The story begins so simply. During World War II, four English schoolchildren—two brothers and two sisters—are sent to live in an old country house to escape the bombing of London. One day they stumble upon an ordinary-looking wardrobe in a strangely empty room.

If you’ve read C. S. Lewis’s beloved books for children, The Chronicles of Narnia, you know what happens next.

The children are swept into a magical land where they meet mythological creatures, talking animals, an evil witch and the Great Lion Aslan himself, perhaps the most compelling and enduring image of God ever to appear in a story for children.

For many years now I’ve been blessed with the job of being what you might call the caretaker of Narnia. I help run a company that oversees all of C. S. Lewis’s writings. No movie, stage play or anything else based on the Narnian chronicles gets made without my permission.

You’d be surprised at some of the strange things people want to do with the books. Once, someone came to us wanting approval to make a musical of the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which the reindeer pulling the White Witch’s sleigh suddenly turn into dancing go-go girls.

A screenwriter thought American audiences would like the story better if a scene involving enchanted Turkish delight candy featured a bewitched cheeseburger instead! However, the Narnia movies currently in production, including The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, have avoided such errors.

Actually, it’s not quite accurate to call what I do a mere job. It’s more like a moral responsibility—a way of paying back one of the most profound debts of my life. You see, I’m not just a fan of C. S. Lewis. I’m also his stepson.

Lewis (I’ve always called him Jack, the nickname used by everyone who knew him) married my mother, Joy Davidman, when I was 10 years old. Four years after that my mother died. I was estranged from my father, who lived in America.

Suddenly a 62-year-old professor of medieval English literature who’d been a bachelor for almost all his life was the closest thing I had to a father. Jack was as grief-stricken as I was. And yet he did everything he could to raise me. I saw a C. S. Lewis few people knew, and I grew to love him deeply.

I didn’t feel that way on first meeting him. My own father was a successful writer, but he was an alcoholic and by the time he and my mother divorced he frightened me. My mother got to know Jack Lewis after writing to tell him how much his books on Christianity had meant to her.

The two began corresponding and then my mother moved to England and enrolled me in school there. I was excited to meet the author of the Narnia books and I pictured someone from Narnia itself, maybe a knight with a sword.

What I encountered instead was a bald, stout old man dressed in a shabby tweed coat and with tobacco stains on his teeth and hands.

I was crushed—until I began to get to know him. Almost immediately I noticed how funny he was. You always knew which room of the house he was in because someone was laughing there.

One of the first things he did was invite me out for a walk in the woods behind his house near Oxford. Jack loved trees and animals and gardens. More than that, he knew exactly how to talk to a child.

He was straightforward and took me seriously, not like some grown-ups, who get cutesy and condescending around children. He asked me what I liked to read and told me his favorite childhood books, including the Bea­trix Potter stories, which he said he still loved as an adult.

Most of all we talked about Narnia. We often spoke of it as if it were a real place, as if a faun or a centaur might appear in the woods at any moment. It was a delightful game.

I was enrolled at a boarding school, so I mostly saw Jack during the holidays. Perhaps what I loved most about him was how much he loved my mother.

She was diagnosed with cancer only a few months after she and Jack married. Doctors told her she had just months to live, but after much prayer she made what at first appeared a miraculous recovery.

She and Jack had four happy years, including trips to Ireland and Greece and—what I most remember—evening after evening of sitting by the fire at home or around the dinner table talking.

They talked about everything, especially books. They suited each other exactly. I had never seen my mother so content.

Then suddenly it was over. My mother’s cancer returned in force and in 1960 she died. Her last words were, “I am at peace with God.” To the world Jack presented a brave face, continuing his scholarly duties and keeping up a vast correspondence.

At home, though, he often wept openly. I tried not to do anything that would provoke his grief and he did the same for me.

I was a teenager by this point and he wasn’t in the best health. But he welcomed me home every holiday, kept close tabs on my progress at school and even bought me a motorcycle when I was older.

Two years after my mother died I learned that my father had been diagnosed with cancer and, rather than face the disease, had committed suicide. I was now an orphan. Jack knew just what to say to me.

He didn’t offer trite condolences—he knew too much about pain and grief for that. There had been tragedy in my family and he didn’t try to sugarcoat that. He could have washed his hands of me but he didn’t. Instead, he made me a part of the last years of his life.

Jack died in 1963, when I was 18. At his funeral I saw a candle burning in a simple candlestick on his coffin. Others say they remember no such thing. But I am certain I saw that candle. Its flame burned unwaveringly through the whole service.

It was a perfect image of Jack’s love—for me, for my mother, for anyone blessed enough to have come into his circle of friends.

Jack Lewis embodied values that sound old-fashioned these days—courtesy, duty, loyalty. He was steadfast in his devotion to me and so I now do my best to remain faithful to him. What would I have done without him, alone there in England with no one to turn to?

