Page 177 – Guideposts Articles

After Divorce, Could She Find Forgiveness?

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Nicki Cooper

Mike and I sat side by side in the only two chairs in the hospital’s pre-op room, our arms almost brushing. We hadn’t been this close to each other in four years. Not since he’d left me and our marriage had come to a bitter end.

A guy with a laptop on a rolling cart came in and asked some questions about insurance. “There’s a hundred-dollar co-pay,” he said.

“Can you split it?” I asked as Mike and I each reached for our credit cards. We didn’t share anything anymore. Not finances. Not a bed or a home or a life. All we had in common now were our 11-year-old boys—Breckan, who was fidgeting in his hospital gown, and his twin brother, Brennan.

“Sure,” the guy said, taking both of our cards.

It wasn’t lost on me that 16 years ago to the day Mike and I had been in Hawaii on our honeymoon, snorkeling, hiking, eating shave ice. I’d dwelled on it every November since our divorce, my stomach tightening at the memory of what we’d had between us and how it was now gone.

Breckan was about to have minor surgery, except no surgery is minor when it’s happening to your kid. I was worried and scared. I didn’t find any comfort in having Mike there. But Breckan did. He and Brennan loved their father. They needed him. And I couldn’t deny them that.

A nurse and a tech came to take Breckan into surgery. I kissed him on the head. Mike high-fived him. Then they rolled him away to the OR.

Mike and I went to the waiting room and found seats. There were enough chairs to put a comfortable—or was it uncomfortable?—distance between us. That summed up our interactions these days. Mike had remarried, and the boys spent every other weekend with him and his wife. He picked them up on Friday and brought them home on Sunday. Sometimes we’d say a few words on my front porch. Usually he’d just nod as the boys ran up the steps, which was fine by me.

Now Mike took out his laptop and put in his earbuds. He was three seats and a world away. Kind of like the last years of our marriage.

I’d tried so hard to hold on to him. I’d prayed for things to work out. I’d looked to Scripture, but even the passage I had always quoted to people in crisis, James 1:2–4, didn’t seem to make sense anymore. “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” I wasn’t so sure about that. All this test of my faith had produced so far was anger, resentment, hate. I didn’t think I could ever forgive Mike.

But was it truly all his fault our relationship fell apart? There was plenty I could blame him for—and I did, to my friends and to my mom. She got so angry at Mike that she wouldn’t so much as glance in his direction at the boys’ Little League games. Still, I’d made mistakes too. Maybe it wasn’t possible to fully account for the failure of love. Maybe it wasn’t necessary.

I looked at my watch, wondering when Breckan would be out of surgery. My mom arrived and sat with me. We talked about my aunts and uncles, about my ready-to-conk-out dishwasher and where I might find a replacement, about various other topics Mom brought up to distract me. At last a man in scrubs came out to the waiting room. The anesthesiologist. “Everything went well,” he said. “Mom and Dad can come on back and see Breckan.”

Mike put away his earbuds and laptop, and the doctor led us to the recovery room. Breckan was restless and agitated, coughing and hiccuping, not himself at all. Mike and I sat on opposite sides of the bed, reaching over the rail to try to calm our son, me on the right stroking his hair, Mike on the left rubbing his arm. Finally Breckan relaxed and drifted off to sleep, a peaceful look on his face.

“We made a cute boy,” I said. “Two actually.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Mike replied, looking at Breckan, not at me.

What I was trying to say was, I’m not mad at you anymore. I’m grateful we had our time together because we made our boys—and they’re really neat people. But Mike didn’t pick up on that.

Breckan’s eyes fluttered open. He put his hand on Mike’s. “Dad, I saw really big lights in there, and fish on the ceiling. I closed my eyes, and then I was here.”

Seeing his IV-taped hand on his daddy’s made something melt in me. I took a picture with my phone and texted it to Mike. It was my way of saying, I’m glad you’re his dad, but he didn’t pick up on that either.

Then I noticed Mike’s other hand on the bed rail and the wedding ring on his finger. I’d caught glimpses of it before, at parent-teacher conferences and on my porch some Sundays, when he brought the boys home. But I didn’t ever think it was pretty until now. It looked different somehow.

Actually, a lot of things were different. I’ve learned so much since you left, I wanted to tell Mike. I’m the one who starts the lawnmower now and changes the filter in the air conditioner. I do my own taxes, and I can grill a steak with just the right amount of pink. I’d learned some things about myself too. That besides being an English teacher, I could write stories for the newspaper that people wanted to read. That I loved helping the homeless. That I could find joy in the tiniest of things.

That passage from James…I understood it now. The first part, about finding joy through my trials. And the second part, “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” I’d grown so much in the past four years. Not only had my world not collapsed, as I was sure it was going to when my marriage ended, but my life was happier and more fulfilling than ever. I felt closer to living out God’s purpose for me than I ever had before.

The nurses let my mom come in. She and Mike and I sat around Breckan’s bed while he drank Gatorade and ate graham crackers, as if he hadn’t eaten all day because he hadn’t.

Mom looked right at my ex-husband and said, “So, Mike, how’s work? Are you doing the same job you were before?”

She hadn’t spoken to him in four years. She’d said plenty about him but not a word to him. Yet here she was, starting a conversation with him as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Well, yes and no,” Mike replied. Then he explained what he meant by that.

And I listened. I could do it without having to pretend to be interested because I really was interested in what he said. He was the father of my children, after all—the boys I loved more than I thought it was possible to love anyone on this earth. Somehow, unbidden, forgiveness had come.

I looked at Mom. Evidently she’d had some sort of breakthrough too. “What was that about?” I asked her when Mike stepped out to take a phone call.

“I just don’t feel like hating him anymore,” she said. “It was hurting my soul.”

I knew what she meant. My soul felt lighter too.

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After a Deep Loss, a Heartfelt Thank You

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Edward Grinnan

I had an old editor at Guideposts once—you may remember him, Van Varner—who would tell me the tears are supposed to be in the eyes of the reader, not the writer or narrator. He also disliked the use of the word “heart.” He saw it as a substitute for genuine emotion in a piece. He would hate the ubiquitous heart emoji.

Yet I can’t help admitting I was overwhelmed with emotion at your prayers and support in response to my piece on my wife, Julee’s, death. You exhibited the qualities that Guideposts strives to both practice and instill: faith, hope and prayer. Acceptance over judgment.

That will be all from me this week. A tearful, heartfelt thank you for all the love. (Sorry, Van.)

After 30 Years of Addiction, God Answered His Prayer for Sobriety

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Sidney H. Smith III

Months into my first serious attempt to stay sober, I was about to throw it all away. I stood in my dorm room at Mercy House, a residential drug and alcohol treatment center in Georgetown, Mississippi. Mercy House is faith-based, emphasizing spiritual growth alongside more traditional substance abuse treatment methods.

