Here is Edward Grinnan’s Editor’s Note for the July 2016 issue of Guideposts. If you’d like to subscribe, click here.
Folks tell us they love Guideposts because they identify with the stories. That goes for me too, especially this issue.
The Message of Ben-Hur. I met author Carol Wallace (Executive Editor Rick Hamlin’s better half) nearly 30 years ago and was duly impressed that she cowrote The Official Preppy Handbook and that her great- great-grandfather wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
Road-Trip Respite, about a mother-daughter tour photographing vintage highway rest stops (I’m not kidding), inspired memories of my own childhood vacations.
Donna Tobin Smith’s The Perfect Answer, about slowly losing her father to Alzheimer’s, reminded me of my mother’s last days and that part of us the disease can’t destroy.
In A Sign From Above, Gail Bindewald wonders if she can survive without exercise. I have the same worry.
Happy Birthday, Sparkle!—well, Sparkle is an old friend of mine and of many sick and hospitalized kids, thanks to the generosity of you readers.
Click here to Bring Hope to a Sick and Hospitalized Child
Our cover story, A Will to Live, speaks for itself. Who wouldn’t be inspired by this brave Army vet?
Patty Cozine and her family rally around a disabled child in The Language of Family. We did the same thing for my brother Bobby.
I certainly identify with the Old English D on Shaka Senghor’s cap: The author of A Letter From My Son is from my hometown.
And who hasn’t shared Chris Edmonds’s pride in a parent, as you’ll read about in Discovering Dad?
I heard Wintley Phipps sing when he visited our offices last year and broke into a gospel number. His story, Finding My Voice, tells how he came by his magnificent musical talent.
Erin Keeley Marshall’s nostalgic Fourth of July story, A Taste of Home, reminds me of the Independence Day parade in old Franklin, Michigan. Summer didn’t really start until the fireworks burst over the historic village green. I used to get a crick in my neck watching until the last glittering tendril melted into the summer sky.
Read More: 8 Prayers to Help You Savor Summer
One thing we don’t have in this issue—a dog story. Don’t know how that happened. (Sorry, Gracie! But folks can read about you on Guideposts Digital here and here. And, oh, okay. One more here.)
Which stories do you identify with? Go to the Guideposts Facebook page and let us know.
