Table of contents for June/July 2023 in Guideposts

It was approaching midnight when I opened the door to let out my golden, Gracie. Instead of sleepily doing her business, she streaked into the yard toward the apple tree, barking her head off. Immediately I knew the interloper was no deer or even a coyote. This degree of bravado she reserves for bears. Gracie hates bears. I grabbed a fireplace poker, a high-beam flashlight and a can of bear spray and tore after her in my robe and slippers. She was circling the tree, jumping and barking like a lunatic. “Gracie!” I yelled. “Gracie, come!” But she was in too much of a frenzy. Her blood was up. The apple tree is sturdy but not large. The bear’s hind-quarters were hanging down precariously. And he was in a mood…

DELIVERING THANKS I stepped outside to retrieve a package from my front porch and called out a thank-you to the postal worker who’d delivered it. He smiled and waved as he headed down my steps, and I couldn’t help but notice that he looked hot and sweaty. I glanced up the street at the rest of his route. I live in an older neighborhood, and nearly every house, like mine, has a porch with steps that postal workers and delivery drivers have to climb to reach the mailbox or front door. Doing that dozens of times each day has to be tiring, especially during the summer. To make people’s workdays a little easier, my sons and I set up a refreshment station on our porch. We filled a basket with…

“I bet if I climbed to the top of this old oak, I could see forever,” I said, looking up into the branches. Climbing trees was a rite of passage in the mountains of East Tennessee, where we lived. At 10, I had climbed all the apple trees in the area, but to scale a huge oak—that was a real challenge. My brother Buddy Earl put his hand on my shoulder. “Brother Doug, you’re not Tarzan.” Being more of a bookworm, Buddy Earl knew all about Tarzan. He was always willing to share in my adventures as long as whatever daring deed arose, I did it first. Buddy Earl pointed to the first limb above the ground. “How do you even think you’re going to get up there?” he said.…

I was on my way to hike with my dogs when I heard the gunshots. Guns are not uncommon in my isolated corner of rural northwest Colorado. The public lands around my house are a hub for deer and elk hunting. Neighboring ranchers sometimes shoot at coyotes and mountain lions to protect their stock. I didn’t give the gunshots much thought. I drove out my gate and was about to turn east onto Highway 40 toward the trailhead when I saw cars parked off the road to the west. I wondered whether one of them could belong to the new manager of K-Ranch, which bordered my property on three sides. I wanted to meet him. So I turned west, telling my dogs they’d have to wait for their walk. Drawing…

I swept a layer of dust from the top of the old wood crate I’d lugged from the back of the garage to the living room. It was a time capsule I’d made 50 years ago, filling it with things I’d prized as a 13-year-old in 1972. In the decades since, people I’d mentioned it to would ask, “What’s inside?” At this point, I didn’t remember. But I was about to find out! I wedged a pry bar into a gap at the top of the crate. My family was gathered around me—my wife, Peg; my 92-year-old mom; my son; my daughter and son-in-law; and my two granddaughters—literally on the edge of their seats to witness the big reveal. Expectations were sky-high. Especially mine. I’d always been into history and…

My brother told me there was something I needed to see. I had no idea on that day six years ago that my whole life was about to change. Dave handed me three creased pages scrawled with familiar handwriting—our dad’s—titled “Things I would like to do in my lifetime!” Dad had died in a car crash 13 years earlier. Dave said he’d found the list in a small pouch when he was moving into his new house. There wasn’t a date on the list, but my mother later told me my dad wrote it in 1978. The year I was born. Dad was just 29 then. My eyes flew down the list of 60 items. Dad had checked off a few—“be interviewed on the radio,” “do a comedy monologue in…

When Dianne and Earl Wickline (To the Rescue, page 20) brought Jaydon, their three-year-old golden-doodle, home from the vet last Thanksgiving, they couldn’t comfort him enough during his recovery. They even let him sleep on their bed—once strictly off-limits. Faith, their other doodle, still wasn’t allowed on the bed, and it wasn’t long before Jaydon decided he preferred to sleep cuddled against Faith, his love for the little puppy as strong as ever. Today the two dogs run and roughhouse with abandon, though the Wicklines are careful to allow them outside only on leashes. They look forward to hiking this summer in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. “So many people still tell us they’re praying for us and the dogs,” Earl says. “Jaydon and Faith teach us to count our blessings…