I’d cycled in and out of plenty of rehabs during nearly 30 years addicted to crack cocaine. None were like this. We spent most of our time learning about God, Jesus and the Bible. We worked at an in-house thrift store, an auto repair center and a craft workshop. Surrender to God and following Jesus were the keys to sobriety, we were told.

I wasn’t sure I believed that. I’d started using crack as a teenager in Oakland, California. I became an addict, a dealer, a thief, a junkie living behind a dumpster, a dad who deserted his child to get high, a fugitive from the law and a Mississippi penitentiary inmate.

Now I was here. Somehow I’d convinced my parole officer to go easy on me after I got caught using drugs following my release from prison. I’d conned so many people over the years, including my wife, Judy, who was crushed that not even 13 years behind bars could drive out my addiction.

I couldn’t use drugs at Mercy House. But I still had an addict’s habits. I held part of myself back. My main question from day to day was, How can I maneuver my way out of this?

Today I’d let my self-control slip. I’d been pulled off one job and reassigned to another. I felt disrespected. I’m sick of this place, I thought. I want out. I didn’t care if I wound up in prison. At least there I knew how to get respect. I snuck into my dorm room, where no one would see me. We weren’t supposed to be in our rooms during the day.

I threw my stuff in a bag. Mercy House wasn’t a locked facility. No one could stop me from leaving. I couldn’t wait to get high. Might as well go out in style.

I paused. There would be no going back if I walked out. I was 42 years old. A prison sentence now might as well be for life. Judy had already filed divorce papers three times, then changed her mind. As stubbornly hopeful as she is, this time Judy would be gone for good.

“God!” I shouted. “If you are who they say you are here, you need to show up right now! Because I am done!”

I stopped. I listened. Nothing. I didn’t have an easy explanation for why I’d gotten addicted to crack. Yes, my part of Oakland had a high rate of crime and drug use. And, yes, my biological father was out of the picture, my stepdad not much of a dad.

But my mom, who worked for the postal service, was a steady provider. She’d put me in private school and done her best to keep me on track.

So why did I take my first drink as a teenager? My first hit of marijuana? Why did I start dealing weed at school? Why did I try crack?

What I did know was that drugs create a vicious cycle. Once addicted, I needed money to get high. I stole, then became a dealer. I spent everything I earned on crack and wound up on the streets, eating out of garbage cans. I got a woman pregnant, then walked out on her and our son because they got in the way of my getting high.

It was a shameful life. Drugs dulled the shame. I made vows to get better, went to rehabs, started my life over in a string of cities.

I ended up in Mississippi, where I had relatives. I got a temp job at J.C. Penney. I met Judy there. She did visual merchandising. I charmed her by pretending to be honest about my drug past.

“I’ve been clean for two years,” I boasted. More like two hours.

I maintained just enough of a veneer of normalcy for us to get married. Though Judy saw the warning signs, she thought she could keep me on the right path. Like I said, she is stubbornly hopeful. We went to church, but I was just going through the motions.

Mercy House was practically a church. We woke up at 5 a.m. and spent much of the day reading Scripture. We also worked jobs and studied a book detailing 49 qualities of a godly person.

I tried to tell myself it was bull. But I was intrigued by this Jesus guy. Forgiveness? New life? Even for me?

It would be amazing to be forgiven and start over with a clean slate. Could I be a man Judy relied on and respected? Stop running and live a godly life?

I stood in the room, agonizing over what to do. “God!” I shouted again.

This time I did hear a noise. Someone sat up in one of the bunks and stared at me. A roommate who was sleeping off a sick day. How much of my ranting and raving had he heard? He gave me a strange look and slunk out of the room. I hung my head. God was obviously not coming to my rescue.

Then I felt it. A heavy weight nearly forced me to the floor. Every wicked thing I’d done pressed down on me. A moment later, it lifted. There was no booming voice from on high. No shining light. Just an inner certainty that God had heard my cry and turned me onto a new path.

I felt exhausted, as if coming down with the flu. But I knew what I had to do. I unpacked and returned to work.

Over the following days, I struggled to understand what had happened. There was no doubt in my mind: I would never use drugs or commit a crime or betray Judy again.

But how? It seemed too good to be true that God had simply removed that defect from my brain.

I committed myself to the Mercy House program and began praying for real. During one prayer, I got angry at God for healing me so abruptly. “If you could do that just by snapping your fingers, why did you let me suffer and inflict pain on other people for 27 years?”

God answered. He told me he acted when I surrendered. Until then, whatever prayer I might have sent his way was me trying to manipulate him, just as I manipulated everyone else. He waited until my cry for help was sincere.

The next time Judy visited, she teared up before she’d even crossed the room. She saw the change in my face.

I graduated from Mercy House and began living in a new way. Until then, I’d never held a job for more than six months, never voted, never paid taxes. After Mercy House, I enrolled in community college, then the University of Southern Mississippi, studying social work. I wanted to help people like me.

Guess where I was assigned to an internship while pursuing my undergraduate degree? The same courtroom where I was tried and sentenced to 20 years for dealing drugs and grand larceny. The D.A. who’d prosecuted my case was now the judge there. She recognized me and, outside the court, asked if she could give me a hug.

I graduated with honors and earned a master’s in social work from Southern Mississippi. After interning with the Department of Veterans Affairs, I became a counselor at an intensive outpatient drug and alcohol treatment center in Biloxi and served as an adviser to the Gulfport police department. (I know, I find it hard to believe myself.) I talk to professional organizations about the role of religious faith in addiction recovery and drug offender rehabilitation.

I know exactly what my clients are going through. One recently came to me after being released from prison. She was stunned to learn that her social worker had once been incarcerated too. We talked about how hard it is to communicate with loved ones from behind bars. She and her boyfriend, also incarcerated, used to call friends at the same house, who then placed their cell phones beside one another on speaker.

“You get it,” she told me.

On one wall of my office, I’ve hung my diplomas, awards and a framed newspaper clipping, its photo showing me with the chief of the Gulfport police department. “New Life” reads the story’s headline.

Beside it is a framed copy of my prison sentencing document. I try to make sure clients see both those things.

The ruling emotion of an addict is hopelessness. I want my clients to know that there is always hope. The new life God has given to me is being offered to them too. He is waiting for them to reach out.

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A Fruitful, Faithful Life

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Meg Belviso

Picture the American frontier in the early 1800s: homesteaders chopping down trees and hunting wild animals. But one of the most beloved figures on the frontier never did either. He wandered the wilderness, sleeping in hollow logs and caves, or at the home of whatever pioneer welcomed him in.

His name was John Chapman, but Americans at the time gave him a different name. They called him Johnny Appleseed.

The name came from the pouch of apple seeds he always carried with him, and the many orchards he planted in the American Midwest—over a hundred thousand square miles of apple orchards from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Indiana.

Why did Chapman choose such a strange life for himself? Nobody really knows. Some say he was jilted by a girl he loved. Some say he simply had an entrepreneurial spirit.

