Page 96 – Guideposts Articles

A Burden to Share

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Jan Bono

I grabbed the railing and hoisted myself up three steps to the community hall. Gasping for breath, I lumbered into a room where a dozen people sat in folding chairs. One was empty, but I figured it would collapse under my weight.

“Have a seat here,” said a large woman on the sofa along the wall. People moved over to make room for me. Plenty of room.

I was 45 years old, five foot six—and weighed 396 pounds. The only clothes that fit me were size 60 blouses and voluminous elastic-waist pants. My shoes all had Velcro straps; I couldn’t reach my feet to tie laces.

I had recently bought a new full-size car because it was the only one whose steering wheel I could fit behind. I was miserable. Yet I couldn’t admit it to anyone. I couldn’t even talk about it.

The meeting started right on time. People introduced themselves and told why they were there, how many pounds they’d lost and what they’d eaten that week. Then it was my turn. I forced out the words.

“I’m Sylvia,” I said. “This is my first time at a support group. I don’t really have anything else to say.”

My name wasn’t Sylvia, but I was too ashamed to let anyone know who I really was. Besides, I was used to keeping secrets. I was always telling people that I was trying to lose weight.

“It’s not my fault that nothing works,” I declared. What I wouldn’t admit was that my life was devoted to eating on the sly.

As far back as I can remember I loved to sneak. Mom made big batches of chocolate-chip cookies for our family of six and stored them in bags in the freezer. I’d take a bunch and hide them in my room.

Whatever was bothering me, however happy or sad or bored I felt, gorging myself always helped, as if I could fill up a sense of emptiness inside. Even when I was a child my eating was dishonest.

Later in college, studying for exams, I’d devour my way through rolls of raw cookie dough. Or polish off a bag of chips and then start in on the candy bars I’d stashed in the back of my desk drawer. I hid food like an alcoholic hides booze.

Marriage didn’t help me cope any better with my problem. When I went through a painful divorce, my weight crept up … 200, 250, 300 pounds. Only food could fill the void.

I taught middle-school English and social studies, and I hated overhearing kids mutter “fatso” and “whale” behind my back. I slipped deeper into depression, which was worsened by failed diets and bouts of overeating. Finally, I started counseling sessions with a therapist in the spring of 1999.

“Do you watch what you eat?” my counselor asked in our first session. “Yes,” I said. Actually, I was watching it go into my mouth. I would stop in a restaurant for a meal, then drive to the other side of town and have another meal—then head home and have a third.

That way, I convinced myself, nobody would know just how much food I was really consuming. “You need to talk to some people who struggle with overeating,” my counselor suggested. “There’s a group that meets every Saturday downtown.”

“I’m not a joiner,” I said. “I can change by myself.”

But the truth was, I refused to imagine my life any other way. I left the counselor and headed for a drive-thru where I picked up several value meals plus extra orders of fries. “For my coworkers,” I lied to the boy who handed me the three bulging bags.

The next week my counselor laid it on the line. “I’m not going to see you anymore,” she said, “unless you attend a group. And you’ve got to go to at least twelve meetings.”

That’s why I was sitting on the sofa at the support group, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. “I’ve had some bad moments this week,” the woman next to me announced, “but with God’s help I managed to keep track of my calories and eat three sensible meals a day.”

God’s help? I was sure God couldn’t help me. “I was feeling down,” a man said, “but I realized overeating wouldn’t change anything, not really. So I called a friend to go to a movie instead.” But food did change things for me. It was my friend.

I clapped along with everyone else, but deep down inside I had a terrible feeling. Not me. These other people might be helped by all this “sharing.” Maybe they were even losing weight. But me? I was a hopeless case.

As soon as people realized my secret, they would turn away. Even these folks. Especially these folks, who certainly didn’t need a loser like me dragging them down. And all this talk of God. What would God want with someone like me?

I left the meeting and drove straight to the grocery store. On the way home I wedged a pint of Ben & Jerry’s between my knees so I could eat as I drove.

“I went to the meeting,” I told my counselor.

“Did you talk?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t exactly lying, but I wasn’t being honest either. All I’d promised was to attend 12 meetings. The weeks went by, and the most I ever said to the group on Saturday morning was “My name is Sylvia” and “I don’t feel like talking today.”

The eleventh Saturday approached. I was nearly home free. That Friday in school I had lunch with the other teachers and made a production of having only half a turkey hero.

“I’ll eat the rest for lunch tomorrow,” I announced, thrusting it back in its brown bag. Easier to finish it off between classes in my room when no one was looking.

I headed down the hall for class, moving slowly through the student throng. “Moooo …” came the taunt of some boys behind me. The sound seemed to echo in the hall. I pretended I hadn’t heard.

An image stormed through my mind of me sharing this ugly humiliation with my support group. I blotted it out. I could never talk about something like this, never bare my soul. I thought of the sandwich in my bag and how soon I could get to it.

Saturday morning the leader said, “Today we’ll talk about hope.” Hope? Vaguely I heard the others talking. Round the circle they went. Then it was my turn. Waves of despair I’d been suppressing for years surged up and nearly took my breath away. In a flash it all came pouring out.

“I don’t have any hope,” I began. “I can’t even remember what hope feels like.” I blinked frantically to keep back tears. Go on, a voice inside me said. Go on. Somehow I knew I needed to do this, to accept, acknowledge and feel the pain.

I grabbed a tissue and continued. “I have no hope of ever being a normal size again. I have no hope at all. …” I was shaking. I started to sob so hard I couldn’t say another word. I motioned for the next person to go ahead and take her turn.

