in with my elderly father after my mother passed away.

The living room was a total mess. I stacked the condolence cards into a neat pile on the coffee table and swept a dying flower arrangement into the garbage pail. Then I stacked the now-empty boxes Mike and I had packed our things in to make the move to Dad’s.

Finally I picked up a laundry basket and gathered up the dirty socks Dad had dropped on the floor near the couch. I balanced the basket against my hip and headed down the hall. Cautiously, I approached the open doorway to my parents’ bedroom. Dad sat on the edge of the bed, fumbling with his gray-striped pajama top.

“Do you need any help?” I asked.

He didn’t look up. “They must be making these buttons smaller than they used to,” he grumbled.

I sighed. Mike and I had moved in with Dad both to ease our financial burden after our pizza restaurant went under and to help Dad adjust to life without his wife of 52 years. Mike went back to school to become a pharmacy technician and was in class much of the day.

I spent most of my time with Dad. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this up. Being with him made me feel all knotted up inside.

To say Dad and I didn’t get along would have meant we had some kind of relationship. We didn’t. Not since I left home after high school. Picking out Mom’s casket was the first thing we had ever done together. I was the second of four girls and that was what he called me: “Number Two.” No name, just a digit.

He was harsh and judgmental with my sisters and me, and he had a temper. Once we were grown, none of us girls wanted anything to do with Dad. It was Mom we loved and stayed in touch with.

My younger sister and I were shocked at what we found when we visited Dad in the weeks after Mom’s funeral. Dad’s medications were scattered haphazardly on the counter and he had no idea which was which. He frequently lost his footing on the uneven terrain of the acreage surrounding the house.

The landscaped flower beds and lawn he’d always showed off now looked more like a vacant lot, overgrown with weeds and strewn with broken gardening equipment. It was clear Mom had picked up the slack the past few years.

“He needs more help than we can give him,” my younger sister said. “He needs to be in a retirement home.”

I was inclined to agree, but memories of Mom wouldn’t let me. She loved Dad—Lord only knew why—and she would not have wanted to see him forced out of his home. Along with our business, Mike and I lost our house and needed a place to live. So moving in with Dad seemed like a solution for all of us.

I’d thought it was God’s timing, but now I wondered, Lord, how can I take care of this man I don’t really care for? Teach me how to love the unloveable.

I looked at Dad, his pajama shirt all twisted. The few buttons he had managed to close didn’t match up right. It might have been comical, if it weren’t so sad. I was so used to dreading him that I was surprised to feel a twinge of sympathy. “You know, Dad, if you want, I can sew the buttons closed, then you could just slip the top over your head.”

Dad nodded. “That’s a good idea,” he said.

A compliment? First one I could remember. I put the laundry basket down and sat next to him on the bed. Slowly I rebuttoned his top.

It felt so strange! Growing up, I lived in constant fear of the man.

No matter how awful he’s been, he’s helpless now, I thought, fastening the last button. He needed someone. But, Lord, why me?

For the first few weeks, I clung to the hope that somehow I could teach Dad to live independently and that this living situation was only temporary. But soon it was obvious that he had age-related dementia.

He couldn’t learn how to wash his clothes or vacuum the floor. He couldn’t shop for food, much less make it himself. All the things Mom used to do for him. I drove him to doctors’ appointments and helped him go from using a walker to pushing himself in a wheelchair.

“Deep down, I know he appreciates you,” Mike told me.

“Does he?” I wondered.

One day, Mike went into town and I got to weeding the flower bed. Dad sat on the porch in his favorite wooden chair and watched two gray squirrels chasing each other around the big old oak trees that shaded the lawn.

“Well, Dad,” I said, standing and brushing the dirt from the knees of my blue jeans, “I should go in and see about putting something on for lunch.”

“Whatever you think is best, Babe,” Dad said, gazing out over the acreage.

I paused in mid-stride. Did he just call me “Babe”? It sounded a lot better than “Number Two.” I heated some soup and brought it out to him.

With a shaky hand, he slurped it up. “Thank you,” he said when he was done. Another first!

Lord, are you playing with me? I asked.

A friend volunteered to come over once a week to sit with Dad so that I could get out and run some errands. The first time, she visited with Dad on the front porch so that they could get to know one another. “How long have you lived here?” she asked him.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe two or three years,” he said.

“No, Dad,” I said, “you’ve lived here for over ten years.”

A flummoxed look came across his face. He struggled for words. “That’s the tough thing about growing old,” he finally said. “Some days you can’t remember where you were born, when you were born or even if you were born.”

He looked so beaten and vulnerable. I felt myself soften. “When I come back, why don’t we go for a ride on the quad,” I said. The four-wheel “Putt-Putt” was the only way Dad could make it to the furthest reaches of the property. “Wecan check out the pear trees at the edge of the field.”