But others say John Chapman was inspired to spread his beloved apple blossoms across the country by nothing less than a message from an angel.

Like many things considered American today, apples originally came from somewhere else. Early immigrants found only crab apples growing in the New World. So they brought apples from England. Most of the early orchards in America produced very few apples, until the European settlers imported something else from home: honey bees.

By the time John Chapman was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, in 1774, New England was buzzing—literally—and the apple trees were blooming. John used to say that the first thing he ever saw were the pink blossoms of the apple tree.

A lot was happening in the colony of Massachusetts when young John was born. His father, Nathaniel, a carpenter and farmer, was a Minute Man who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

When John was 24 he left home for Pennsylvania with a bag full of apple seeds he had gotten from a local apple press—and a pretty good idea of what his life’s work would be. Four years later, he bought sixteen bushels of seeds, loaded them into two canoes lashed together and took off down the Ohio River.

Soon John had a system for planting his orchards—and a thriving business as well. He traveled down river and over land, often carrying heavy bags of seed on his back, in search of rich, fertile land where he thought pioneers might settle.

He planted his trees in a straight line and built a fence to keep animals away. Then he hired a local boy to look after the saplings and continued on his way, returning regularly to check on his work. Within a few years he had saplings to sell to arriving families.

When he ran out of seeds he returned to the East Coast and started all over again. He became so well-known amongst both the pioneers and Indians that they renamed him Johnny Appleseed.

This very successful businessman had a knack for predicting where pioneers would settle and how popular his apple trees would be.

But when Johnny Appleseed’s legend grew, it wasn’t tales of money or power that people shared, but stories of his faith and charity and his love of God’s natural world. For all the trees he grew, he couldn’t abide the cutting of one down.

By all accounts—and there were many, because everyone seemed to know Johnny Appleseed—he was an odd-looking fellow. Small and energetic, with long dark hair and bright black eyes, Johnny traveled the wilderness with nothing but his bags of seeds and a Bible.

Some said he didn’t even carry a gun or a knife—a dangerous gamble in the American wilderness. But Johnny never got into trouble. He befriended everyone: pioneers, Indians, even wild animals.

One legend had it that during a snowstorm Johnny took shelter in a fallen tree. Once inside the tree, he discovered it was already being used by a mother bear and her cubs. Instead of driving Johnny away—or worse—the mother bear welcomed him as her guest.

One thing that’s for sure: Johnny never hurt an animal. A strict vegetarian, he refused even to ride a horse. He often used the profits from his apple trees to buy lame horses from their owner to save them from being killed. He bought mistreated animals for whatever amount the owners asked, then found the animals a kind home.

Johnny’s compassion and generosity extended to people as well. He gave away trees when necessary, or traded them for food or clothing. He lent a hand with the chores when he came upon settlers in need.

However, he wore no shoes, summer or winter. That was no easy feat in the deep snows of the frontier. In fact, he often entertained little boys by pressing hot coals or needles into the soles of his feet, which had grown tough and leathery in his travels.

For clothes he wore whatever anyone was willing to trade—that made for some pretty strange outfits.

However little Johnny Appleseed cared about his own personal adornment, he delighted in covering the American landscape with pink apple blossoms. And those weren’t the only seeds he sowed. A devout believer, Johnny loved to share his faith with everyone he met. He became a messenger of sorts himself; his angel had chosen wisely.

One can just imagine being a little boy or girl living on the frontier. Sun is setting. Chores are almost done. Then over the horizon a man appears. No ordinary man. He wears no shoes, and his long hair brushes his shoulders.

Perhaps he wears an old shirt a size too small, or a pair of pants several sizes too big. Perhaps he isn’t wearing a shirt at all, but an old coffee sack with holes cut out for arms and a tin pot on his head instead of a hat. Imagine the excitement as the child realizes who it is: the famous Johnny Appleseed.

He’s invited to stay for dinner. When the meal is ready everyone gathers round. Johnny refuses to eat until all the children have been served—that’s not something frontier children usually experienced! Over the meal, Johnny shares stories about his life in the wilderness.

After dinner Johnny sits by the fire. He reaches into his coffee sack and pulls out an old, dog-eared Bible. “Who’d like to hear the good news?” he asks. “News fresh from heaven?”

Then Johnny Appleseed begins to read, perhaps from the Sermon on the Mount, some of his favorite passages, it is said.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he begins in a voice one frontier housewife described as being “loud as the roar of the wind and waves, then soft and soothing as the balmy airs that quivered the morning-glory leaves about his gray beard.”

In 1845, when he was 70 years old, Johnny Appleseed arrived at the door of his friend William Worth in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Of course, William was glad to see him. They shared a simple meal of bread and milk. Johnny read from his Bible. Then Johnny stretched out on the floor and went to sleep. He never woke up.

When the news reached Washington, US Senator “Texas” Sam Houston said, “This old man was one of the most useful citizens of the world in his humble way. Farewell, dear old eccentric heart. Your labor has been a labor of love, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call you blessed.”

A true American legend had died. Many of the apple trees growing from Pennsylvania to Ohio today are descended from the very seeds he planted, barefoot, all those years ago.

The seeds planted by John Chapman—on the advice of an angel— bloom in America to this day. As does the faith he helped spread throughout the land.

View our slideshow of Johnny Appleseed images.

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A Footpath Toward a Stronger Faith

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Jennifer Pharr Davis

“Why the Appalachian Trail?” friends asked somewhat incredulously. Great question. I’d spent all of three nights in the woods my entire life. The one summer camp I went to had air-conditioned cabins and hot water.

Yet here I was, telling everyone I was going to thru-hike the trail from Georgia to Maine after graduation. Partly to test myself, sure. Isn’t that what you do when you’re young? Partly to put off getting a job. But the real reason went much deeper than that.

Ever since I’d heard about the trail, I had the strangest, strongest sense that I was supposed to hike all 2,180 miles of it. I felt called to do it.

Fresh from college I set out from Springer Mountain, Georgia, on my unlikely quest. I have since thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail twice more, most recently in record time—46 and a half days (an average of almost 47 miles a day).

But speed has never been my true goal. What I’m really after are the spiritual lessons that come from the trail, a kind of freedom of the soul, lessons that serve us wherever our life’s journey takes us.

1. Choose your own identity.

Trail names are a hallowed tradition. Hikers pick nicknames to go by, like Dude or Mooch.

“You should be Stretch or Amazon,” people told me because I’m six feet tall and have the long stride to match. But after 21 years of others defining who I was, I was ready for a change. Who did I think I was?

The first time I was about to sign a register near the southern end of the A.T., I paused and thought of all the reading I’d done as a classics major. Homer’s Odyssey had captivated me.

Look at all the wisdom the hero, Odysseus, gained from the challenges he overcame. Could I be like him? That March day I picked up a pen and wrote my new name: Odyssa. Because I was on a life-changing journey.