The meeting ended. I dodged the hugs and headed to my car. I drove out in a spray of gravel. I’m never going back. I’ve made a fool of myself. There is no hope for me. God, even if you are listening, you’re wasting your time.

On the way to the grocery store I stopped at the post office to pick up my mail, a little surprised that anything would get between me and a meal. Among the bills and catalogs was a thick envelope from a friend I’d taught with but hadn’t heard from in months.

Inside was a pretty card on which my friend had written: “Here’s something for you to hold on to.”

I pulled the tape off the small package she’d enclosed. A flat polished rock of white-and-purple marble dropped into my hand. Engraved on it was a single word: HOPE. I gripped it tightly in my hand.

I drove home and put the rock in the center of my dining room table. I didn’t want to eat at all, as if that tiny stone were a great rock that stood between me and my compulsion. It was Day One of my recovery.

The following Saturday I went back to the meeting. Number 12. I wasn’t ashamed to speak. I couldn’t afford to be ashamed. “I’m determined to lose this weight,” I said. “With God’s help and your encouragement I know I can do it.”

I had already begun planning. I would set up what worked for me. Only three meals a day, no snacking in between, yogurt instead of ice cream, hold the cheese and mayo and consume half the portion, maybe less.

I couldn’t exercise yet—I could barely even move—but foresaw the day when I would get up every morning for a brisk walk. “I can do it,” I announced. “I’m not alone.”

I took a deep breath. What I’d said was scary, but I’d made my commitment out loud, and I wasn’t backing down. “I have something else to tell you,” I said. “My name’s not Sylvia. My name is Jan. And I’m really glad to be here.”

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

With Reason and Faith

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Chuck Leavell

"If you don’t want to plant a crop on that field down the road, y’all might want to think about planting trees on it.” My brother-in-law, Alton, tossed that out casually and grabbed another of the buttermilk biscuits his sister–my wife, Rose Lane–had made.

Little did I know that his remark would change my life.

The three of us were sitting at their late grandmother’s old pine table having breakfast. Miss Julia had left the family homeplace, a nineteenth-century farmhouse and roughly 1,100 acres in middle Georgia, to Rose Lane.

We lived a few miles away, in Macon, but we’d been staying at the farm to look after things while we grieved for Miss Julia and took stock of our situation.

And really, to try to figure out what we were supposed to do with all this land. Mostly cattle and row crops had been raised on it since Rose Lane’s grandparents bought it. But I wasn’t a farmer. I was a rock musician.

For four years I was the keyboardist for the Allman Brothers Band, who maybe more than any other group shaped the southern rock sound (that’s me you hear on the piano on “Ramblin’ Man” and “Jessica”).

When the Brothers temporarily disbanded in 1976, a couple of the guys and I started our own group, Sea Level. We toured extensively and made five albums, but in 1981 we broke up too.

Now I was between jobs, wondering what my next gig would be. A musician’s life is an uncertain one, but the Good Lord had always provided for me. I fell in love with music at the age of six. I’d listen to my mom pick out a melody on our piano, then play it back for her by ear.

She taught me that more important than the notes being played are the feelings being expressed. “What would it sound like if you were upset?” she’d ask. And I’d rumble something on the low keys. It gave me the shivers in the best way, like hearing everyone sing at church.

I discovered another love around that same time. My family lived in the country outside Montgomery, Alabama, and I felt a close connection to the land. There were woods to explore, horses to ride, a creek to wade in.

I started my first band, the Misfitz, at 13 after my family moved to Tuscaloosa. We practiced in my parents’ living room and played the YMCA every Friday night. At 17, I took off for Macon, Georgia, the birthplace of southern rock.

Capricorn Records was then an up-and-coming label, so that’s where I went. Behind the desk was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, with an equally beautiful name, Rose Lane White. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and her sparkling hazel eyes.

But would you believe it took me two years to muster up the courage to ask her out? Lucky for me, she accepted. After dating a few months and getting serious, I asked her to tell me about her family.

“We’re country folk,” she said. “My granddaddy was in the timber business. He and my grandmother also farmed, and my parents, my brother and I–we’ve all worked the land.”

Six months after our first date, Rose Lane and I were married. Two years later, our first child, Amy, was born. When we weren’t on tour with the Allman Brothers–we carried Amy from gig to gig–we were making memories with Rose Lane’s family on their land.

Spending our free time there was one thing. But now Miss Julia’s 1,100 acres were our responsibility, and we wanted to do right by her and by the land. So here we were at breakfast, Alton, Rose Lane and I, shooting around ideas.

“Trees?” I asked Alton. “You mean peach trees, or pecans?”

“Orchards need a lot of attention,” he said. “And you’re on the road so much. I mean trees that you grow for long-term forestry–for pulp production, saw timber and other products. Something you wouldn’t have to tend day to day like corn or cotton or cows.”

He looked at Rose Lane. “It would be kind of like reviving some family history.”

That got me thinking. And studying. I read everything I could get my hands on about trees, forestry and land management. I went to seminars. I sought advice from conservation experts.

I studied how to plant, grow, manage and harvest timber in ways that are beneficial for people, wildlife and the environment. The more I learned, the more I saw that one big reason we are here on God’s green earth is to be good stewards of the land.

One day, maybe a month or so into my research, I was playing my grand piano when I looked–really looked–at the instrument that had given me so much joy, as well as a great career. Its unique shape. The contrast of the black and white keys.

I thought about the thousands of hours I’d logged sitting at it, learning all I could. Then it hit me: This wondrous instrument came from that precious, natural and renewable resource–wood.

Of course I knew that. I’d just never given it much thought. The maple case, the spruce in the soundboard, the wooden keys and levers…now I could imagine all the work and care that went into growing those trees, harvesting the timber and crafting the wood.