“Today is the tomorrow you were so worried about yesterday…. Just keep in there, just keep fighting. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.”actor ANTHONY HOPKINS, 85, who celebrated 47 years of sobriety this year “What you do with yourself between the last time you heard from God and the next time you hear from God is the ongoing challenge of a life of faith.”CECE WINANS, gospel singer “You are unique. No experience was wasted in the making of who you are. And God delights in both who you are and who you are becoming.”entrepreneur EMILY LEY, from her book Growing Boldly: Dare to Build a Life You Love “One thing that we all need always is hope. We always need to be able to hold up…

Al Roker TODAY SHOW WEATHERMAN. JOURNALIST. AUTHOR. Best advice you’ve gotten It was from Willard Scott. He said, “Always be yourself. Everybody wants to be somebody else; just be you.” Hardest thing you’ve ever done Watch my kids go off to college and/or their professional lives. You know they are going to make mistakes, and you want to fix everything but can’t. A surprising detail about you I’m extremely shy. What you do for your spiritual well-being Every day, I write down what I was grateful for. It might just be a great meal. A friend stopping by. But I always like to remember, to try to end on a positive note. Q&A by Celeste McCauley. Find a longer version at guideposts.org/alroker For more on this story, see FAMILY ROOM…

Five pearls. I admit it was a strange thing for the woman to say to me. I had never planned to be a hero that January morning in 2013. Afterward I told reporters all the credit went to God. I had simply been where he wanted me to be. Then a woman came up to me at work and said, “God will bless you. He will give you five pearls to call on him in times of great need.” I thanked her, but I really wasn’t sure what she meant. Someday I would be. Two days before Thanksgiving 2022, all I was thinking about was sitting down to a turkey dinner with my wife, Dianne, and sharing some scraps with “the kids,” our two dogs, the center of our lives.…

Fifteen years ago, when Hurricane Ike destroyed nearly all the homes on Oak Island, a suburb of Houston, Texas, residents got help from an unlikely source—Neil Diamond. The legendary singer raised more than $1.8 million to rebuild the ravaged community. Why had the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer made such an extraordinary effort? Neil told the Houston Chronicle about an experience he’d had in 1966, when starting as a singer. Neil had been writing songs for other artists before his debut single, “Solitary Man,” climbed the charts. He recorded an album and went on tour. For his first Texas gig, he arrived alone at the Houston airport. When he went to pick up his rental car, he realized he’d left his money in New York. Panicked, he explained his…

Do you believe that God intervenes directly in our lives? Some 20 years ago, I would’ve told you absolutely not. That’s when I took a trip to Boise, Idaho, for work. I was an electronics engineer and business consultant, and I needed to meet with an important client there. I was walking around the city center before hand when a woman approached me. I had a feeling she might be a member of some kind of group, interested in proselytizing and maybe handing out pamphlets. Instead, she struck up a conversation. We exchanged pleasantries, made small talk. Then, unprompted, she launched into a seemingly random story. “Years ago, I was in a terrible accident,” she said. “Hit-and-run. My toddler was in the back seat. I couldn’t get her out. We…

BETTER THAN AAA My daughter Emily, age 10, was excited about going away to camp in North Carolina. I was less excited about the prospect of driving her there from our home in central Florida. My husband had to work, so it would just be me with Emily and her seven-year-old sister, Anna, in the car. What if something went wrong? What if we broke down? Or got a flat tire? I asked God to be with us on the drive—and signed up for AAA before we left. We had stopped for the night in Georgia, halfway through the drive, and were now in the middle lane of I-95 heading toward the camp. We whooshed by a car on the side of the highway with its hood up and hazard…