2. Accept the generosity of others.

One evening in the woods I smelled something tantalizing. I followed my nose to a clearing where an RV was parked. There was a circle of lawn chairs around a campfire. Pots of beans, rice and corn were warming over the fire.

A table was set up with cheese, lettuce, salsa, sour cream and tortillas. The RV door squeaked. A motherly woman stepped out. She handed me a plate. “Take whatever you want,” she said. “Pull up a chair and enjoy.”

I’d heard about strangers offering gifts to thru-hikers—a ride to town, a shower, a hot meal. I’d always been the independent type. This hike was something I was doing on my own. But I soon discovered I was never going to make it without accepting the generosity of others.

They call it trail magic. I call it God’s grace. P.S. Those fajitas were fabulous.

3. Let your spirit sing.

My biggest fear was cold, wet weather. It hit early on, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A bonechilling rain fell. I had to slide down Clingmans Dome, the highest peak on the trail, 6,643 feet above sea level, over patches of snow and ice.

“Tomorrow will be better,” I muttered to myself. But, no, the next day was worse.

The weirdest urge came over me. Sing! What? Sing! So I sang. Not well and not loudly. I launched into “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, then “Tomorrow” from Annie. If refugees and orphans could have a positive attitude so could I.

You know what? It worked. When you lift your voice in song, your spirit sings along with it. From then on, whenever something got to me—weather, blisters, mosquitoes—I’d sing myself into a better mood. Rap, hymns, pop, folk, gospel, rock, off-key at the top of my lungs.

4. Meet God where you are.

I was used to seeing God in church. I didn’t expect to find him on the trail. How little I understood of the wonders of his creation! One night in the Blue Ridge Mountains brought that home.

The mountains, true to their name, were transforming from a barren brown to a kaleidoscope of blues. The sky was lit up with red, orange, pink and yellow more vivid than any painting. “Praise God!” I shouted into the wind. Dorky, maybe, yet it felt so right.

I remembered a verse in the Bible that said if people failed to praise God, the rocks would sing out his glories. That’s just what they were doing. Praise God!

5. Be yourself.

I’d thought I was a pretty good judge of people, but I discovered that sometimes they’ll defy your expectations. One night I settled into a shelter when a man with a long beard came in. “Arrgh! Greetings, milady,” he said. “Is there room in here for a weary pirate?”

A pirate? He had to be kidding. “There are some open bunks,” I said.

“My name is Captain Jack Daniels,” he said, “but call me Captain.” He’d been a thru-hiker for 15 years and had a number of businesses on the side. He gave me his card. There was a Bible verse printed on it. Who would’ve guessed?

It’s easy to get into conversations with people on the trail—talking makes the miles go faster. At first I felt awkward telling others what I believed. Finally I dove in. By the time I reached Maine I was much more confident of who I was.

6. Dream in teams.

Soon after that first thru-hike I fell in love with Brew Davis, a schoolteacher and an old friend of my brother’s. We got married in June. I won’t be hiking as much anymore, I thought.

Brew surprised me. He suggested I thruhike the A.T. that summer and he’d follow in our car. That was how we spent the first summer of our marriage!

By the end of it, we knew each other so well, it was like we’d been married for decades. We learned to trust each other, to share, to be patient (that would be me waiting for Brew to drive up in our Toyota Highlander when I was exhausted and starving).

Brew says he was growing in his biblical role of husbands “loving their wives as much as Christ loved the church.” Sometimes that meant forgiving his wife for eating all the granola bars!

Then we hatched a plan of beating the thru-hiking speed record, and I must insist, it’s our record. Because I was hiking 18 hours a day I was getting six hours of sleep a night, which meant that was all Brew was getting too.

He had to pack up the gear, drive and find obscure trails, do laundry, buy food. More than that, he had to meet and anticipate my needs.

We started June 15, 2011, and finished July 31. Most people assumed the record-holder would run the trail. Not me. I hiked. I went three miles an hour. It’s not always the fastest or strongest that wins but the most persistent.

Of course, it helps when you have someone as devoted as my husband supporting and praying for you the whole way. More than once I was ready to collapse. “Get some sleep and you’ll be okay,” Brew would tell me. “God is with us, remember?”

Indeed, he has been, from the moment he called me to the trail, and every step of the way since. We are all of us put on this earth to complete a journey, and fast or slow, for each and every one of us that journey ends in glory.

View photos of Jennifer’s thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

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A Firefighter’s Earth Angel

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Ron Bigness

Faces were grim on Engine Company 208.

We sped through the streets of Mesa on our way to one of the worst calls a firefighter can get. “Med-3 on North Rosemont,” the dispatcher’s voice had said. “Possible pediatric drowning.”

The house where a little girl had tumbled into a swimming pool was only three and a half miles from the station. The four-minute drive felt like forever.

We were experienced firefighters. Between the five of us we had nearly 80 years’ experience. This was my sixteenth year with the Mesa department. I knew all too well the awful truth about kids who fall into swimming pools—few survive. It takes only minutes for an oxygen-starved body to shut down. By the time paramedics reach the scene victims usually show no sign of life.

I’d been called to more than a dozen pediatric drownings. Not a single child recovered. A few revived with catastrophic brain damage. Most died.

I reviewed our treatment protocols. First we insert a tube down the victim’s throat and pump it with pure oxygen. Then we establish an IV and administer drugs to strengthen cardiac contractions, all in hopes of restoring oxygenated blood flow.

I tried to stay focused, but my mind kept flitting back to my own kids, who’d grown up just blocks away from the house where we were now headed. Jason and Shannon were teenagers now, but I still saw their faces every time an emergency involved kids.

The worst part was talking to the victim’s parents. I remembered one call, a three-year-old who’d wandered into a neighbor’s backyard and fallen into a pool. The boy’s mother was a friend of our family’s. Her distraught face burned in my memory. I’d felt so helpless, so frustrated that there was nothing we could do. It’s the worst feeling a paramedic can have.

The truck halted in front of a two-story house with a desert garden. A cluster of neighbors stood out front. We hurried inside, lugging oxygen tanks and equipment. My eyes took in kids’ toys on the living room floor, a family portrait photo on the wall. I wondered if the baby in the photo was the child we were about to try to save.

More people clustered in the backyard near a swimming pool. A man on his knees frantically pumped the chest of a tiny girl. She looked about two years old. We raced over. The girl was motionless. Her skin was deathly pale, her lips and fingernail beds a purplish blue—all signs of severe oxygen deprivation. Her shoulder-length brown hair streamed wetly from her head. She wore shorts and a T-shirt.

I pulled the man away from the girl’s body. We inserted the tracheal tube, pumped it with oxygen, administered medication and hooked up a heart monitor. I looked for the parents. They were obvious by their horrified faces. The father, who’d administered CPR, clutched his wife.