My beloved piano wouldn’t be here without trees. I wouldn’t be living this wonderful life of mine without trees.

Tree farming? I had to try to make a go of it. Rose Lane and I agreed to make her grandmother’s house our permanent home. And like Alton suggested, we would grow trees on the land.

They would purify the air, filter our streams and rivers, and provide shelter for wildlife. Our trees would be used to make everything from paper to telephone poles.

Rose Lane’s hazel eyes were shining. “I think Miss Julia and Granddaddy would be very proud.” That very day the Rolling Stones called. They were looking for a keyboardist. As I said, the Good Lord provides.

Before I knew it, I was back on tour… with the world’s greatest rock-and-roll band. On breaks, I came home to Rose Lane and our girls (by then we had a second daughter, Ashley) and our tree farm. We named our place Charlane Plantation, a combination of Charles and Rose Lane.

I loved learning about trees, and that love deepened as I nurtured them and watched them grow. In the 32 years since we started Charlane Plantation, we’ve planted more than a half million trees.

I cofounded Mother Nature Network, the most visited independent environmental website in the world. And I’m still touring with the Stones and releasing my own albums.

My friends say I am a tree farmer in my heart and a musician in my soul. They’re right. As passionate as I am about music, sometimes I need a respite from the craziness of rock and roll.

I’ll go for a long walk among my trees. I breathe the air they’ve freshened, listen to the play of the breeze in their leaves and give thanks. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith.”

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

William Styron on Depression

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by William Styron

William Styron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, was struck with depression in 1985. Five years later, at age 65, he wrote about overcoming this “catastrophic soul disease” in his powerful book Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (Random House). We recently spoke to Styron about his experience with depression:

I never thought for a moment it would hit me. I didn’t even know what depression was. It can strike like lightning. The figures show that on average twice as many women are afflicted, but it can hit anyone.

People around the person who suffers from this illness must realize that the patient is going to be incapacitated through a great part of each day. The suffering is so intense that most people who are going through it feel that it’s going to go on forever.

Depression varies from person to person, but it does seem to run in cycles. For many, the worst horror comes in the morning. It prevents one from getting out of bed. Usually it lets up during the latter part of the day.

If people see the pattern they can be far more responsive, patient and protective of the depressed person’s needs.

The illness is treatable, and it is very important to find a professional whom you can talk to. The sufferer almost always has a failure of a sense of future. You cannot conceive of a day in which this pain begins to go away.

It requires an enormous amount of faith in oneself and in the capacity to get well to avoid the worst resolution. Only a small percentage of people–and I have to be blunt about this–kill themselves. That leaves a large majority who are going to get well.

The paradox is that they don’t believe it. They have to be told over and over again. It is essential for anyone who is in the position to deal with the sufferer to constantly assure the person day in and day out that he or she is going to get well.

My wife, Rose, was able to see something horrible was happening to me and was endlessly patient in helping me try to feel better. And I also found help reading chapters from the Bible, like Job. I read the Book of Job a great deal.

I’ve been a writer for a long time and I’ve always had response to my work, but nothing approaching the thousands of letters I’ve received from people all over the world after the publication of Darkness Visible.

Although I wrote the book to get my own experience off my chest, it’s gratifying to learn that it has been of such help to others.

Download your free eBook, Let These Bible Verses Help You: 12 Psalms and Bible Passages to Deepen Your Joy, Happiness, Hope and Faith.

Why You Should Use Your Imagination When You Pray

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Bob Hostetler

I prayed for you today.

I probably don’t know you, but as I started writing this blog post I imagined you clicking on the link. In my mind’s eye I saw the light from your device’s screen illuminate your face as you began to read these lines. The muscles in your face relaxed, little by little, as you scanned the text. You closed your eyes on finishing and began using your imagination to pray for someone or something in your own life.

The imagination is a powerful prayer tool, one that we too often neglect. Eugene Peterson, in his book Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination, refers to “the workings of the imagination as a means of grace,” and says that “an exercised imagination is essential to a full-bodied and full-souled life in Christ.” I agree wholeheartedly and am learning to incorporate imagination more and more into my prayers.

I pray for my two young grandchildren who cope daily with cystic fibrosis. I picture them as teenagers, playing baseball or dancing in a meadow. I see them breathing deeply, their lungs filling with the afternoon air. Their bodies are strong, their every function unimpaired. It’s my prayer for them, as my praying imagination envisions for them a long, vibrant future filled with health and vitality.

I pray for a friend who has endured more than a year of rehabilitation from an operation, gathering strength, yes, but so very slowly. I picture Jesus coming to her in her home, reaching out and touching her. I visualize warmth, light and strength coursing through her body.

Another friend’s life has been shattered by suspicion, accusation and betrayal. I close my eyes and imagine Jesus washing his feet, while so many layers of hurt flake off from his heart and mind, float into the air and disappear.

I hold in my mind the lovely face of my wife, who recently lost her father and was unable to attend his funeral. I sketch a mental picture of Jesus enfolding her in His arms while she weeps. I see her shoulders relax and her burden lift. Eventually, her back straightens, she exhales. She smiles. Nods. He smiles back.

These sorts of prayers heighten and deepen my prayer life. They are truly a means of grace. They make me eager to pray and excite me with the promise of God’s willing answers. I pray, even now as I write this, for you to enjoy a similar experience as the workings of your imagination shape and energize your own prayers.

