Guideposts

GREAT course on how to tell a story, no matter what genre—fiction or non-fiction. The printed material plus the videos solidify the information. The best investment you could make! —Dianne M. Join Guideposts Editor-in-Chief Ed Grinnan and other senio

It was a september morning in 2017. I sat in a rocking chair on our front porch in Nashville, working on the manuscript of my novel. I should have been focused on finishing my edits so my agent could send the book around to publishers. But what reall

I stood in front of a panel for my interview for a Miss Mississippi preliminary pageant, trying not to let my nervousness show. The judges were taking a long time to look over my paperwork. What kinds of questions would they ask? Most people think th

My son, Tim, raises chickens, ducks, guinea hens and quail. He’s the fifth generation in our family to sell his wares at Detroit’s Eastern Market, which has served the city since the nineteenth century. Tim sees quite a few homeless people between hi

SOME PEOPLE CALL ME AN OVER-night sensation. I play Kate in the hit TV series This Is Us, and now I have my first feature film, Breakthrough, coming out this Easter. But I wouldn’t exactly call my success “overnight.” More like 365 nights and days—mu

THREE EMERGENCY RESPONDERS crouched beside an unmoving patient. He was older—not breathing. It was time to perform lifesaving CPR. Every second mattered. Ken Ayers straightened his elbows and pressed down. He counted out 30 chest compressions. Marily

THE GRAVEYARD. THIS WAS where drugs and alcohol had led me. I was 34 and had never had a job until now, working at the cemetery. I’d just gotten my first assignment to dig a grave. As if I hadn’t been digging my own grave for years. Smoking pot, drin

Amelia Milling, a twenty-one-year-old college student from Tennessee, was on Day Two of a three-day solo hike of the Crow Pass Trail, in Alaska’s Chugach Mountains. Following part of the historic Iditarod route, it runs 23 miles from the town of Gird

Your dad, Stephen, was a pastor, social worker and vibrant part of his community. When did you notice that something wasn’t right with him? Dad was a prayer guy. At our big family Christmas gathering, he always said this elaborate prayer that would t

ONE GRANDPARENT WAS STILL ALIVE when I was born: my mother’s father, Poppop Rossiter, who lived with my aunt Cass. My memories of him are vague, though even at a young age I knew there was something wrong with the old man. He would forget my name and

THIS IS MY PLACE. THIS IS MY time. This is my discipline. The subway rattles, shakes and rolls. The tabloid headlines scream out in boldface. Who was killed? Who was maimed? Who won the lottery? The kids sitting next to me and standing above me are t

“I WANT TO APPLY FOR A JOB IN Antarctica. It’s a six-month commitment,” Sarah told me that day, sitting on our bed in our rental house in New Zealand. She said it the way people talk about going on a beach vacation. But one thing I’d learned in four

WHEN I GOT MARRIED, I thought I was ready to be a husband and father. My wife, Soroya, and I were in our twenties then, enjoying life together and starting our careers. She was a kindergarten teacher. I was a supervisor at a call center. Four years i

“MOM, PLEASE GET IN THE CAR.” She ignored me and wandered through her small vacation home—a mobile home, actually, by a lake outside town—in search of her favorite night cream. “Mom, we have to get Dad to the hospital now.” I tried to steer her towar

THE DOCTOR’S TONE WAS GENtle, but his expression was serious. “If you keep going at this rate, you’ll have only another two years left,” he said. “You have to slow down.” It was a few days into 2018. I had just awoken from a coma in the ICU. My third

As busy as she is now, Asya Branch (“Tell Us About Your Dad,” page 20) has a lot of opportunities waiting for her after she hands off her Miss Mississippi crown later this year. In between winning the state title and competing in the Miss America pag