Innholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2015 i Mysterious Ways

In January 2004, my last semester at New York University, I got an internship at Guideposts magazine. I figured it was just the first stop on my career path. None of my friends had ever heard of the magazine. The Mysterious Ways stories I fact-checked seemed pretty far-fetched. In journalism class, I was taught to be skeptical, to get down to the cold, hard facts. Eric Metaxas felt the same way, the summer of 1988. Like me, he was a writer, an English major in college. He’d landed his first job, as a proofreader for chemical giant Union Carbide, commuting every day from his home in Danbury, Connecticut, to the company’s headquarters in the woods nearby. He made friends with a coworker, Ed, an older man with a wife and…

Faith inspired the name of the Alpha and Omega Care Centre in Pretoria, South Africa—the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet representing the Lord and his son. That appealed to 22-year-old Virna van der Walt. When she went to work there, in April of 1998, Virna had studied nursing and assisted at a homeopathic practice. Now she was ready for a challenge, providing day care to young people with crippling disabilities. Other institutions had turned these patients away. Alpha and Omega was their last hope. "Who's he?" Virna asked the head caregiver her first day, pointing to an older boy with cropped hair, slumped in a wheelchair in front of a television set. Barney the purple dinosaur danced on the screen. "Don't mind Martin," the woman said. "He's…

A bustling flea market with rows of overflowing tables. At a wood-framed stall, a perky blonde woman folded 11 lace curtain panels over white plastic hangers. The sign above her booth said Joy Street. That was all I remembered when I woke up. A weirdly specific dream. In reality, I’d recently moved into an old red-brick house and was looking for vintage curtains to cover the floor-to-ceiling windows— 11, total. At an estate sale in town, I’d spotted ones the perfect length, with intricate embroidery they just don’t manufacture anymore. Unfortunately, another woman beat me to them—a perky blonde. She scooped up the curtains and disappeared. The saleslady didn’t have any others like them. My dream gave me new hope. That weekend, I drove to a flea market an hour…

“Let’s try that café on Sunshine Street,” my daughter, Stacey, said. “Maybe they still have power.” We’d been having a serious talk over lunch when the restaurant’s lights flickered and died. Electricity was out all through the neighborhood. There wasn’t even a storm! Sunshine Street was six blocks away. The drive over gave me time to think about our conversation. All week I’d wrestled with the decision to quit my job. Now that my kids were grown, I felt called back to my lifelong dream— to be a writer. Stacey was all for it. But what if I quit and never found a paid writing gig? I’d prayed for guidance. Instead God had left me in the dark. Block after block, every place we passed was pitch black inside. I…

My husband, Mitchell, loved the blurry home videos I’d brought over from my parents’ house. We hadn’t met until we were in college, so he got a kick out of watching me toddle around at birthday parties, Christmases and family vacations. “You were such a funny little kid!” he said, laughing. We were about to call it a night when Mitchell shouted, “Wait a minute…run that back again!” The video was of me, around 15 months old, on vacation in Yosemite. A blond boy a little older walked into the frame, wanting to play. Mitchell paused the video. “Do you see what I see?” We hopped in the car and drove to Mitchell’s dad’s. He was surprised by our impromptu visit, but even more so by the video Mitchell put…

Brownsville, Brooklyn A New York City neighborhood plagued by crime and poverty didn’t deter photographer Brandon Stanton from seeking an inspiring subject for his popular street-portrait website, Humans of New York. He struck up a conversation with 13-year-old Vidal Chastanet, asking who had influenced him the most. “My principal, Ms. Lopez,” Vidal replied. “She told each one of us that we matter.” Brandon’s photo and the boy’s response drew attention online—even more than usual for Brandon’s site. Brandon tracked the principal down and found her just as inspiring as Vidal did. Together, Brandon and Ms. Lopez set out to collect $100,000 to establish an annual sixth-grade class trip to Harvard University. According to the New York Daily News, within a week, the school received over a million dollars. The support…

My 70-year-old father-in-law jumped in the water first. But he couldn’t get to my daughter. His arms flailed, tangled in the camera strap around his neck. “Mommy!” three-year-old Jinny cried, her eyes wide with panic. She’d started swim lessons at 18 months and did fine in shallow water, but she’d drifted into the deep end of the motel pool. Jinny reached frantically for me. She was in the middle of the pool, too far for me to pull her to safety from the deck. Before I could do a thing, she went under. I looked around, desperate. My husband, Bob, had gone back to our room to get something. No lifeguard on duty. No one else was close to the pool. Just me. And I couldn’t swim. I was terrified…