Why You Should Stop Trying to Be So Productive

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by John Koessler

Excerpted from The Radical Pursuit of Rest: Escaping the Productivity Trap by John Koessler

As I write this, my attention is divided. I am listening for the chime that tells me I have a new email waiting. When I am at a loss for words, I find it hard to reflect at length about what I should say next. It is so much easier to click away from the screen and log onto Facebook. Or else I scan my favorite newsfeed and check out the latest headlines. To be honest, it’s not news. Not really. It’s gossip mostly. Headlines about actors, musicians and late night talk show hosts. I am not especially interested in their stories. But I keep scrolling, cycling past stories I have read more than once. Hoping all the while that something new and interesting will appear. I am not addicted. I am distracted.

Computer technology has not destroyed my ability to concentrate. But it has made it harder. It has also made rest harder to find. Digital technology has turned our world into one where we are never alone and are always on the job. Most of us don’t think it has any effect on our social and emotional well-being. But the digital world is altering the way we view time and schedule our activities. We use our cellphones to track one another. Wherever we go we are accompanied by the constant murmur of distant friends. Even when we turn off the phone some part of us wonders what we have missed.

Digital culture has also broken down the natural boundaries that used to exist between work and rest. Dr. Kimberly Fisher, a research associate at the Center for Time Use Research at Oxford University, observes, “People don’t have as much mental space to relax in a work-free environment. Even if something’s not urgent, you’re expected to be available to sort it out.” The last thing I do before I go to bed at night is check my email. If I have a new message, it’s usually about my job. If I wake up in the middle of the night, my first instinct is to lean over the nightstand to check for new messages.

The answer to this problem is obvious. All I need to do in order to pursue rest is to disconnect from the digital world. Not permanently but perhaps for a time. It is simple. But it is not easy. The prospect of being unplugged from the grid makes me nervous. This is more than the fear of losing access to information. It is a sense of being detached. I am not a digital native, yet even I feel uncomfortable when I turn off the technology. I feel isolated, cut off not only from the technology but from the relationships it represents.

The technology is new but the fear is an old one. It is solitude I dread. And digital culture makes solitude easier to avoid. When Jesus saw that the people planned to make him a king by force, he “withdrew again to a mountain by himself” (Jn 6:15). This was not the first time Jesus did this. Solitude was his regular practice. But I do not quit the crowd so easily. Not only do smartphones, texting and social media enable others to intrude on me at any time and in every location, they greatly increase the likelihood that I will invite such interruptions. I can withdraw to the mountain like Jesus, but I am never really alone. Digital culture is the new background noise. It is the multitude I carry in my pocket. Its incessant chirping intrudes on my most intimate moments and serves as a constant reminder of the waiting crowd. Rest is harder to find in a digital culture because technology has dissolved the two fundamental boundaries that are essential to rest: solitude and silence.

Solitude and Silence

Interruptions were a problem before there was digital technology. Jesus was interrupted too. The crowd intruded on his privacy on more than one occasion. The difference between his experience and ours is that the crowd had to make a serious effort in order to interrupt him. Today they can stay where they are and click their way into our presence. Like Jesus we occasionally need to withdraw from the crowd—especially the virtual crowd. One solution is to turn to habits the church practiced long before the computer age was ever envisioned: the ancient disciplines of solitude and silence.

Solitude is a critical component to our overall spiritual health. Dallas Willard describes the benefit of solitude this way: “The normal course of day-to-day human interactions locks us into patterns of feeling, thought, and action that are geared to a world set against God. Nothing but solitude can allow the development of a freedom from the ingrained behaviors that hinder our integration into God’s order.”

The biblical metaphor for solitude is the wilderness. Moses, David, the prophets, Paul, the disciples and of course Jesus himself all spent time in the wilderness. On the surface, the wilderness seems an unlikely location for rest. After all, the wilderness is not a resort. It is a place of deprivation. While we are in the wilderness we do not have access to our usual conveniences. The wilderness is also a place of disruption. Work must cease and we cannot maintain our ordinary relationships. It is impossible to follow our normal routine there.

This sheds an important light on the experience of rest. We are tempted to think of rest as a kind of indulgence. But in reality the practice of rest often involves a measure of self-denial. Rest requires that we cease our ordinary activities and break away from our daily relationships. When we are at rest we are often unavailable.

When God’s people observed the Sabbath in the wilderness, they could not gather manna. Instead the Lord preserved the extra food they had gathered on the previous day. God’s people were also forbidden from engaging in their ordinary work and were restricted in their movements. But deprivation is not the ultimate goal of rest. The intention was not for the Israelites to go hungry but to recognize that they were being fed by God. They abstained from their normal occupations in order to occupy themselves with something better. Likewise, when we rest in this way we do not cease from all activity; we abstain from one kind of activity in order to engage in another. We deprive ourselves of our ordinary work for a time in order to engage in a higher calling with a better reward. The benefit we receive by leaving our other pursuits behind is that we are refreshed. The ancient command to observe the Sabbath was both a sign and an invitation to enter into the experience of God, who refreshed himself on the seventh day of creation. The pursuit of rest is really the pursuit of God.

John Koessler (DMin, Trinity International University) is chair and professor of pastoral studies at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, where he has served for over 20 years. He is the author of several books, including The Surprising Grace of Disappointment, True Discipleship, God Our Father and A Stranger in the House of God.

Why You Should Make New Friends as an Adult

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Pablo Diaz

While I had many friends growing up, one stood out. His name was Philip and his nickname was Junior. His family lived above our third floor apartment in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Junior was the only boy of five children. On many occasions his parents took us boys to Coney Island beach where we enjoyed swimming and playing in the sand. When home, we loved wrestling on the living room floor and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

When I was having a bad day, he was always there. Although Junior and I don’t see each other as often as we used to, we remain friends. Our relationship reminds me of a quote from author Ally Condie, “Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.”