They spoke in anguished bursts. The girl’s name was Paisley Walker. Her parents were Terry and Kaye. She was almost two, her birthday just a week away. The family—they had six kids—had only recently moved.

“We were about to put up a fence surrounding the pool,” Terry said.

“Paisley must have wandered outside and fallen in,” said Kaye.

“Please save her!” they both pleaded. I yearned to tell them their daughter would live, but I didn’t dare raise false hopes. I’d seen too many victims rally only to die moments later or live on in a coma. Instead I walked Terry and Kaye through our treatment procedures, keeping them focused on something tangible.

One of the paramedics at Paisley’s side spoke. “We have a pulse,” he said in the measured tone that comes from years of experience.

“She has a heartbeat,” I relayed to Terry and Kaye. “We’re going to medevac her by helicopter to a trauma center in Phoenix.”

Word came over the radio that the helicopter had landed in a nearby field. An ambulance arrived and we hoisted Paisley onto the stretcher, her little body so light and easy to lift. The stretcher wheeled through the house and disappeared inside the ambulance, which sped to the helicopter. I gave Paisley’s parents directions to the hospital and returned to the backyard to help pack up equipment.

A television news reporter hurried up to me. “Will the girl live?” she asked. I thought a moment. “I don’t want this on the record,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s going to be a real good outcome.”

I tried not to think about Terry and Kaye getting the likely pronouncement at the hospital—that Paisley hadn’t made it after all, or that she’d live, but not as the Paisley they’d come to know and love. It was a somber ride back to the station.

My job was finished, but I knew I’d never forget that little girl and how we’d probably failed to save her. I still felt so helpless I didn’t know if I could face another emergency call, whatever it might be. But you have to face it, I told myself as we pulled back into the station. That’s your job.

A week later on a brilliant June morning the guys and I were taking a break when a knock came at the station door. It was Terry and Kaye Walker. The anguished expressions I remembered were gone, replaced by excited smiles. I looked down. At their side stood a little brown-haired girl staring up at me with wide, shy eyes.

“Guys, come here!” I shouted, hardly believing what I was seeing. The guys crowded around and we welcomed the Walkers inside. It was as if nothing had happened to Paisley. She immediately began toddling around the station, marveling at her reflection in the fire engine’s chrome bumper and grabbing every piece of equipment she could reach.

“It’s Paisley’s birthday,” Terry said. “We wanted to stop by and thank you.”

“We wouldn’t be celebrating today if it wasn’t for you,” Kaye said.

I stared at them, then at Paisley. The Walkers kept thanking us, telling how Paisley had revived at the hospital and come home seemingly unscathed a few days later.

I thought of all the other drowning calls we’d been on, all the heartbreak we’d endured at the station. I thought of the grim feeling inside the truck as we’d pulled up in front of Paisley’s house.

Who’d saved whom? I wondered. Sure, we’d helped save Paisley’s life. But she’d saved us too. She was like an angel fluttering down from God to remind us why we did the work we do. To remind us never to give up hope, even when the odds seem so terribly stacked against us.

It’s been 10 years since Paisley toddled through our station door. We’ve celebrated every birthday with her. Watching her grow into a young lady with a bright future, I feel like I’m watching a miracle of God unfold in real time.

A miracle for Paisley—and for five grim-faced firefighters on Engine Company 208.

A Fire Chief Remains Hopeful in the Fight Against Her City’s Opioid Epidemic

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Brett Leveridge

Hi Guideposts. I’m Jan Rader, fire chief in Huntington, West Virginia, and I’ve been a first responder for 23 years.

I actually was working as an assistant manager in a jewelry store in a mall, and a lady collapsed right in the doorway of the store, and I didn’t even know CPR. So I called 9-1-1 and waited, and the fire department showed up and there was a woman who was with them. They were actually able to save the lady, and it was the first time I realized that being a firefighter was something that a woman could do.

Once I became a firefighter, I really was interested in the medical side as well, so I became a paramedic; I did that on the side.

Opioid addiction, or substance use disorder, is a country-wide problem. In 2016, it killed 64,000 people, and that’s more than died during the Vietnam War.

We try to stay as positive as we can in this area, and we focus our attention on the small successes here. We have a lot of people in the community diligently on this problem, helping firefighters and everybody who’s working to combat this epidemic.

Naloxone is a drug that we can administer, so by administering Narcan (brand name for Naloxone) over and over again, we are keeping people alive until they can seek treatment. We actually deal with people that have gone into longterm recovery daily, and they are healthy, happy, tax-paying citizens again. It’s wonderful to see. You know, it takes about three years for the brain to heal completely from substance use disorder, but people do recover and they can recover and they are amazing people.

We take an oath to save life and property, and nowhere in that oath does it say we have the right to judge. We don’t know back stories of people, and when you learn them, it’s devastating and you wonder why some have resiliency and some do not.

I keep a lot of people that I meet on the street and I deal with on a daily basis in my prayers, because I believe in the power of prayer. Several people have contacted me after they have recovered to thank me, and it really makes you feel good about what you’re doing. I feel like I’m ethically and morally doing the right thing and that I was chosen to do what I’m doing and I see too many good things coming out of this, so it’s easy to stay positive in that respect.

I have a lot of hope because I think that there’s more good than bad in this world, and we have the power to overcome this and be a better, stronger community and a better and stronger country.

A Father Reconciles with His Son Facing Drug Addiction

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Ray Bowman

Someday he would hit bottom, come to himself, and come back home. Dad, he would say, “I’m sorry.” And before he could say another word, I’d go to him, throw my arms around him and say, “David, I forgive you. Welcome back!” Then I would kill the fatted calf and the celebration would begin.

I must have replayed that scene scores of times through the agonizing years of David’s drug addiction in the 1970s, and it never failed to give me hope. But it didn’t happen quite that way.

Two weeks before his high school graduation David announced, “I’m dropping out of school and moving back to Oklahoma.” Since his junior-high years my wife, Sally, and I had known he was drinking and using drugs. We had gone to counselor after counselor, but nothing seemed to help. We had endured the pain of watching him play varsity basketbal l while high. We had lived through the long nights when he stayed out all night only to return drunk or stoned. I had stood in our carport doorway raging, “David, why are you doing this to us? Why are you doing this to yourself?” And I had seen him cling to the side of his orange Dodge van to keep from falling, unable even to comprehend my questions. I don’t know how many times I had to take him inside and put him to bed, where he would sleep all day and all night, and sometimes all the next day. Still, his announcement shocked us.

Sally and I went to our counselor. “You have no choice but to let him go,” he said.

And so, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, I let him go. In the years that followed, I tried to live out the role of the loving father. Sally and I never let ourselves be embarrassed that our son was a drug user. We did our best to let him know that even though we didn’t approve of what he was doing, we accepted him. Although David often lied to us even when the truth would have been to his advantage, we kept communication open.