TRIBUTE PIZZA GUIDEPOSTS has always been a special magazine to me. I enjoy reading people’s stories about their everyday life experiences and encounters. I can relate to them as I have had my own experiences that have made a difference in my life. Their stories have inspired me to write my own, and I’ve even had several published in Angels on Earth. After retiring from my pizzeria business, I decided to make a pizza with my wife, Pam, at home. We called it our first “designer pizza”—a tribute pizza to GUIDEPOSTS, to celebrate the magazine’s 75-year anniversary. We shared it with friends and family, and they loved it! As GUIDE-POSTS’ seventy-eighth year in publishing approaches, I plan to celebrate with another tribute pizza. I’m delighted to be a part of…

My friend Bill and I had lunch plans. We were going to try the new bar-becue place not far from my condo. So I was surprised to see him coming up the walk with his bright red toolbox. “I’ve been telling you for weeks now that I should fix that old door for you,” he said. “Well, today’s the day!” The lock in my front doorknob had been sticking for some time. The deadbolt above it was so loose, I didn’t even bother to lock it. That didn’t sit well with Bill. As soon as he noticed the problem, he decided it was his problem. That’s the kind of guy Bill was—protective and caring. He was always looking out for me. We swung by the hardware store after lunch. I…

I pulled up to my house with a sigh of relief. It had been another tough day at school. I teach high school English. I love reading and writing and language and literature, but lately I had been going through the motions. A stack of papers awaited my grading pen on the car seat beside me. Just the thought of tackling those papers was exhausting. Eight months earlier, my 27-year-old son, Russell, had died unexpectedly. His car had caught fire. The details were too awful to contemplate. The tragedy was so horrific, it had blotted out my whole world. I was back at work now, but my job was the only thing that had stayed the same in my life. I was a shell of my former self. Listless. Swallowed…

I was washing dishes one day in May 2020 when my youngest, 11-year-old Nathan, came running into the house. “Mom, you won’t believe what I found in the mud puddle. Come see!” We were two months into pandemic lockdown by that point, and remote learning hadn’t been holding Nathan’s interest. I was glad to hear him excited about something. I dried my hands and followed Nathan out to a large puddle in our driveway. “They’re tadpoles!” he said. “Dad said a frog must have laid her eggs in there.” I bent down for a closer look. There were hundreds of tadpoles swimming around. “Aren’t they cool?” he said. The next few days, Nathan kept his eye on the tadpoles. One afternoon, he asked if he could use my phone to…

I should have been excited about morning sover coffee, and I’d talked our new house. After many relocations for my husband’s career, we were finally staying put in the San Antonio, Texas, area. We’d moved so often, I had unpacking down to a science. But this time it was taking longer than usual. I was still shuttling between this neighborhood and our old neighborhood, 20 minutes away. I thought keeping busy would help. It didn’t. I’d unwrap things, such as our living room decorations, arrange them and think, Mom would love how this looks. Or I’d reach for my phone to text her a photo and get her opinion. A big reason Mike and I had decided on this house was that there would be room for my mother and…

My little rescue dog, Soda, and I ventured out at sunrise. Our usual morning walk is a quick loop around the yard, but Soda had other plans, pulling forward with purpose. Since he has grown older and become blind, moments like this, where he is a driving force of puppy will, are few and far between, so I let him lead, wondering what he had in mind. We walked down our road. Soda tugged me down a dead end we never take, his pace increasing. Ahead, a sizable all-white bird perched regally on a telephone pole. “You’re beautiful!” I said to the bird. It was a red-tailed hawk that was, despite its name, completely white. Over the years, I had heard about sightings of this unusual bird, a rare leucistic…

My family has been farming here on the prairie since 1959, when my dad bought some land. Things have changed since then, and they haven’t changed. We farm 10,000 acres now, and I harvest the wheat, soy and corn in an air-conditioned combine with a padded seat and computer controls. But we still work just as many hours, sometimes 100 a week in peak season. And family farming is still a knife-edge business. It costs one and a half million dollars to put a crop in the ground. If something goes wrong, we’re sunk. We love it, though. All that lies between us and the sunrise is our front yard and wheat rolling to the horizon. Our closest neighbor is more than a mile away—church, another 24 on a dirt…