Edward Grinnan - The Promise of Hope: How True Stroies of Hope and Inspiration Sved My Life and How They Can Transform Yours

The Promise of Hope

ISBN-10: 0-8249-4815-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-8249-4815-3

Published by Guideposts
16 East 34th Street
New York, New York 10016
guideposts.org

Copyright 2011 by Edward Grinnan. All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Distributed by Ideals Publications, a Guideposts company
2630 Elm Hill Pike, Suite 100
Nashville, Tennessee 37214

Guideposts and Ideals are registered trademarks of Guideposts.

Acknowledgments

Every attempt has been made to credit the sources of copyrighted material used in this book. If any such acknowledgment has been inadvertently omitted or miscredited, receipt of such information would be appreciated.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grinnan, Edward.

The promise of hope : how true stories of hope and inspiration saved my life and how they can transform yours : nine keys to powerful personal change / Edward Grinnan.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8249-4815-3 (alk. paper)

1. Conduct of life. 2. Change (Psychology) 3. Hope. 4. Inspiration. I. Title.
II. Title: How true stories of hope and inspiration saved my life and how they can
transform yours. III. Title: Nine keys to powerful personal change.

BJ1521.G84 2011

155.2.5dc22

2011003241

Cover design by Georgia Morrissey and Audrey Razgaitis

Cover photograph by Gail Zucker

Interior design by Lorie Pagnozzi

Typeset by Aptara

Printed and bound in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my family; to Julee and the dogs; and for Van

Contents

Preface

I t was a raw, blustery late afternoon in early spring almost two years back now, and you couldnt tell if the howling was coming from the wind in the still-bare trees or the hungry pack of coyotes up the hill behind our getaway place in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. The air still held an insinuation of winter, as if it might not be done with us yet. With the land still so barren, spring is tough on the coyotes and bears, and we had a golden retriever pup with us who was not even two yet. Id have to keep an eye on her, but she wouldnt like it. Shed want to explore.

I brought in some more wood for the stove. My wife, Julee, glanced at a sheaf of legal-looking papers strewn across the dining room table. It was a book contract I was about to sign.

Is Millie in? she asked.

Yeah.

You cant leave her out with that bear around.

I never do.

A bear would make short work of her. You saw what it did to our trash can. Those coyotes too. They hunt in packs.

Shes in.

So, Julee said, pointing to the papers, whats this book about?

Its about the power of personal change and what Ive learned from my years at Guideposts, helping people tell their stories of hope and transformation and redemption. Its a good subject. Change is one of the hardest things. Look at the stuff people go through. Just look at some of the stuff weve been through, Jules.

She paused for a moment, as if she was hoping Id actually heard what I said.

Are you going to tell your own story, Edward? she finally asked.

It was the one question I hoped she wouldnt ask.

I thought Id touch on it, I said noncommittally.

Julee tended to the fire in the woodstove a little more vigorously than was strictly necessary. Touch on it? she said. How do you just touch on a story like yours?

I didnt have an answerat least not yet.

For twenty years, Edward, youve helped all kinds of people, from celebrities to ordinary people, tell their personal stories for millions of readers of the magazine every month. And its good. It helps people. Millions of people. But nobody knows your story, not in all these years. Maybe its time you come out of hiding and tried some of your own medicine. Did you ever think your story might help people?

This would be a good time, I decided, to take Millie for a walk. I grabbed her leash and went back outside to mull the question over. I sat in a log chair and tilted back, looking up through the denuded branches at the graying sky, where streaks of sunset were already beginning to appear. Millie settled at my feet.

Julee was right. For all these years Id been helping people tell their true, first-person stories of hope and inspiration in Guideposts magazine, urging them to find the spiritual and emotional truth of their experiences and bare their souls to millions of readers. Sometimes I felt more like a therapist than an editor. And yet these stories had changed me. They changed my life in ways I never could have dreamed. Perhaps it was time for a dose of my own medicine.

Our stories reveal and define us. They are the road maps of our lives. Our stories transform us and change the people around us. Human beings have been telling their stories since they could carve on cave walls, and probably earlier. We may be hardwired for storytelling. We are our stories, and all stories are about change. Our stories are as human as our flesh. So why was I afraid of mine?

In a way, I suppose, I thought my story was long behind me, almost as if it had happened to someone else. I would have to go back and find that person and get in touch with who he was and who, to a great extent, I still am at some level deep inside. That frightened me. I didnt want to go back there and look at parts of my life I thought Id buried forever. But you never do bury anything completely. Who you are today is because of who you were yesterday. Life is a continuum, and our stories stretch across that continuum. We can only change ourselves so much within the context of who we are, though that change is often profound and transformative, even redemptive. And I was certainly a person redeemed.

Millie whined demurely, a pitiful sound coming from a ninety-pound dog. She was hungry for dinner. That was her story.

Back inside, Julee had stoked a fire that would have made Hephaestus proud, and the cabin was quite warm now.

I see you are literally turning up the heat on me, Jules.

She was holding the pen and thrusting it toward me.

If you are going to sign that contract, then sign it to write an honest book, because I dont think I want to spend a year never seeing you while you put together something about other peoples stories and what you learned from them. Theyre great stories. Just put yours in there too. Its going to help people. It will give them hope. I promise you, Edward. Your story is why I married you.

The woodstove was throwing off so much light it hurt my eyes. I took the pen from Julee, sat at the table, pawed through the papers till I found the last page and signed my name where it said author .

Introduction

Find a Job, Any Job

I arrived for my job interview at Guideposts magazine one day in 1986 having barely heard of the publication. I only knew that there was an opening for an assistant editor. A friend thought that perhaps I was interviewing at a travel magazine. In a way, he was rightif you substitute the word journey for travel.

At the time, though, I was simply looking for a job, practically any job, to keep body and soul together: a body that, at age thirty-two, Id subjected to almost unbearable abuseand that had come all too close to an early endand a soul that had long disappeared behind the clouds.