He left in May, returning to Oklahoma City, where we had formerly lived and where he could be with his drug buddies. Sally and I agreed we would not intervene until he asked for help. From time to time he phoned, and when he did, our hopes shot up. But all he ever called for was to ask for money, and we always said no. We told him he needed to get a job and support himself.

He found work all right, but went through one job after another. He sold his van and spent the money. Unable to pay rent, David broke into our former home, which we were still trying to sell, and lived there with no furniture, no water, no electricity. To buy drugs, he sold his blood. Several times he passed out from hunger. Like the prodigal, our son was living with the swine.

Finally in November David called and said, “I’m sick. Can you come get me?” I dropped my work, and Sally and I flew to Oklahoma City. The scene of what was about to happen had never been more vivid. “Dad, I’ve been wrong,” my son would say. “Will you forgive me?” The day we’d been waiting for had finally arrived!

The David we found was an emaciated shadow of the son we had known, weak from giving too much blood, and starving. That first day he ate five meals. But it didn’t take long for us to realize that however desperate David may have been, he wasn’t sorry, and the day wasn’t going to end the way we’d expected.

Disappointed yet hopeful, we took David to Idaho and sobered him up enough for him to finish high school. We were making progress. Next David returned to Oklahoma to attend a Christian college. Though drugs had often kept him from playing his best, he was still a strong-enough basketball player to win a full athletic scholarship. More progress. Back in Oklahoma, though, David fell in with his old buddies again and lost his scholarship because of drug use.

Through these years, Sally and I often became discouraged. Where did we go wrong? The question was never far from our minds. David had grown up in the same loving home as his older brother and sister, who were outstanding students at a Christian college. Why had he chosen an opposite path? We had raised him in a church where he was surrounded by people who cared for him. Why did he prefer his drug buddies? We had always made time for family—skiing in Colorado, bowling, driving the four-wheel drive up the mountainside just for fun. Sally and I had gone to every one of David’s basketball games, no matter how far away, no matter how bad the weather. What had we done to cause David to choose this lifestyle rather than the one we had tried to teach him? When our first two children were giving us so much joy, why did David have to bring us so much pain? It was when these questions refused to go away that the picture of the prodigal son’s return would keep me going. Yes, I kept telling myself, he will come home.

Where did we go wrong? The question was never far from our minds.

David moved on to Kansas City, where he lived with our daughter and her husband. We kept communicating, but David’s actions gave us little basis for hope. One day Sally and I were talking in our big country kitchen—I sitting at the table, Sally working at the counter. We had not been discussing David, but suddenly I was struck by such a forceful thought that it was as though a third person had walked into the room and joined the conversation: You need to go to David and ask his forgiveness because you have resentment against him. For a moment I was speechless. I had always pictured him coming to me, humbling himself, asking my forgiveness.

I told Sally. She was surprised, but she agreed, “Yes, that’s something you need to do.”

No, I thought, this can’t be right. I’d seldom lost my temper with David. And though I had carried some anger around inside me, I thought I had let go of it. I thought it was all in the past. “Am I really angry and resentful?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sally said. “You have been for a long time.”

It took a while for the thought to sink in. “Maybe I could call or write,” I said.

But again it was as if a third person said, No, that’s not right. It has to be in person. I’ll provide the time.

A few months later we were visiting our daughter’s family and David in Kansas City. Feeling the time was right, I asked David if we could go upstairs to his tiny bedroom to talk. David sat on the bed, the only place to sit, and I stood. “David,” I said, “the Lord has shown me that I need to ask for your forgiveness because of my bitterness and resentment about all the problems we’ve had.” Then I waited.

“Well,” he finally said, “it was partly my fault.” That’s all he said. But I understood what he was really saying; he understood, and the Lord understood.

He stood up and we hugged each other. “David,” I said, “we’re going to put the past behind us.”

As we walked out of the room David said, “I feel better.” So did I.

A few weeks later David called and told Sally, “I just thought you might like to know that I accepted Jesus into my life last night.”

He said he’d been watching television with a girl he had been dating, a friend from college. “I told her, ‘You know, I really need to make some changes in my life.’ Then she asked, ‘When are you going to?’ When I said I didn’t know, she said, ‘Why don’t we pray together right now?’ I said okay and we prayed, and I asked God to forgive me and come into my life. It’s still hard to believe it happened.”

After that night David never used drugs again. He came back to Idaho, and about a year later he married a fine Christian woman. Today he participates enthusiastically in his church, holds a highly responsible job as dispatcher for a major trucking company, and is a wonderful father to his three children.

David’s story didn’t follow my script. He never asked my forgiveness in so many words, and there never was a fatted calf. But more important, I had to depart from the role I had imagined for myself. Had I merely stood at the door, waiting for David to come to me and say, “Dad, I’m sorry,” I might still be waiting. But because God sent me to ask David’s forgiveness, our son has come home.

This story first appeared in the July 1991 issue of Guideposts magazine.

A Family’s Battle

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Brannan Vines

I was in the passenger seat of a Humvee, on a dusty street in Iraq. The sun was so bright it almost blinded me. I felt the sand whipping through the window, stinging my arm and face. Gunfire erupted. Rounds came through the windshield.

I heard the driver shout. He’d been hit. Blood was everywhere. No! I realized it was my husband, Caleb, an infantryman. I couldn’t stop the blood. I shouted for a medic but I knew it was too late. Caleb was going to die.

I woke with a start. The bedroom was dark and silent. It was a dream, a terrible dream about a place I had never been, a war I had never fought in. Yet it was so real. I felt like screaming.

But I couldn’t. Caleb was asleep beside me and the last thing I wanted to do was wake him up. Who knew what he’d do if he awoke in the dark, disoriented and afraid?

Maybe he’d shout, or dive off the bed for cover. Or he’d be jolted into combat mode, striking out at an unseen enemy. He’d wake up our eight-year-old daughter, Katie, and then she’d be crying too.

Life had been like this ever since Caleb returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq. I was never even in the military. Caleb served on the front lines in Baghdad, Ramadi and other hot zones. He’d been shot at and escaped dozens of explosions. For two years there was always someone trying to kill him. He came back with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, unable to work, unable to cope.

I’d been caring for him for several years now. His physical injuries were the easy part. The wounds to his soul were deeper. Our house had to be dark—too much light reminded Caleb of the desert sun. I had to monitor the TV to make sure nothing agitating came on—news, war images, any kind of violence.

My days were filled with typical mom duties: making meals, doing laundry, getting Katie to and from school and tap class. But I also squared off against Veterans Administration bureaucrats, monitored Caleb’s 12 different medications and planned each day down to the second to make sure nothing unexpected happened.

You never knew what might set him off. He hadn’t hit me yet. But when his memories overwhelmed him and I momentarily became the enemy, he’d come close. Mostly it was the screaming. Or his agonized replaying of some moment on the battlefield. He was racked with guilt for having survived when his buddies hadn’t.

