Table of contents for August 2016 in Guideposts

It has been a while since I have said two very important words to you: Thank you. And not just for being faithful readers of this Editor’s Note. There is so much more that Guideposts is grateful to you for that there isn’t enough space on this page to list it all. But I’ll try. Thank you for being our ambassadors of hope and inspiration. Every year you send tens of thousands of gift subscriptions to friends and loved ones and to military personnel and their families. And you renew your own subscriptions at a rate that far surpasses the industry average. Thank you for supporting our other magazines—PLUS, Angels on Earth, Mysterious Ways and Mornings With Jesus, and our special edition The Joys of Christmas. You help us grow…

DAYS FOR GIRLS DAYS FOR GIRLS In March 2014, I was looking for a new outreach project that would use my sewing skills. I read an article about Days for Girls International, which provides feminine hygiene kits for girls and women in more than 100 countries. Intrigued, I did more research. Days for Girls’ founder, Celeste Mergens, was inspired during a trip to Kenya. She visited an orphanage and saw girls sitting on cardboard boxes. They couldn’t go to school or work because they had their period—even if they could buy disposable pads, they had nowhere to dispose of them. They wound up missing more than two months of school or work each year, which contributed to a cycle of poverty. Back in the United States, Celeste and some friends…

I closed my laptop. opened it. And closed it again. I got up from my desk and paced around my apartment. C’mon, Willie, get it together! I sat back down, opened my laptop and read over the post I’d been struggling to write all week for an online blogging platform. My finger hovered over the mouse. One click and my post would be shared with the world. One click and everyone would know the truth—I, Willie Morris, was a man of faith. I was the last person anyone would suspect of being religious. For most of my life I’d been a devout atheist. I came from an Italian Catholic family and had grown up going to church, more out of obligation to my mom and grandma than anything else. Once…

WELL COACHED Loser. That was something I never thought I’d be—until I placed a humiliating sixty-ninth in men’s skeet shooting at the World Cup in Slovenia. How could I have sunk so low? At 11 I’d set my sights on winning the gold at the 2008 Olympics—and did it as part of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit. The next three years couldn’t have been better. I married my sweetheart, Rebekah, and we had a baby girl, Bailey. All the while I trained, followed my coach’s orders, never missed my target. So what happened? It was July 2011. I hadn’t won a medal all year. Traveling with the team felt like a chore. I hated to be away from my family, my shooting stank, and now we had another baby on…

I was wiped out from a long day at work, but the instant I heard my younger son Cande’s voice on the phone, I felt reenergized. Cande was 24, a student at St. Mary’s Law School in San Antonio, and I couldn’t have been prouder of him. My husband, Candelario, and I are first-generation Americans; our parents were immigrants from Mexico. We were the first in our families to go to college and grad school. I’m a high school librarian; Candelario is a psychotherapist. It meant the world to us that our children were following in our footsteps, to know that they would be secure both professionally and financially. Our older son was a call-center manager for a hospital and our daughter was a student in culinary management. And soon…

“Now boarding, Flight Eighty-seven to New York.” I grabbed my carryon and joined the other passengers by the gate at London’s Heathrow Airport. All around me, couples and families laughed and chatted, relaxed and carefree after their summer vacations in Europe. Was I the only one worrying about what waited back home? I’d cut my trip short, left my brother and my grandmother on a cruise so I could figure my life out. “Are you sure you want to leave early?” Grandma had asked me. My brother and I had accompanied her on a transatlantic voyage to Sweden, her parents’ homeland. But my mind stayed stuck in Lawrence, Kansas. I was 21 years old, about to graduate from the University of Kansas with a degree in education and get married.…

Floss. Start watching the blood sugars now, you idiot! And just calm down, would you? Calm down…You’ll be okay. You’ll get there.” actor TOM HANKS, on advice he would give his youngest son “God has revealed enough of the future to give us hope, but not so much that we do not need to live by faith.” BEN WITHERINGTON III, Methodist pastor and professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” author URSULA K. LE GUIN “Aging is a physical process, but age is a state of mind.” submitted by Guideposts reader TED SMITH, of Hickory, North Carolina SEND AN UPLIFTING QUOTE from a newsmaker or yourself to upside@guideposts.org…

“Looks like this one’s yours,” my husband, Bryan, said with a big, wide, knowing grin, holding up a creamy white puppy. “Not so fast,” I shot back. Bella, our daughter Gabrielle’s golden retriever, had had her first litter— eleven adorable little fur balls—nine with golden coats and two almost pure white. English creams, the light ones are called. There is nothing cuter in the world than golden retriever puppies. Nothing. They were all energetic, curious and affectionate. This one, though, was definitely a troublemaker. She was beautiful—bright white coat, black button nose—but a little too restless and energetic for my taste…always getting into something, roughing up one of her brothers or sisters, looking to make mischief. That had become an issue when Bella got sick and was unable to nurse.…

“Do you need anything, Mom?” I asked. My mother lay in the hospital bed we’d set up when she moved into our guest house in Los Angeles three years before. She was motionless except for her eyes. She blinked to tell me no. Blinking her eyes and wiggling her foot to hit a bell have been her ways of communicating since she lost the ability to speak. “Try to get some rest,” I said. I kissed her forehead and she blinked back at me, our code for “Good night.” I left her with her nurse and went to our house, only steps away. My wife was in bed already, quiet but not yet asleep. The world knows her as Angela Bassett, movie star. To me, she is simply my beautiful…

DRESS CIRCLE I was so excited to read Sue Pardo’s Someone Cares story Sew Happy in your February 2016 issue—and to see that she lives in Maryland too. Like Sue, I make dresses for little girls out of pillowcases. I heard about the idea during a meeting for Girl Scouts volunteers. I made my first 75 dresses with my Brownie scouts and granddaughters. I hung a few at my daughter’s organic grocery store along with fliers inviting people to join me. Four Methodist women’s groups took the project on and more than 50 other women are helping too. In addition to the dresses, we’ve started making shorts for boys out of T-shirts. Every other month we gather to drop off finished pieces, give new members a sewing lesson and share…