Many of us have childhood friends who will be forever in our lives, but as we age we must continue to make new friends. As adults we may be more fearful of rejection or of a relationship turning bad, but we must seek out new friendships at work, church, the senior center or other places we spend time. Sometimes it means taking a risk and starting a conversation with a stranger, but we must make the most of opportunities to meet new people.

In life, we all face inevitable changes whether it’s in our health, career, housing or family. That’s when we tend to turn to our friends, family and God. These relationships play important roles in determining how we face obstacles. When life gets hard, we need others to lean on. Start building that support today.

Why Worry When You Can Pray?

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Pablo Diaz

Do you struggle with worry? Many people battle it on a daily basis. Worry means “to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts.” By definition we bring worry upon ourselves.

Worrying takes its toll on both mind and body, cutting off natural energy and effectiveness. The physical and emotional impact varies from person to person. Worrying can lead to restlessness, mood swings and even illness. It has the potential to squeeze the life out of a person and rob them of joy, peace and happiness.

The other morning my daughter called to tell me how she responded to a late night text message from her boss. It became a long discussion with both being at different ends of how to resolve a business matter. The text message turned into a telephone conversation that ultimately led to a worry-filled, sleepless night.

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale offers this wisdom in dealing with worry, “Say to yourself, why worry when you can pray?” In Psalm 34:4, the psalmist writes, “I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears.”

When worry occupies our mind, it is best to seek the Lord in prayer. I find that the more I open up to God about my fears, and talk with Him about my worries and concerns, the more calm I become. His presence gives me peace, as He reassures me that things are going to be alright. Through prayer the burden of worry is lifted.

When we worry, we live with stress. Sleepless nights, eating disorders and physical illness, along with a host of other ailments, become the norm. However, praying to the Lord about our concerns leads to peace, calmness, a clear mind and sound health.

Why worry when we can pray? Instead of letting disturbing and worrisome thoughts occupy our minds, why not talk to God about them? Share how prayer has helped you get through difficult times without anxiety and worry.

Lord, teach us to release our worries to you through prayer. Move us from fearful thoughts to faith in You and Your sovereignty.

Why Water Is So Calming

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Holly Lebowitz Rossi

As children, my sister and I always noticed our mom getting a contented, faraway look as she gazed at the ocean on vacation. We called it “the Enya Effect,” named for the dreamy music of the Irish singer she loved.

But the marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols would call what we’d noticed “Blue Mind,” a phenomenon where being close to water inspires positive emotional states including calm, relaxation, creative thought and more restful sleep.

In his 2015 book by that same name, Nichols presents the science behind Blue Mind, citing studies such as this one, which linked natural or constructed water features with mood improvement and a sense of inner restoration.

Brain chemistry changes around water as well. According to Nichols, water can impact neurotransmitters known to impact mood in a similar way to how they change during meditation. “The best way to handle stress,” he told Psychology Today, “may be to get to the closest beach.”

A river, lake, stream or pond will have the same effect. And if you can’t get away, a soak in the tub can tap into water’s calming properties—or a white noise machine featuring waves, rain or babbling brook. Even an internet search for aquatic photography can steer your mind toward peace and contentment.

And if you really want to enhance your aquatic joy, put on some Enya—I especially recommend “Caribbean Blue.”

Why Time Begins on Opening Day

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

That is the temporal title of one of my favorite books on baseball, by Thomas Boswell the distinguished sportswriter for the Washington Post. Or there’s always the goofy but irresistibly endearing movie It Happens Every Spring starring Ray Milland as a hapless professor who accidentally discovers a substance that makes a baseball repellent to wood and improbably becomes a major league pitching sensation.

“Put me in coach” belts John Fogarty, referring to centerfield and not an airline seat. Has a single sport ever engendered so many books, songs and movies?

Happy Opening Day, everyone! The first pitch is scheduled for 1:10 p.m. Monday in Cincinnati, long the traditional site of Opening Day, though Sunday is technically opening night. What fan’s heart doesn’t leap at the strains of the National Anthem, the thwack of the first pitch—usually a fastball—nailing the catcher’s mitt, the roar of the crowd for the first hometown hit.

Opening Day…it not only celebrates the start of the season, it is a celebration of hope itself. (Maybe it should be called National Hope Day.) Who is more hopeful than a baseball fan? Who has more reason to hope?

For that one magical day, everyone is in first place and anything is possible, even for the most lowly, underpayrolled small-market club in the league. The long season lies ahead, a road rising to the horizon and beyond, and no one knows what prize might lie at its end.

Which is why fans flock to the parks on Opening Day. I fell in love with major league ballparks a long time ago. Almost nothing compares to the first time you walk into one, especially if you’re a kid. It’s like entering another dimension, as if God scooped up a slice of pastoral America and set it down in the urban hearts of the great cities.

And then there is the food. I eat my first hot dog of the year on Opening Day, even if I’m not actually in the ballpark. When I first came to New York and could rarely afford a ticket to Opening Day, I used to take the subway up to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, hit a hot dog vendor and stand outside the great stadium listening to the cheers of the crowd drifting out of the historic gray edifice.

So here we go again, our hopes and prayers poised at the starting line. Everyone take a deep breath….one, two, three: PLAY BALL!

P.S. I’m having a baseball fantasy come true on April 28 when I’ll be throwing out the first pitch and hosting GUIDEPOSTS readers at Inspirational Fan Day at beautiful Fluor Field, home of the minor league Greenville Drive baseball team in Greenville, South Carolina. Later in the summer we’ll be honoring the fan with the most inspirational story.

Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at GUIDEPOSTS.

