Table of contents for Oct/Nov 2025 in Guideposts

In the 10 years that I have shared my life with my golden retriever, Gracie, she has been a constant blessing. She’s helped me learn lessons in humility (a work in progress), forgiveness, acceptance, honesty, resilience. She’s taught me to rest when I’m tired (nap time is anytime!) and to play every day (time for a new tug toy). When my wife, Julee, died, we grieved together. Our lives are intertwined. A friend told me about the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy, located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, only a few miles from our house. I was surprised I hadn’t known of it. “They have an outdoor blessing of the animals on October 4, the feast of Saint Francis,” she said. Fittingly, we gathered by a statue of Saint Francis of…

A QUIET THANKS I smiled and handed the older gentleman a tray with a sandwich and a bowl of soup, noting that his hat identified him as a Vietnam veteran. My husband, Alan, and I volunteered at a soup kitchen, and we were saddened to see how many of the people needing help had served our country in the military. The man took his food and sat at a table by himself. Alan and I have learned that not all veterans want to talk about their military service, but we wanted to be available to anyone who did. After we’d finished serving food to everyone in line, we went out to the tables. We checked on the Vietnam veteran, asking if he wanted anything else to eat. “Thank you for…

One morning during my daily devotions, I found myself singing a particular scripture over and over: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” Was there some kind of message for me in this verse from Isaiah 41? As I pondered its words, I got the strongest sense that God was telling me something was going to happen and that I didn’t have to be afraid. That afternoon, a friend of our 21-year-old daughter, Angie, called from Portland, Oregon, to tell us that Angie had been feeling extremely ill all day. Our daughter had recently moved to Portland, a 13-hour drive…

Sitting on my deck enjoying the September breeze, I chatted on the phone with my best friend, Kris, who lived a couple hours away in Maryland. We texted frequently but tried to talk every so often to keep our friendship strong across the miles. Out of the blue, she asked, “What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?” An innocuous question, but I froze, my shoulders tensing. I knew exactly what I would be doing come Turkey Day. That was the problem. “We haven’t really talked about it,” I said. There was nothing to discuss. I would be hosting, as I did every year for my extended family. “It’s just us this year,” Kris said. “Why don’t you, Matt and the girls come spend the day with us? It’s been too…

My mother’s ringtone awakened me in the middle of the January night. I fumbled for my phone and answered to Mom’s panicked voice. “Jeannie, come quick. Something’s wrong with your father.” “Did you call 911?” I asked. “We’re at the emergency room now. Hurry!” I was already grabbing a pair of jeans. “I’ll be right there.” My teenage daughter, Lindsay, came to my bedroom. The phone must have woken her. “What’s wrong?” “I have to go. Your grandfather’s in the ER.” “I’ll come too,” Lindsay said. Dad was 87 and a lifelong diabetic. It was probably another episode of out-of-control blood sugar. He’s tough, I told myself as we sped to the hospital. He had never missed a day of work in his 43 years at the telephone company. Not…

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.—ROMANS 5:3–5 (ESV) I was in the throes of filling out financial aid forms with my younger son, Henry. My dining table was covered with old tax records, and a lot had changed on the online form since we last filled it out with my older son. On top of that, the site kept crashing. The deadline was looming, so there was no option but to keep going. I looked out the window. A host of sparrows was on the lawn. The winter had been strange.…

Zoom meetings had become routine by 2020, but the one I was preparing for now was anything but ordinary. It was hard to believe it was even happening. Checking to make sure my internet connection was stable, I remembered the day I’d received an email from a complete stranger: “My name is Twighla Allen,” the message had read. “On behalf of my grandfather, I’m looking for an old Army friend of his. His name is Clair Avery. He served in Korea between February and October 1952. I’m hoping I’ve found the right family.” She had. That Army friend turned out to be my late father, Jack Flood. Twighla had gotten his name from a page torn from an old address book that her grandfather had saved for more than 50…

There’s no doubt that retired racehorse Duke and the other rescued animals of Runaway Farm (page 60) helped Christopher Leighton recover from heart surgery. Now Chris finds joy in watching visitors interact with them. “Animals have such a natural healing effect,” he says. “When people tell us they come here to meet the horses, pigs or goats, but they leave feeling more at peace, it’s just remarkable to me.” Although the farm isn’t open to the public, Chris and his wife, Jen, set aside certain days to host fundraising events and welcome volunteers and visitors from area schools and the local chapter of The Arc, an organization that serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “We recently had a nonverbal student use her voice for the first time when…

