This was a Christmas gift from our Sunday School leader for the women’s group. It is a variety of stories told by individual authors. All of them are truly inspirational. They speak of love, loss, prayer, and hope. Many show courage and resilience in the face of disaster or illness. It is presented by Guideposts, a non-profit organization, who provide an array of products meant to uplift and encourage its readers. I’ll provide a complete list of stories, but first just wanted to comment on a few that most spoke to my heart.

The first story is How Love Endures by Evelyn Husband. She is the widow of Rick Douglas Husband, a U.S. Air Force Colonel. He was the space shuttle commander of STS-107 who was killed when the craft disintegrated upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. Her writing offers a bit of a background into how they met and their family; the disaster from her point of view; and the healing for both her and her children in the aftermath.

The second story is Sincerely by Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings. Sincerely is very short and deals with her memories of her beloved Grandfather and how they talked and laughed together while picking blackberries when she was a young girl. She’d pick the petals of a wild sunflower, saying “Granddaddy loves me … loves me not … loves me …” She felt oh, so dreadful if she ended with ‘love me not.’

Home Team is by Mike Singletary, the head coach of the SF 49ers. He’d had an NFL career with the Chicago Bears and in 1985, helped lead them to a victory in the Super Bowl. So in sports, he was ‘the man’, but not everything was peachy in his life with his wife. This is his own story of how he endeavored to change that.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5.

Contents of Stories of Love to Warm the Heart:
How Love Endures by Evelyn Husband

Sincerely by Sue Monk Kidd

A Sea Change by Mark Stubbs

Home Team by Mike Singletary

Grandpa, I Can Still Hear You by Gregory G. Heyworth

The Man I Married by Kim Pridgeon

A Field of Jonquils by Jan LaRosa

The Stranger my Daughter Married by Anson Reynolds

The Loner by Abby Susan Peoples

My Secret World by Janet Long

It Could Happen to You by Catherine Clark

Ricky Loves Cindy by Ricky Ward

How to Love the Unloving by Bethanne Walker

Vigil for a Little Boy by Sally John

Trouble at the Indy 500 by Bonni Libhart

The Great Vacation Experiment by Tom Anderson

Class Act by Megan Felt

My Biggest Catch by Susan Karas

The Captain’s Decision by Scott Southworth

The Art of Compassion by Michael Daube

A Good Day by Dawn Kuzel

Caregiver of the Year by Alec Rogers

Together by Jerry Hunt

The Five Reasons I Love My Life by Dolly Parton

Remade by Joyce Brotherton

Somebody Needs You by E. Stanley Jones

Six Days by Suzanne Shemwell

Kiss of Faith by Genell Dawson

Marion’s Marriage by Marion Bond West ( )