Sunday evening, 7:30 p.m. That’s when I would do it. I sat on the edge of my bed and twisted the cap off my prescription pain medication. Normally one tiny white pill would help ease the pain. Not this time. I emptied the entire bottle into my palm and counted. Thirty-two pills. If I took them all at once, I'd stop breathing, go into cardiac arrest. I wouldn't need to write a note for those I left behind. Everyone would know why. It was a cruel irony, being a registered nurse with an incurable disease. Tonight I would finally cure it for good. Thirty-two pills. One for each surgery I’d had in my 60 years on earth. I suffered from an invasive form of neurofibromatosis: noncancerous tumors that grow from…

There is a date that actor David Oyelowo will never forget. July 24, 2007. Two months after he and his wife, Jessica, moved from England to Los Angeles to further their careers. He had just read the script for a film called Selma, about the civil-rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. A voice spoke to him. You will play Dr. King. “I remember the date because it was such a shocking revelation,” David told Sojourners magazine. He knew it was the voice of God. The same voice had led him to marry Jessica nine years earlier. But this had to be a mistake. Dr. King with a British accent? David was descended from Nigerian royalty. His family had never experienced the Jim Crow American South. The director of…

Mint Condition Ekgh! Ekgh! A coughing fit. I pulled the phone company van into a quiet cul-de-sac where I could catch my breath. My throat was burning something fierce. A few days earlier, one of my coworkers had been too sick to finish installing a new phone line. I’d met up with him to complete the work, and before he left I gave him a handful of red-and-white mint lozenges, my entire supply, to soothe his sore throat. I must have picked up his bug. Lord, I wish I’d saved a couple of those mints! I prayed. I heard a loud clanking noise. An old pickup truck was pulling up behind me. The driver climbed out and tapped on my window. “I see you work for the phone company,” he…

Hope Springs Eternal “Five more minutes? Please?” A familiar bedtime plea from my seven-year-old, Wesley, his nose in a book. He loved science, and read everything he could about the cosmos. I’d finally gotten him to give his children’s Bible a chance, and he was in the first chapter, the story of creation. I couldn’t say no. Meow. Another plea, from beside the bed. One of our four cats, staring up from her fancy fountain water dish. Just a regular water dish now that it was broken. Despite my best efforts to repair it, it refused to spout. Much to my frustration and our felines’ dismay. “Mom,” Wes said, looking up from the Bible, “how do we know God started everything? What about the Big Bang?” I was impressed by…

Where am I? I couldn’t see anything, anyone. A sudden wind blew, fierce as a winter storm. I was swept into a great whirling tunnel of darkness. Far off in the distance, I heard someone talking. A voice I recognized—my neurosurgeon. Relax, I reminded myself. You’re still under. They said surgery could take as long as eight hours. An image bloomed before me, like I’d opened a giant pop-up picture book. A handsome red dun quarter horse neighed and pawed at the dirt outside his stable. Gunner. If it hadn’t been for him... “I’m getting close to the right optic nerve,” I heard my surgeon say. I braced myself, but there was no pain. Only a cold sensation— a scalpel?—inside my skull. I’d been having dizziness and mild leg tremors…

I opened the door to our house tentatively, as had become my habit. As if some barrier were keeping me from crossing the threshold. My eight-week-old German shepherd puppy, Sascha, trotted inside ahead of me, his nails clicking on the tiles. “Jeremy?” No answer. Empty. I dropped my keys in my purse and checked the hallway. Hung up my coat. Checked out the kitchen. I crept up the stairs to the darkened landing and stopped, listening. What was that creak? A footstep? Or just the house settling? My heart sped up. I pushed open the door to the bedroom. The curtains cast long black shadows across the floor. What was I so scared of in my own home? It was frustrating that I had to live this way! Something brushed…

The name is Katha. Not Kathy. Or Kat. Or Kathleen. It’s Katha. Why oh why did my parents have to give me such a strange name? Growing up in Toledo, Ohio, I wished I could’ve been a Jane. Or a Sandy. Or even a Belinda! Anything but Katha. No matter how many times Mom insisted that the name was divinely inspired, I wasn’t buying it. She claimed that it came to her one afternoon during her eighth month of pregnancy. She’d spent most of the day with a massive baby book, browsing for the perfect name for her daughter-to-be. Nothing seemed to stand out, especially when paired with our ordinary last name, Brown. Exasperated, she pushed the book aside and drifted off to sleep. She awoke with one word on…

Deep in the woods near Blackville, South Carolina, there is a natural spring from which miracles flow. Native Americans believed the Great Spirit gave the waters healing properties— a legend enhanced by the experience of six soldiers gravely wounded in the Revolutionary War. After drinking and bathing in the spring, all six recovered. Lute "L.P." Boylston, who inherited the land, felt the water should be free for all. He deeded the spring and the surrounding acre to "Almighty God, for the use of the sick and afflicted." Public officials maintain the spring today, the only land legally owned by God in the United States. Believers say water from God's Acre Healing Springs can cure stiff limbs, ulcers and cataracts. Others say vegetables washed in it stay fresh longer. Everyone agrees…