“Sometimes grace is louder than outrage. Sometimes you change the world not by kicking through the front door, but by holding it open for the next person.”AL ROKER, Today show cohost, from the commencement address he gave to Siena College’s class of 2025 “If you can take something that feels as mundane as cooking every evening and find the sacred tucked into that, then you’re going to find it when you do the laundry, when you’re driving to work, when you’re dealing with a difficult situation.”AARTI SEQUEIRA, chef and TV personality “Life is hard—of course it is. Things go wrong. People can be awful to us, or good ones get taken. Or both. And yet how precious it is, this gift of days we’re given.”SUZY WELCH, writer, professor and speaker “Christ’s…

It was May 6, 2018, more than a month after my heart attack, and I was still in the hospital in Atlanta, barely able to sit up in bed. At 45, I felt as helpless as a baby. The medicines used to revive me had sent my immune system, already compromised by lupus and Raynaud’s syndrome, into a frenzy, leaving me partially paralyzed from the waist down. Now an infection was spreading through my legs. My husband, CJ, and my parents had kept vigil over me this entire time. But all their prayers and my own had gotten me no closer to going home. The doctor came into my room and got right to the point. “The infection isn’t responding to antibiotics. The only way to stop it is to…

My husband, Eric, was driving us to his mom’s birthday party, just across town. “By the way, the shipping was delayed on your mom’s present,” I said, “so we don’t have anything to give her today.” I was about to add that I should’ve gotten a card for us to write that her present was on the way but stopped when I saw Eric’s mouth drop. “We don’t?” he said sharply. “No, we don’t,” I snapped. “Because the present I ordered—well ahead of time, I might add—hasn’t arrived yet.” Eric didn’t say a word. That’s because he knows I’m right, I thought. I adore my mother-in-law, and I was happy to handle getting her a gift, but why did my husband just assume that I would take care of it?…

After eight hours of software training for my job, all I wanted was to unwind on the flight home. Yet here I was, stuck in the last row, right by the bathrooms. Someone in corporate had booked my seat. Ick. At least the seat beside me was open. I pulled out a copy of The Great Gatsby I’d brought, hoping Jay’s and Daisy’s troubles would be a diversion. But as soon as the pilot turned off the seatbelt sign, passengers bolted for the bathroom. Strangers lining up by my seat. Toilets flushing. The smells. Triple ick. I looked up at the parade of humanity. A middle-aged man glared back at me, his face set in anger. A strong feeling came to me. Ask him if there’s a man in his…

Twenty years, I thought, jogging through the neighborhood around our farm that spring morning. Where did the time go? I’d just hit two decades as a law enforcement officer here at the Jersey Shore. Retirement was on the horizon…. And I was not ready for it. Much as I loved being a husband to my wife, Jennifer, and a father to our three kids, “protect and serve” was the principle I lived by. Over the years, I’d developed a deep bond with my community and with my fellow officers. There’s a saying in police work: “There’s no such thing as routine.” From handling traffic duty to helping folks at accident scenes to searching for missing children, every day was different. Just because I made it through one shift without incident…

THE GRATITUDE GAME I knew being a middle school teacher’s aide would be a challenge when I took the job, but I was unprepared for just how hard it would be. Especially when I was assigned to teach an elective Spanish class by myself. “Pay attention, por favor!” I had to raise my voice to be heard in a room of restless sixth graders. I might as well have been talking to myself. The kids viewed my class as a break from their regular subjects. How could they not? I’d been given no textbooks, no lesson plans. I had to create my own worksheets, lesson plans and visual aids. But my biggest problem wasn’t teaching materials. It was keeping control of the classroom. “Please get back in your seat,” I…

STORIES THAT SPEAK TO ME As a faithful reader of the annual devotional Walking in Grace (formerly Daily Guideposts) for years, I was delighted that so many of my favorite devotion writers—Lynne Hartke, Rick Hamlin, Shawnelle Eliasen, Sabra Ciancanelli, Marilyn Turk and Jim Hinch—had stories in the April/May 2025 issue of Guideposts. Those stories spoke to me—especially Shawnelle’s Mama’s Hands, in which she wrote of leaning on God as she serves as her parents’ caregiver; Marilyn’s realization that she needed to put her husband before her work in A New Togetherness; and Jim Hinch placing his trust in God for a crosscounty move in The Two Dudes. Each story related directly to my own experiences. Although I enjoy every issue, this one was extra special. I look forward to more…

I was standing outside our house on a crisp November day in Belmont, North Carolina, a comfortable suburb just west of Charlotte, where my wife, Ashley, and I had settled to raise our three children: Amelia, 7; Jack, 5; and Ava, 2. Nothing was more important to me than being a good father to my children. But more and more these days, I asked myself, Was I? Just then, Amelia ran up to me and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Not a big moment for most dads, but it felt good to be asked. I took little Ava’s hand, and we were off down the block, Jack and Amelia walking their bikes ahead of us. I’m a business consultant, which means I spend a lot of…