We were broke. I was exhausted. And now I was having battlefield nightmares too. I’d become hyper-alert, just like Caleb. I scanned every room for exits. I flinched at loud noises. It was as if I’d contracted my husband’s PTSD.

Was that possible? I felt trapped and didn’t know what to do. Lying there next to Caleb, I let myself drift back to the early, happy days of our marriage. We were high school sweethearts, married in college. I loved Caleb for his rugged good looks and his sense of honor—and his smarts.

He was a civil-engineering major and never ceased to amaze me with the facts stored in his head. I was studying to become a court clerk. I pictured us settling down, raising kids, fixing up a house. You know, a happy, normal life. September 11 changed all of that.

“I’ve got to enlist,” Caleb said, watching the Twin Towers crumble. That was Caleb. A true southern gentleman, he took honor and duty very seriously. He volunteered for the infantry, though he could have chosen an easier job. He survived his first deployment and I prayed every day for his safe return from the second.

He came home, but it didn’t take long for me to see something was wrong. “Honey,” he asked a few days after getting back, “this is a stupid question, but…how do you divide a number by two? I can’t remember.”

I guess it was at that moment I felt as if the bottom had fallen out of our lives. Then came the nightmares. Angry outbursts in the grocery store. Moments of agony and guilt. Sometimes Caleb would disappear into the bedroom for an entire day and night. Then I’d worry he’d decide life wasn’t worth living.

I didn’t know where to turn. Caleb had been wrongly advised by the Army to withdraw from military service rather than getting a medical retirement, which would have entitled us to health benefits.

Without benefits we couldn’t afford basic health care, let alone treatment for a condition as complicated as PTSD. The VA bureaucracy was like a monolith. I didn’t know what we were eligible for or how to get it.

Caleb tried for a time to work, but he quickly learned that that was no longer possible. I tried starting a home business and went to food banks and church feeding programs to maximize our meager income.

At last, with the help of an organization called Vietnam Veteran Wives, I figured out how to start the process of getting Caleb disability benefits. Still, for a long time, the three of us lived on less than $20,000 a year. We exhausted our savings, and our once-perfect credit went down the drain. We ended up filing for bankruptcy.

I looked at my bedside clock: 3:00 a.m. A long time till morning. I didn’t want to sleep anyway. I was scared I’d have another nightmare. A few days earlier, I’d Googled “Caregiver PTSD.” Psychiatrists hadn’t officially recognized the condition, but the symptoms were being written about in medical journals.

They could be brought on by the stresses of caregiving. Especially caregiving for wounded veterans. And yes, you could start reliving another person’s trauma, especially a spouse’s. I didn’t know whether to feel vindicated or terrified.

I’d tried seeing a volunteer therapist—we couldn’t afford therapy otherwise—but she didn’t seem to understand. Then, just the other day, Katie and I had walked into a store together. “Mama,” Katie said, looking up at me matter-of-factly, “there are four exits from here. Look.” She pointed around the room, just like her daddy did. Not Katie too!

I stared into the darkness of the bedroom. Lord, is our whole family cursed with PTSD? I wondered. Isn’t there anything you can do to help us?

I closed my eyes, retreating into the deeper darkness of my thoughts. Suddenly an idea popped into my mind.

I found myself remembering the conversation I’d had with a woman at Vietnam Veteran Wives, the one who’d told me how to sign Caleb up for disability. It had meant the world just to talk to someone who understood.

My eyes flew open. Was that what a website could do? Provide a way for people to reach out and share the burden of caregiving? Already a name was coming to mind: Family of a Vet. Because that’s what Caleb, Katie and I were. That’s what we had to offer.

The next day I looked up do-it-yourself instructions and cobbled together the most amateurish website you ever saw. I wrote about my struggles and asked if anyone out there was in a similar situation.

The following day I checked the site. There was a comment! “Thank you so much for sharing your story, Brannan. Our lives sound so similar. I had never heard of a vet center and how they offer combat counseling. Please tell me how to sign up.”

I posted a reply explaining what I’d learned. By the end of that week four more women had visited the site and shared stories and tips of their own. Soon hundreds of military families were coming to the site to trade stories and advice on caring for wounded warriors. I put up my contact information and other military families reached out.

Many of their situations were far worse than mine—husbands lost or suicidal, VA case managers AWOL. Talking together, we often figured out solutions. Sometimes talking was the solution. “I feel so much better,” a vet’s wife said to me after we commiserated about our kids casing rooms for exits and acting up in school.

I felt better too. You’d think listening to caregiving war stories would compound my anxiety. It didn’t. I felt reassured. I wasn’t alone. I was part of a community. And my struggles weren’t for nothing.

Now I could talk to women overwhelmed by caregiving and say with complete honesty, “I know what you’re going through.” I had become what I’d spent so many years looking for—a resource.

Gradually our home life improved. Caleb still had nightmares and mood swings—and so did I. But some evenings we made it through an entire dinner without talking about Iraq once. Especially if we were having lasagna, Caleb’s favorite, which Katie liked to help me make.

Caleb got a service dog, a German shepherd named Shilo, who’s trained to bark or put her paws on Caleb’s chest when she senses something about to trigger a PTSD episode. Shilo has been nothing short of a miracle. She’s Caleb’s, of course, but she often works “extra shifts” to help me too.

Caleb got involved with our local chapter of Rolling Thunder, the vets’ organization dedicated to raising awareness about POWs and MIAs. Recently we took a big family trip to the annual convention in Washington, D.C. It was exhausting, but we made it. And Caleb met a lot of other guys with stories like his.

The more stories he hears, and the more he shares his, the more self-assured he becomes. The love of my life has a long way to go. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But things are definitely getting better. Family of a Vet is a registered nonprofit now. We raise money to help veterans and their caregivers get the services they need.

I even signed up for a VA program that pays caregivers of disabled vets for their work. It’s the first of its kind—and so far only open to caregivers of vets who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I hope it’s going to expand.

One evening, I was in the laundry room sorting clothes while simultaneously planning Katie’s lunch and Caleb’s meds for the next day. Suddenly Caleb came up behind me. For an instant I flinched—old reflexes. But all he did was take me in his arms and start dancing me around the cramped room.

I often think back to the night I got the idea for Family of a Vet. I know that that was no random idea. It was an answer to prayer. In meeting other families online, in helping them, my struggles have become a source of strength.

Caregiving is a battle. It can give you PTSD. But we don’t fight that battle alone. God gives us one another. And in that gift, he gives us himself.

Adventure Awaits

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Julie Lavender

This was all David’s fault. David, my longtime boyfriend. I mean, my ex-boyfriend. I had been so sure that we were soul mates, destined to spend the rest of our lives together.

David and I had met in high school and dated all through college and graduate school at Georgia Southern University. We were two months away from graduation when he took me out to dinner and popped the question.

Only it was the wrong question.