I had gone as a child hoping to meet a knight in armor from a fairy tale. I got something far better, a father who understood that what children need most of all is unwavering love.

Find out which C.S. Lewis books Guideposts readers love most!

Hear Douglas Gresham talk about the making of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Dressed in white with a stoic look on her face, Earlitha “Cookie” Johnson sat next to her superstar husband Earvin “Magic” Johnson at a press conference that would become an iconic moment in sports history.

It was November 7, 1991, only two months into her marriage to the 3-time MVP of the NBA. Unbeknownst to the flock of journalists present, Johnson was also pregnant with the couple’s first child. She braced herself as her husband made the announcement that would change both of their lives forever:

“Because of the HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers today,” the 6’9 legend announced to the world, shattering misconceptions of who could be impacted by the virus.

While some of the sports journalists in the room that day were crying, Johnson writes of that day in her new memoir, Believing in Magic: My Story of Love, Overcoming Adversity, and Keeping the Faith, “I was completely numb.”

Johnson and her unborn child did not contract HIV, but the stigma of AIDS and the wide-spread ignorance about HIV threatened to ostracize them from friends and loved ones. Above all, Johnson feared for her husband’s life and for the future of their family.

“Back then, in 1991, we’d really only heard of AIDS; that was the first time I’d heard of HIV, when he was diagnosed,” Johnson tells Guideposts.org. “You just automatically thought it was a death sentence.” While her husband was determined to be the face of HIV and educate the masses on getting tested and living a healthy life, Johnson had to choose what her role in this fight would be.

AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser—who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion and passed it on to her two children in childbirth—was able to convince both Johnsons that coming forward about the HIV diagnosis would save lives and be critical to the awareness movement.

Once Magic’s doctors informed her that symptoms of HIV could take up to ten years to manifest, Johnson decided not to focus on when or how he contracted the virus, but only on his life.

“Are you going to try and help him live, or are you just going to leave him and let him die?” Johnson asked herself. “I made that decision that I was going to help him live.”

But to support her husband, she first had to support herself and her baby.

“I had to get in deep into the [Bible],” Johnson tells Guideposts.org. “Going through it at the time, it was scary, but God said, ‘no weapon formed against me shall prosper’; He said, ‘if you put the kingdom of God first and His righteousness, all things will be given to you.’ You have to remember these promises, and say, ‘I’m not going to worry because of what God said.”

The promises of God, and particularly Psalm 91, would become her lifeline.

“That helped me get through the pain to where, now, I feel like I can easily talk to Him. I don’t have to turn to Him only when there’s a problem, I can turn to Him anytime, rejoicing.”

These days, Cookie and Magic Johnson have many reasons to rejoice. She’s the owner and designer of the jean line CJ by Cookie Johnson, the mother of two children, and her husband continues to be living proof that there is abundant life after an HIV diagnosis and an HIV/AIDS awareness activist and philanthropist through the Magic Johnson Foundation. After 12 years of on-and-off dating, 2 broken engagements and a brief, two-week split 10 years into their marriage, the Johnsons also just celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary with a lavish ceremony on the French Riviera with family and friends.

“When you think about Earvin making it through HIV and us making it through 25 years, that’s a testimony,” Johnson says. “God really wanted Earvin to be the face of HIV and to help save as many lives as possible. In the beginning it didn’t feel like it but when you look back on it, Earvin took on that role and all the blessings came afterwards. My role was to keep him strong so he could do his purpose. God kept us together when there were so many break-ups, so many times I could’ve walked away, he could’ve walked away, but somehow every time we walked away we always got back together. I believe that was God pulling us through because He had this purpose for us and it continues.”

While Johnson was out promoting her jean line across the country, she discovered her purpose extended beyond supporting her husband and children; many women also flocked to her as a source of inspiration in tough times.

“Women would come up to me and go, ‘I didn’t come for the jeans, I just wanted to meet you because you have no idea how you’ve helped me in my life, just watching you and your husband.’ And they would share their stories and we would be crying together and it happened everywhere I went.”

Johnson decided the time was right to share her story with the world.

“The whole point of writing this book was I felt like I was telling my testimony,” she says of Believing in Magic. “I thought maybe if I write a book it can help more people in that same way, to see the way God works in my life, maybe it could help someone else in their life.”

By sharing the ups and downs of her life, she hopes other swill be encouraged to know that they are not alone.

“[Whatever you’re going through,] God can help you navigate through that,” she says. “[My] prayer always is, ‘God, what is your plan for me?’

Hearing God’s plan, she says, is like having a gut-level feeling. “You know it’s right because you will have such a peace about it. You don’t always know exactly what [your path] is, but it’s about taking that fear and turning it into faith. That’s what keeps you going.”