Dad perked up. “Sounds good to me,” he said, mouth curled up into a smile.

That afternoon, I drove the quad up to the front porch. “Hop on,” I said.

Dad shook his head. “Let me drive,” he said. One of the few things he could still do.

I hesitated. Dad shook his head again, stubbornly. Oh, Lord, here we go. I hopped off. Dad grasped the handlebars and pulled himself onto the front seat. I climbed on in back of him. “Hold on tight,” he instructed.

We took off toward the end of the field. Leaning in against Dad, I felt the warmth of his body against mine. I couldn’t remember a time when we’d been that close.

“Look,” Dad said, pointing ahead. Two white-spotted deer were standing at the corner of the orchard. We stopped and watched in silence as they grazed. The peaceful silence of two people savoring a moment together.

Slowly we wove our way back to the house. Dad climbed off and I held out my arm to support him. “Hey, Dad,” I said, “I picked up those ice cream bars you like when I did the shopping. Do you want one?”

“My favorite,” he said. I helped him into his wheelchair and pushed him to the front porch. He looked up at me. “Margaret?”

My heart skipped a beat. I almost didn’t recognize my name coming from his lips. “Yes, Dad?”

“Thank you,” he said. “You take such good care of me.”

I felt the knot inside me come loose. This was the man I had once found impossible to love. Dad and I had both been brought low by circumstances beyond our control, and in this new place, there wasn’t room for anger or resentment. There was peace, tenderness, even love.

That was really why God had brought me here, I realized. Not out of desperation, but for a chance to settle the past and to finally have a relationship with my father.

“I’m here for you, Dad,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder, “as long as I need to be.”

Reduce the stress of caregiving and avoid burnout with these tips and resources.

Forgiving Her Alcoholic Father Helped Her Feel Whole

Posted on March 11, 2026March 12, 2026 by Jill Suttie

The phone rang in my office. I was preparing for an evening talk at the university where I worked.

My heart sank when I heard the caller’s voice. It was my father.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Dad asked.

“Sure, but I can’t talk long,” I said. This was my usual tactic with Dad: set a limit, keep it short.

“This won’t take long,” he said. “My therapist told me I should call each of my daughters and ask them a question. So I want to ask you.”

My heart sank even further. What could this be about? And why was he doing this to me right in the middle of my workday?

“Did you feel that I loved you as a child?” he said.

I was 34 years old, married and working at the University of San Francisco while earning a doctorate in psychology. I had been an independent adult for nearly 16 years. I’d even lived abroad. My husband, Don, and I planned to have children soon.

Yet my father still had the power to stop me in my tracks.

My father was an alcoholic and had been since my childhood. Growing up with him had been a nightmare for my mother, my two older sisters and me. We lived in fear of his drunken rages. He berated and humiliated us, meting out harsh punishments seemingly at random. Even as an adult, I feared his abuse and suffered from the emotional scars he’d inflicted.

For years, I had lived in Santa Barbara, far away from my dad. But poor job opportunities and a broken relationship convinced me to move back to the Bay Area, nearer to my father, where I eventually found a job, met my husband and started graduate school.

Meanwhile, my father had fallen apart. He and Mom divorced, and he lived by himself in a trailer park. Lately he had begun reaching out to me in ways that were, frankly, surprising. And unwanted.

I didn’t know how to answer his question. I knew what I wanted to say. But could I say it?

“No,” I said in a burst of honesty. “Maybe I knew it in an abstract way, but I didn’t feel it.”

Dad was silent. He seemed stunned. He ended up mumbling something about having to go, then hung up. I sat there afterward, shaking. But it was a relief to have finally spoken the truth.

I told Don about the call when I got home. My husband was the opposite of Dad. Upbeat, loving, stable, articulate about his feelings. He loved me and supported my work and my efforts to heal from the damage of my childhood.

“Do you think your dad will get back in touch?” Don said.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. But in my heart, I knew those words weren’t entirely true. My feelings about Dad were more complicated than I let on.

Against all odds, he had started attending Alcoholics Anonymous and was making a sincere attempt to stop drinking. Although he expressed scorn for AA’s emphasis on surrender to a higher power, he did find the meetings helpful. Talking with other alcoholics showed him how damaging alcoholism was to relationships and made him feel less alone.

He was working AA’s 12 steps with the help of a therapist, and I was pretty sure that’s why he’d called with his question.

Everything I had learned as a psychologist told me I couldn’t bury problems and expect them just to disappear. But I also felt deeply wary of my father. Nor was I keen on unearthing decades of fear and resentment just to help him feel better.

How typical of Dad to barge into my workday with a bombshell question like that! Even in the midst of recovery, his focus remained firmly on himself. What did he expect, that I would forget about the past and pretend that it didn’t matter?

There was so much to forgive—most important, how my father made me feel inferior and unlovable. In third grade, when I broke my arm while roller-skating, he yelled at me for crying and discouraged Mom from taking me to the hospital.