Why This Former Pathologist Is Going to Seminary

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Dr. Thomas Andrew

For two decades, I worked as what I call an accountant of America’s opioid crisis. From 1997 to 2017, I was the chief medical examiner for the state of New Hampshire. I oversaw autopsies. My department’s job was to determine and officially certify the cause of death.

New Hampshire is a small state. In 1997, the population was almost 1.2 million. (It’s a little more than 1.3 million now.) When I started as chief medical examiner, the department saw roughly 30 to 40 drug-related deaths per year. Then, suddenly, in the early 2000s, after pharmaceutical companies began heavily marketing opioid pain medicines, the number of drug deaths shot up to 200 per year. They kept climbing. By 2015, they were at 439 per year. Last year, 487 people in New Hampshire died from drug-related causes. That’s more than one drug-related death per day. A one thousand percent increase in two decades. One thousand percent!

I learned to recognize the telltale signs of opioid abuse. Needle marks. Bruising in areas associated with injection. Inflamed or damaged sinuses from snorting drugs. Signs of respiratory failure—most overdose victims die from lack of oxygen to the brain.

I did my job with professionalism and medical objectivity. But the work took its toll. I’m a Christian, strongly influenced by my upbringing and youth spent as a Boy Scout. I believe in serving others. Examining the bodies of overdose victims, I often felt helpless. I could determine how people died. I couldn’t stop the deaths from happening.

I told myself when I took over my department that I would stay in the job no more than 20 years. In my view, public servants shouldn’t consider their jobs lifetime appointments. Organizations need new leadership to change and grow. I knew I would retire in 2017.

What I didn’t know is what I’d do next. After much thinking and praying, I enrolled in seminary, intending to become a Methodist chaplain and work with young people. What explains such an unexpected turn? I’d spent my career investigating death. Turns out, the job was preparation for something else—steering people toward life. Growing up, I was blessed by several influential mentors.

My parents were examples of strong faith and devotion to family. The minister at our Presbyterian church—a tall, authoritative, deep-voiced Calvinist named Reverend Nicholson—taught me Scripture and the basics of Christian life. Reverend Baer, the minister at the Methodist church that hosted my Boy Scout troop, showed me that a pastor can be young and cool as well as spiritually grounded. He even let me give the sermon at his church on Scouting Sunday when I was 14.

There was my beloved Boy Scout troop leader, Alva Butt, whose example also guides me today. Alvie, as we called him, wasn’t the kind of youth leader who tries to impress kids with his hipness or his skills. He was sort of goofy, just like us boys. He never raised his voice. Never got angry—no mean feat when you’re shepherding a dozen or so teen and preteen boys through the wilderness. And yet we always knew who was in charge. And we always knew how Alvie wanted us to behave—with kindness, courtesy and trustworthiness, according to the Scout Law. Alvie inspired us to be our best selves.

I considered going into ministry or youth leadership myself as I left for college. But I was a science nerd at heart, and medical school captured my interest. I began my medical career as a pediatrician, working with kids. The job was rewarding—and frustrating. Time with patients was limited. There were endless hassles with insurance.

I’m a methodical person. I try to look at issues from all sides. I could not do that in the rush of primary care, so I went back to school, studied anatomical pathology and became a forensic pathologist under the wing of my most influential mentor, Dr. Charles Hirsch. I worked in three medical examiner branch offices in New York City before coming to New Hampshire.

I love pathology. It’s like detective work. Clues are everywhere: on the skin, in the organs, in the blood. A pathologist must be thorough, ruling out nothing. It can take a long time to determine a definitive cause of death.

Opioid drugs stimulate the release of naturally occurring mood-regulating chemicals in the brain. The drugs do this by attaching to neural receptors, flooding the brain and altering perceptions and responses. One receptor that opioids attach to is the mechanism regulating breathing. The opioids slow breathing, part of their overall depressive effect. Take too much and breathing will slow until the brain is starved of oxygen—hypoxia. Unless the drug user is revived by an opioid-reversing medication such as naloxone, he or she will die of asphyxiation. That’s why so many overdose victims turn blue.

I saw few such cases when I started work in 1997. After the turn of the century, the number began to increase. I didn’t understand why at first. Then I began reading news stories about OxyContin, a new long-acting opioid pain medication being marketed to primary care physicians. The medication was said to be nonaddictive. But I was seeing clear signs of addiction and abuse. The overdose victims I examined had large amounts of opioids in their blood, far more than would be expected if they’d taken the drug as directed.

As regulators began cracking down on prescribing procedures, I saw a growing number of heroin overdoses. Unable to get pills, users were switching to powerful street drugs in the opioid category.

“If we keep going like this, overdose deaths are going to outnumber traffic deaths in New Hampshire,” I told a reporter in 2004. The comment—a heartfelt expression of alarm—went viral. People were shocked, incredulous. A high-ranking federal drug official even traveled to New Hampshire to meet with me and learn more. No one could believe the situation was that bad.

The very next year, it happened: More people in my state died of overdoses than in traffic accidents. Was this just a New Hampshire phenomenon? No. The same became true for all of the United States in 2009. In 2016 alone, the last year for which statistics are available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 63,632 Americans died from drug overdoses. That’s 5,000 more than the number of soldiers killed throughout the entire Vietnam War.

Imagine if the number of traffic deaths skyrocketed by one thousand percent in 20 years. In fact, in 2014, 10,000 fewer people were killed in traffic accidents than in 1997. American car manufacturing is highly regulated by government safety standards, roads are heavily policed and drivers are subject to traffic laws. Our nation has not yet committed to a similar solution for the opioid crisis.

Watching overdose victims appear in my lab at an ever-rising rate, I grew increasingly frustrated. Yes, I could recognize the signs of an overdose, examine victims and arrive at a carefully determined cause of death. But by the time people came into my care, it was too late. They’d already paid the awful price of addiction. I was the cleanup crew.

