Personal Change

Medicine Man

jbloustein — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:18:33 -0600

Retirement. Lingering with the paper over a late breakfast. Basking in the sun, legs dangling in the pool. Nothing but blue skies and open fairways.

My wife, Nancy, and I dreamed of this day after running my dermatology practice for 40 years. Now, a week into the promised land of retirement, I was haunted by work still left undone.

“Forget the golf game or sleeping in late,” I told Nancy. “I just can’t all of a sudden stop being a doctor.”

Military Outreach

jbloustein — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:25:57 -0600

First time I ever saw Guideposts magazine was in my dad’s chapel in occupied Japan.

He was an Army chaplain and was always looking out for inspirational material for our soldiers. I followed in the family footsteps and became an Army chaplain myself, just in time to be deployed to Vietnam. You can bet I made sure there was helpful, inspiring literature from GUIDEPOSTS for my men.

Stories that Make Us Care

jbloustein — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:47:30 -0600

Julee was touring, so it fell to me to rush home and give Sally and Marty their midday walk, feed them lunch while I ate mine and checked out the headlines on CNN.

That day, April 19, 1995, I stared in disbelief at the images of devastation and carnage at the Murrah building in Oklahoma City and tried to make sense of this act of mass murder.

Behind the Scenes with Carmindy

jbloustein — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:30:15 -0500

Take a glimpse behind the scenes at our photo shoot with April covergirl Carmindy.

GUIDEPOSTS Senior Editor Celeste McCauley took a few candids of the TLC makeup maven as she showed off The Beauty Within.

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Line in the Water

admin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:04:23 -0600

I am an education professor at Central Christian College. Sometimes when I'm teaching a class full of glassy-eyed, bored students, or when I'm stuck in an interminable faculty meeting, I feel like calling it quits and heading for home. It's times like those I remember a fishing trip I took with my dad in 1956, when I was 12 years old.

Housing Them in Her Heart

admin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:27:00 -0500

The irony isn't lost on Diane Nilan. She voluntarily became homeless to try to end homelessness.

Her first exposure to poverty was in childhood, through her family's maid Minnie, who supported 13 kids on a salary of $8 an hour. "It started getting me to ask 'Why?'" says Diane. "I realized that the happiest times in my life are ones that are centered on others."

He's a Player!

jbloustein — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:49:34 -0500

Ben Kneller was pretty decent at basketball.

The six-foot-six forward/center captained his Westlake (California) High School team, leading it to the California Interscholastic Federation Division I playoffs, while earning all-league honors.

But he knew he wasn’t nearly good enough to play Division I college ball. He didn’t even bother trying out when he enrolled four years ago at San Diego State.

The Power of Half

mcherkezian — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:10:40 -0600

How would you react if your teenager wanted you to sell your house and donate half the money to charity? Kevin Salwen of Atlanta, Georgia, said he was in shock when his 14-year-old Hannah suggested just that, and then wouldn’t let it go.

It all started in 2006 when they were in the car together one morning. Hannah noticed a man driving a Mercedes on one side of the street and another man holding a sign asking for money for food on the other. It really bothered her; she knew what she was seeing just wasn’t right and something stirred in her head, heart and soul.

Baseball's 6 All-Time Most Inspiring Players

admin — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:07:00 -0500

A hero, more than anything, is one who inspires us. Through his courage and selflessness, he impels us to great deeds of our own.

There are many baseball players who rank as heroes on the field, but only a special few whose actions on and off the field resonate with us so deeply that we admire them more as people than as athletes.

They give not just to their fans, but to their communities as well. Their contributions lift us—all of us—up. You could argue that these six former players are baseball’s greatest heroes of all time.

The Letter

admin — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 12:22:00 -0500

The letter came on a frantic spring day, knee-deep in planning my daughter Keri's wedding. I wouldn't have noticed it except for the strange brown envelope. The paper was thin and crinkly. The stamps looked odd, too—-foreign. Then I saw the postmark: Harare, Zimbabwe.