At school open houses, he dismissed teachers’ compliments by telling them I was lazy. He drank and embarrassed me in front of my friends, threatening me and calling me names. I never felt safe in his presence. I thought he hated me.

As a teenager, I bitterly resisted his efforts to restrict and control me. I fought back when he insulted me. I called him the Ogre and made fun of him with my friends. The day I moved out for college felt like the happiest day of my life.

For 15 years, I tried to put Dad and the trauma of my childhood behind me. Then Mom called me one day to say that Dad had filed for divorce and was moving out. I was surprised. I had always thought she would be the one to leave their marriage. But I was glad because now I could visit her without seeing him.

Dad also called to share the news. He read me a new copy of his will in which he’d added spiteful language about my mother. I seethed but said nothing.

About a year later, not long after Don and I had married, Dad called again. To my astonishment, he was crying. “I’m miserable, Jill,” he said. I could tell he’d been drinking. I wanted to hang up, but something in his voice kept me listening.

“I miss your mother,” he said. “Do you think she would take me back?”

I took a gamble. “No, Dad. You need help, not Mom,” I said. “You should see a therapist.”

I assumed he would dismiss the idea. But he surprised me. He found a therapist, who promptly told him he was an alcoholic and recommended he attend AA. Dad tried a meeting and found it uncomfortable. “The higher power talk is annoying,” he told me during one of his phone calls. “But the people there seem okay.”

For some months, I didn’t hear from him much. I was busy with my own life and not focused on him. It was around then that he called me with his bombshell question.

I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Soon after the call, I moved to a new job that was closer to where my father lived, and he started inviting me to lunch. I was nervous the first time we met. Would he drink? Insult me or embarrass me? But he was like a different person. Sober. Polite. Someone I could talk to.

I was glad to have a sober father in my life. But all it took was one flash of the old Dad to make me want to cut him off again. “Stop jacking me around,” he barked once after Don and I offered to help him with flooding in his mobile home. Our offense? Not returning one of his phone calls fast enough.

I knew that making amends was an essential part of recovery, the ninth step. But Dad’s program didn’t seem to take into account how I might react. I felt guilty if I didn’t go along, but I was still angry at him and tense whenever we were together.

Partly to overcome this, and partly just to keep our lunches from falling into awkward silence, I began asking Dad about his past. He told me his parents had been harsh and unloving. Though he had fought in World War II and returned home to earn a history degree at Stanford University, his mother tried to talk my mom out of marrying him when he proposed. She thought my mom could do better.

“I’ll never forget that,” Dad said.

He also told me stories that gave me insight into his character. As a senior in high school, he tried to prevent a fellow student, a Japanese-American boy, from being sent away to an internment camp.

Later, working as a high school teacher in California’s Central Valley, he lost his job after teaching students about the history of racial discrimination in their town. He ended up leaving education and working for an insurance company. Disappointment and boredom in that job contributed to his drinking.

Don and I had two children, and Dad was delighted to meet them, though I had to intervene a few times when his old disciplinarian ways resurfaced. Yet the more I learned about him, the more willing I was to allow him into my world. Dad had had a difficult life, but he was trying—albeit imperfectly—to be a better person. I could let go of my image of him as “all bad.” I even began to like him.

When my mom died, I did not expect my dad to comfort me. But he attended her memorial and even shed tears. After my sisters and I sorted through Mom’s things, he helped me take the items we didn’t keep to Goodwill.

“I don’t want to give away Mom’s piano, but I don’t have room for it,” I told Dad.

“I’ll store it,” he offered.

A few months later, still grieving for Mom, I broke down in tears during one of his visits. Dad took me in his arms and held me. It felt strange but good.

“Would you mind if I had someone else bury me after I’m gone?” he asked. “I would hate to have you cry over me like that.”

“No!” I said. “I’d need that time to say goodbye.”

That was when I realized that I cared about my dad more than I’d thought. Although he was frustratingly obtuse at times, he was trying to soothe my pain and make things easier for me. He could never make up for my lost childhood. But Dad was doing what he could do now—showing me love when I needed it.

I began to forgive him then. And not just for his sake. Forgiving him helped me open my heart and feel whole. Forgiving wasn’teasy, and there were often setbacks—but it was worth it.

My father died at age 85, long after we’d reconciled. When my sisters and I cleaned out his house, I found a note on the back of an envelope written in his nearly illegible scrawl. It was a to-do list that he must have made a few days before he died. It included reminders to take his pills, call his doctor and undertake other mundane activities.

At the bottom of his list, Dad had written these words: Call Jill. Tell her not to worry.

Adapted from an April 8, 2019, story in Greater Good magazine, a publication of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jill Suttie is a psychologist, musician and a staff writer and contributing editor for Greater Good Magazine at the University of California, Berkeley.

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