I did my best, though not always successfully, to hide my stress from my kids. I unburdened myself to my wife. And to God in prayer. That faith I learned from my mentors growing up? I leaned heavily on it as my work grew more challenging. Approaching retirement, I became increasingly convinced I didn’t want to end my working life as an accountant of death. I wanted to prevent people from ending up in the forensic lab. I wanted to address the spiritual dimension of the crisis, reaching kids before drugs did.

How could I do that? I thought back to Alvie. How his gentle but unwavering leadership, his dedication to us boys and his selfless example of service had inspired me. Could I do the same for kids now? New Hampshire has one of the lowest churchgoing rates in the U.S. If I wanted to reach kids with a spiritual message I would have to go to seminary—then work in an organization outside the church. Like Scouts.

That became my plan.

I retired in 2017. That year, New Hampshire had the nation’s highest overdose rate after West Virginia and Ohio. My successor in the forensic pathology office has been confronted by so many overdose deaths, her staff is barely able to keep up with the workload. The arrival on the black market of fentanyl—a potent and deadly synthetic opioid marketed and sold like heroin—has deepened the crisis.

I enrolled in a seminary in Dayton, Ohio, where I grew up. I take some online classes and commute to Dayton to be on campus. I’ve completed nearly one year of studies. It feels strange to be writing exegesis essays on biblical prophets after all my years investigating death in a forensic lab.

I’m focused on life now. For so many years, I watched America’s drug crisis unfold before my eyes. For just as long, I have believed that this crisis does not have to get the better of us.

The Boy Scout Oath says, “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty… to help other people at all times.” If we live by that, if we give this crisis the attention it deserves, reaching out with love and compassion for those caught in the web of substance abuse and their families, we can make progress. The number of deaths doesn’t have to rise inexorably. The tragedy of addiction doesn’t have to claim a generation.

I was an accountant of death. I’m ready now to help prevent it.

4 Tips to Help Protect Your Kids from Drugs and Alcohol

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Why the Alcoholics Anonymous Co-Founder’s Wife Founded Al-Anon

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by William Borchert

Bill & Lois Wilson, Copyright Stepping Stones Foundation. Property of the archive of Stepping Stones–Historic Home of Bill & Lois Wilson, Katonah, NY. Permission required for further use. http://www.steppingstones.org

I nudged my car up a narrow drive through trees. Sunlight on the leaves made a riot of shadows. It was beautiful, but I was impatient. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be at home, working on a new screenplay I was writing. Instead, my wife, Bernadette, had dragged me to a picnic at her friend Lois Wilson’s house. Lois was the widow of Bill Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I knew about AA—I had started my career in newspapers and met plenty of hard-drinking reporters whose lives were saved by the organization and its 12-step program of recovery. And, ever since Bernadette had met Lois through some mutual friends, she had been telling me what a kind and fascinating woman she was. But not even learning that Lois had founded Al-Anon, the 12-step support group for loved ones of alcoholics, could make me glad to give up a precious weekend day. My business partners and I had recently produced the 1973 hit movie “Serpico,” starring Al Pacino. We were working feverishly on a follow-up, chasing screenplays, talent and money. There was little time for anything else. What am I doing here? We’ll just shake hands and leave early, I thought.

The picnic was at Stepping Stones, Bill and Lois’s cedar-shingle house on an eight-acre plot of woodland in New York’s Westchester County. Lois held the picnic every year, an open invitation for recovering alcoholics and their families to spend a day relaxing in the warm June sun. When Bernadette and I reached the top of Lois’s drive, we saw a wide lawn barely dotted with people spreading blankets. We were early. More time squandered.

We got out, and I breathed the rich, dusky smell of lilacs. A stream meandered past and disappeared into trees. Bernadette led me across the lawn to a screened porch at the back of the house. There, surrounded by a few friends, sat an elderly lady in slacks and a silk blouse. When she saw Bernadette, she rose and embraced her.

“Lois, this is my husband, Bill.”

Lois, who, at age 82, was no more than five feet tall, looked up at me with glistening, grayish-blue eyes and gripped my hand firmly. “It’s wonderful to meet you,” she said in a lively, crackling voice. I stammered out a reply, suddenly feeling very foolish. She was so open, so welcoming. She told me how pleased she was that I had come, then invited me to go with a friend of hers named Penny on a tour of the house. In moments I was mounting a creaky spiral staircase and entering a long, high-ceilinged room crammed with photographs, plaques, an old Moviola machine and a desk where, Penny told me, Lois had laid the groundwork for Al-Anon by sending letters to the wives of alcoholics in her husband’s support groups.

As I made my way through the room, poring over photographs of Bill and Lois, and reading letters from luminaries around the world thanking them for their work, my eyes widened in surprise. I clicked on the Moviola and felt my own movie gears whir. The founding of AA—what a film that would make! And all the material is right here at my fingertips. I wonder if Lois will give me permission?

When Penny and I returned to the porch, the lawn outside was packed with families eating, laughing and forming a line around the house to spend a few moments with Lois. I watched her greet each person as if he or she were her only guest. They kissed her cheeks, gave her gifts and told her stories of recovery and redemption. “I’m so glad you could come,” she replied. “And it’s wonderful to hear what AA did for you.”

Bernadette and I stayed most of the afternoon. When we left, I asked Lois if I could meet with her again to talk about my movie idea.

“Of course,” she said.

