Mysterious Ways

Do you ever feel as if you’re being reminded to have faith? I know I do. Sometimes, when faced with a problem, I immediately want to take action and resolve it, as if I alone manage the outcome. But then some-thing reminds me that I’m not in charge a

When my brother John died at 56 from prostate cancer, I was devastated. He and I had always been close. I missed his sense of humor and his mischievous smile. A favorite memory of John was of shortly after he’d left for college. Mom had asked him to

West Deptford Township, New Jersey Some of Austin Schwarz’s favorite childhood memories were spent on his dad’s fishing boat. But his father had sold it when he got sick with brain cancer. After his dad died, Austin contemplated buying the boat back,

I stood near the railing of the ferry as it skimmed over Lake Erie toward the small island of Put-in-Bay. The eight of us—my mother-in-law, Judy; husband, Eric; our five kids and I—would be spending the week there. It was our first vacation in more t

The lake caught my eye in a glint of January sunlight. Its glassy waters reflected the jagged Alps; a tiny is-land with a church sat in the center. It was Lake Bled in Yugoslavia, shining up from the pages of a National Geographic on my parents’ coff

Motown legend William “Smokey” Robinson captured the world’s attention with his tenor voice and hit song writing. As frontman for The Miracles, he gave us such 1960s classics as “My Girl” and “The Tracks of My Tears.” He went on to become a successfu

It was a Saturday afternoon. I busied myself with chores, getting everything ready for the week ahead. While I dusted the mantel, my thoughts drifted to Mom. Mom had died five months earlier, and I still worried about her every day. She’d struggled s

My date, Lisa, and I were huddled in the pitch black on a wooded ridge in the Colorado Rockies. All around us were rocks and sheer drops. We’d lost the trail. We were still a mile or more from the car. And it was getting colder by the minute. I could

What does heaven actually look like? We living may never know. But we can gain some insight from those who’ve gotten closest, through near-death experiences (NDEs). The following five survivors turned to visual art to depict what they saw in the time

“Please help, Mom,” I whispered. “Show me that everything’s going to be okay.” It was a quiet Wednesday night, and I was in bed, trying to fall asleep. My husband, PJ, was already asleep beside me. The past three months had been hard for us. It all s

I sat on the bed with a handful of my mother’s drugs. Little white pills cupped in my 12-year-old hand. This will end the pain, I thought, moving the tablets around with my thumb. My parents were out to dinner. I had raided their medicine cabinet for

I drove slowly back from the store, content to go below the speed limit. I was in no hurry to get home. No one would be there waiting for me. Only a few weeks into my new life as a single woman, my studio apartment was still a maze of stacked cardboa

The pain was sharp and sudden. It shot through my lower molar. I dropped the pair of khakis I had been folding into the open suitcase on my bed. “Oh, no,” I muttered. My husband, Mike, looked up from across the room. “What is it?” “It’s this darn too

I thought I knew about Saint Patrick. The guy who banished snakes from Ireland, then converted everyone to Christianity by noting that the three-leaf clover was a perfect symbol of the Trinity. He performed many miracles. Because of that, there’s a b