That’s why I was 3,000 feet in the air, in a small propeller plane, crawling toward the open door. Wind whipped at my face and my oversized red jumpsuit. I sat, dangling my legs out the door the way I’d practiced, and looked down carefully. Very, very carefully. Everything on the ground seemed so far away. The grassy field where I was supposed to land was the size of a pea.

“Ready?” the jumpmaster shouted over the engine noise.

Ready? Not me!

I wasn’t an adventurer, a risk taker, a daredevil. I was a homebody, a planner. I knew what I wanted out of life. And things had been going exactly as I’d mapped out. David and I had been together for six years. We were in love.

The next step was obvious. After we finished our master’s degrees—entomology for him, early childhood education for me—we would get married and settle down in our hometown of Statesboro. I’d teach at the elementary school I’d attended as a kid. David would find a good job too. Then we’d start a family.

So when David took my hand at dinner and looked deep into my eyes, naturally I thought he was going to ask me to marry him.

But that wasn’t what he asked.

“Julie, there are no jobs in my major around here. I’m going to become a Navy entomologist,” he said. “That means moving. Maybe across the country, maybe even around the world. You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

I couldn’t leave Statesboro! Everyone and everything God had blessed me with was here, not on the other side of the world. Just the thought of being uprooted made me panicky. “This is the only place I have ever called home,” I told him. “I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

“Statesboro will always be home for me too, but I have to go where my job takes me,” David said. “I love you, Julie. Please think about coming with me.”

I burst into tears. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

David shook his head, looking as miserable as I felt. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” he said. “It’s only going to hurt worse when I ship out.”

Six years together, and just like that, it was over. I would have hidden away at home, nursing my broken heart and filling out my teaching application. But my best friend, Debbie, had other ideas.

She called me one day with such excitement in her voice that the phone almost levitated.

“Guess what, Julie?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, just rushed ahead in typical Debbie fashion. “I signed us up to go parachuting!”

“You what?”

“You need to get out. This will be the perfect thing to get your mind off your breakup,” she said. “We’re going to jump out of a plane. Next week. I already paid for it.”

“I can’t jump out of a plane,” I protested. “What if I break my leg? Or end up paralyzed?”

“Will you stop worrying and do something wild for once in your life?” Debbie asked. “Come on, it’ll be fun! Just imagine it—floating, the sky all around you….”

She kept talking about how cool parachuting would be.

I tuned out, my gaze wandering around my bedroom. Photos of David and me covered the walls and the top of my dresser, going all the way back to our first big date, the homecoming dance our junior year of high school.

In the corner stood the three-foot-tall stuffed dog he’d won for me on a church trip to Six Flags. The pink Izod sweater he’d given me on our first Christmas as a couple hung over the back of a chair. I’d worn it to tatters but I couldn’t bear to toss it.

Everywhere I looked, there was something that reminded me of David, and how our lives were intertwined. David and I were so different, it was a wonder that we came to be attracted to each other at all.

He was the son of academics, I was a farmer’s daughter. His family belonged to the country club, mine was just country. He was Methodist, I was Baptist. We didn’t meet until eleventh grade, when we ended up in the same chemistry class and discovered we had more than a little chemistry of our own.

Of course I had noticed the hunky guy with the adorable smile, but I didn’t think that he had taken any notice of me. Then, one afternoon in class, he saw that the laces on my tennis shoes were undone. “Let me tie those for you,” he said, and proceeded to get down on bended knee. My shoes were so cheap and old that when he pulled on the laces, they broke right off.

The world looked so different from
up here. So much bigger and more
spectacular. So…inviting. Was
this what God wanted me to see?

Not that I cared. The class hunk was flirting with me!

“Julie, you there?” Debbie said.

“Yes.”

“Yes, you’re there, or yes, you’ll jump with me?”

Maybe I did need to do something wild. “Both…I guess.”

A week later, Debbie and I were at jump school. We practiced how to depart the plane, how to deploy the chute and steer it, how to land safely, what to do in case of emergency. I was intrigued by something else the instructor told us. “The word parachute is French,” he said. “Para means ‘shield’ and chute means ‘fall.’ A parachute does exactly what its name says. It shields you from a fall.”

That made me think of one of my favorite verses, Psalm 119:114: “You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.” Why hadn’t God shielded me from heartbreak? He knew I was a small-town girl. Why did he let me fall in love with a Navy man who wanted to see the world? Was it God’s fault, not David’s, that I was about to jump out of a plane?

All those questions, and more, ran through my mind as I sat, my legs dangling out the open door. What if I let go too early? What if my parachute lines got tangled? What if something else went wrong, something I hadn’t even thought of?

The jumpmaster shouted again. “Ready now?”

Not really, but Debbie would never let me hear the end of it if I backed out. I felt behind me, checking just one more time that the parachute was in my pack.

I grabbed the strut—the part holding the wing in place—firmly with both hands. The metal was cold. I inched toward the drop marks—two pieces of tape on the strut that showed where I was supposed to hold on before releasing my grip.

There. The drop marks.

“Go!” the jumpmaster commanded.

Good thing the roar of the propeller drowned out the pounding of my heart. I took a deep breath and let go. Of the strut, of safety, of all reason.

I went plummeting through the air. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, I counted. I reached for the rip cord and pulled. My body jerked upward. I glanced over my shoulder. My chute billowed reassuringly and hovered over me, easing my descent.

For the first time since I’d gotten into the plane, my heartbeat slowed back down to normal. I tugged on the toggles, my brakes, and steered toward the landing spot.

The sky was robin’s egg blue, with only a few wisps of clouds in the distance. Stretching below were grassy fields like patchwork stitched together by roads and fencerows. A ribbon of silver—a stream—meandered through the trees and found its way to a larger body of water.

The world looked so different from up here. So much bigger and more spectacular. So…inviting. Was this what God wanted me to see? That falling in love meant expanding my horizons, opening my heart and my imagination to a world beyond the little patch that I knew? Yes, he would shield me from harm, but not from experiences meant to help me grow.

The ground rushed closer. I pulled on the toggles and got into position for landing. My feet touched the earth. I rolled the way we’d practiced, got to my knees and stood, feeling triumphant. Debbie had landed too. She ran toward me, grinning.

“So, are you handing in that application to teach at your old school?” she asked me.

“Nah,” I said. “I’m going to call David.”

Guess what? David and I got back together and got married. More than 25 years later, we live in Statesboro. But only after moving all over the country and traveling all over the world, courtesy of David’s career. Like the Navy slogan says, “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”

Our marriage has been an adventure too, the most wonderful kind, where love led the way.

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The world looked so different from
up here. So much bigger and more
spectacular. So…inviting. Was
this what God wanted me to see?

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The world looked so different from up here. So much bigger and more spectacular. So…inviting. Was this what God wanted me to see?

The world looked so different from
up here. So much bigger and more
spectacular. So…inviting. Was
this what God wanted me to see?