The following Thursday afternoon, Lois and I sat in her living room, drinking tea. I turned on a tape recorder, and she began to tell the story of herself and Bill. They had married just before he shipped off to fight in World War I. She still had a picture of him in his second lieutenant’s uniform, and I could see why she spoke of him so reverently. He was handsome, with a penetrating look, and she said that even at that young age, she believed he would do great things. When he returned from the war, he’d made a great deal of money working in finance on Wall Street, and he had rented an elegant apartment in Brooklyn Heights, just across the East River from Manhattan’s thrusting skyline.

He’d also, however, begun drinking. Not enough, at first, to affect his work. But enough to eventually snowball into a powerful addiction. Soon, he was arriving at the office hung over, insulting clients and cutting out early to drink. He would disappear for days into underground speakeasies, surfacing only when he ran out of money. Lois, frantic, would be left to nurse him back to health. After the stock market crash of 1929, he lost his job and the apartment, and he and Lois crammed their belongings into her father’s house on Brooklyn’s Clinton Street. Only when Bill’s drinking landed him in the hospital for the fourth time did he reach out to a God he had never believed in and realize that faith and fellowship were his only hope.

“He founded AA after meeting a fellow alcoholic named Dr. Bob Smith, on a trip to Akron,” Lois told me. “When he got back to New York, he began a support group at our house. Though, if you had seen it back then, you wouldn’t have called it that. It was mostly just Bill going to the Bowery and pulling drunks out of the gutter to pray with them and talk about their addiction. They weren’t exactly a welcome sight. But all I could think was, they were keeping Bill sober. So I didn’t complain that he wasn’t working, and that they weren’t paying him anything for his help. I got a job at Macy’s and did the cooking and cleaning at night.”

It was a precarious life, made more so when Lois’s dad died, leaving Lois and Bill to pay the mortgage on the house. Bill’s AA group was growing, but Lois’s job wasn’t enough to make payments. One day, a foreclosure-warning letter arrived from the bank. Lois showed it to Bill as he got dressed for a meeting downstairs.

“We need to talk about this,” she said.

“Not now, sweetheart,” Bill answered.

“But, Bill, we’re going to lose the house!” she said.

“Well, these men are waiting for me,” Bill said. And he dashed downstairs.

“At that moment, I realized something that sounds very strange,” Lois told me. “Bill’s AA groups were working wonders. But they were becoming like his drinking—consuming him. Not even sobriety could curb the effects of alcoholism! I felt so helpless, so trapped by this spiral of addiction, that I stomped out to the front porch to get some air. I was all set to yell at the trees when I happened to notice a long row of cars parked in front of the house. I peered through the car windows and saw that, sitting in each car, was the wife of one of the men at Bill’s meeting. They had driven their husbands there and parked outside to make sure they stayed. They were that desperate.”

“That’s who I need to talk to, I thought. They’ll understand. And I ran to the street and asked the women into the kitchen for coffee. As soon as I told them how mad I was at Bill, even though he was sober, they all cried out that they were mad at their husbands! Well, I knew right then that we wives, and anyone else related to an alcoholic, were sick and needed our own support group. And soon after that, Al-Anon began.”

Lois and I had many more conversations like that—several years’ worth, in fact. She told me much about her and Bill’s life, but mostly I paid attention to the parts about Bill. That information was what I needed for the television movie My Name is Bill W., which premiered in 1989, starring James Woods as Bill and JoBeth Williams as Lois. The movie was a hit, garnering seven Emmy Award nominations.

But Lois didn’t live to see it. She died in 1988 at age 97. I moved onto other projects and stowed the tapes of our interviews deep in a box.

More than a decade later, Bernadette and I moved to South Carolina. I was unpacking my office when I came across a stack of tapes buried beneath some papers. I took one out. It was wrapped in a green band, which I had used to mark Lois’s interviews.

A strange feeling came over me. I inserted the tape into a stereo I keep in the office and pressed play. Lois’s vivid, crackling laughter filled the room.

Then her voice came in, in that no-nonsense New England twang. “If your husband or wife gets cancer or some other terrible illness, do you walk out on them? Of course not. Well, alcoholism is a disease, and I couldn’t walk out on it.”

Bernadette came in. “Is that Lois?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said, putting a hand to my face.

“How wonderful that you still have those tapes,” Bernadette said. “We should listen to them again.”

Yes, I thought. Listen. Did I ever really listen to Lois? I remembered not even wanting to meet her, driving grudgingly to her house under a warm June sun. What if I had never pulled up that narrow drive? Never stepped onto that screened porch and seen her welcoming eyes? I would never have made my movie. But, more important, I would never have met the woman who changed the way we think about alcoholism.

Lois had made me promise to preserve her anonymity in Al-Anon. But now that she had died, I realized that the world needed to know just how profound her insight and contribution had been. That afternoon on her porch, seeing those wives lined up in their cars, Lois didn’t just find a support group. She learned the true, terrible reach of alcoholism. The way it affects whole families, anyone connected to an alcoholic. Without her support of Bill, there would have been no Alcoholics Anonymous. But without her recognition of her own need for healing, millions would still be battling a disease they didn’t even know had hurt them.

I looked at Bernadette. “I think I need to write a book about Lois,” I said.

Bernadette grew quiet. “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “When will you start?”

I looked at the tapes. “Right away,” I said. “I’ve got everything I need.”

In fact, I had been led here years before, not knowing that that day when I first visited Stepping Stones, a plan had already been set in motion.

This story first appeared in the January 2007 issue of Guideposts magazine.

UPDATE: William Borchert wrote the script for his film My Name is Bill W., based on the true story of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson. He also published the book about Bill Wilson’s wife, Lois, called The Lois Wilson Story: When Love is Not Enough.

Photo courtesy of Stepping Stones–Historic Home of Bill & Lois Wilson, Katonah, NY, http://www.steppingstones.org

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