My brother John Middendorf died suddenly on June 21, 2024. It has been three months, which seems unreal to me. Hasn’t it been an eternity? Then again, it feels like yesterday—or that it never happened at all. How could someone so alive now be dead? Losing him has felt like a ripping out of something central in my core. Until …
And church needs you, too. Pandemics are isolating. Four years ago, so much was unknown about COVID-19, but one thing was certain: It spread from person to person. Hence the need to keep people separate. This meant avoiding group gatherings, which was painful, because we are social creatures. For Christians, the gathering we missed the most was church. I know …
How long is grief? I guess what I’m really asking is, “Does grief ever end?” Last week I had a five-hour drive ahead of me, so I looked at my list of downloaded audiobooks borrowed from the library. Seasons of Sorrow by Tim Challies was one of them. The subtitle was “The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God.” That was …
Permit me to humbly suggest the following: If you are ever invited to a 100th birthday party, consider attending. And if the centenarian is one of your dearly departed mother’s most treasured friends, do whatever you can to attend. And if she was also someone you yourself loved since you were a child because she stayed involved during sleepover weekends …
Whenever I hear the word “polarization,” I can’t help but think of cell division. Specifically? Anaphase, which perhaps you remember from high school biology. All the organelles have been doubled and are bunched at the edges—in moments it will split down the middle and become two cells. Anaphase is polarized. All those organelles are squinching themselves on one side of the …
Marijuana, Adolescents, and Schizophrenia Marijuana, Adolescents, and Schizophrenia By the time this drops, I will be one week out from age 65. Yet, I’m not grieving—I welcome growing older. Age has its advantages: Fewer emotional roller coasters, for one. For another, I’m better able to articulate my thoughts. And my body hasn’t betrayed me (yet). However, parts of my brain …
It isn’t hate to speak the truth. I am one of those parents who didn’t let her daughter (though she begged and begged) read the Harry Potter book series when she was 10…and 11…and 12. Even though her friends were reading them. Even though the whole world seemed crazy about them, and she was an avid reader. Why not, you …
Egomania, anyone? When I was a child—maybe six, maybe seven—I went through a phase of suspecting the entire world existed as a massive play with one star—me. That is, I was the main actor and the rest of humanity played supporting roles. That is, the universe revolved around me. That is, I was all ego. Someone didn’t recognize me or …
To tell you about justice, let me introduce you to Aidah. She worked in our home (our “inside worker”) during the eight months our family lived in Kenya in 2003/2004. Don and I worked at Kijabe Mission Hospital as family physicians, and our three children attended elementary and middle school at nearby Rift Valley Academy. She helped me buy food …
The first time I ever heard of a lobotomy was in the early 1980s. I was a medical student, but I didn’t learn about it in class. Instead, I was in a darkened room with a bunch of other family members, watching a family home movie filmed 30 years earlier. The scene was some kind of a garden party, and …