Articles By: Linda Brendle

Loss and Gain – They Never Travel Separately

Last week I exchanged several e-mails with a friend who had just returned from a trip to care for a loved one in distress. In addition to travel fatigue, she was feeling especially sad because of the approaching anniversary of the death of someone who played a major role in her life. Her last e-mail...

October 12th, 2012 | Essays, Featured | Read More

A Child’s View of God

This post is a little bit of a departure for me. You can blame my grandchildren for that. Last month we spent a few days in Colorado, first staying with the kids while Christian and Amy had a little adult time in Las Vegas, and later spending some quality time with the whole family. Zoe is almost three...

October 2nd, 2012 | Essays, Featured | Read More

Jesus, the Caregiver

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance: all the classic stages of grief. As a caregiver, I’d add another stage: burnout. My mom’s memory started to fail about 15 years ago, and my role as her caregiver started with an occasional offer of assistance (“Here, Mom, let me help you with...

September 21st, 2012 | Essays, Featured | Read More

Remembering | by Linda Brendle

We celebrated the Lord’s Supper at church last Sunday morning. It’s a beautiful service done in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, but remembering is not something Mom does very well. She is in the mid to late stages of Alzheimer’s, and Communion has become very confusing for her. She...

July 2nd, 2012 | Essays, Featured | Read More

Will Christianese Sell?

Will Christianese Sell? When I first started asking for feedback on my book, I was told to tell my story, to put myself into it, and that’s what I did. For some people, that seems to be a problem. Last year I posted the first 5 chapters of my book on Authonomy.com, a website where writers post their...

June 3rd, 2012 | Essays, Meditations | Read More

How Much More Is Enough

One of the disadvantages of country living is the lack of services. We have city water and electricity, but we have a septic tank instead of city sewer service. We don’t have cable, so the only way we can get TV reception is with a satellite dish. And then there’s Internet service, or rather, there’s...

May 25th, 2012 | Essays, Featured | Read More

Saying Good-Bye to Frodo

Leanne, a good friend of mine, recently started a blog called “Being Sam” based on Sam Gamgee in “The Lord of the Rings.” In her blog she explores what it means to be Sam, to walk alongside another, to be “swept up in another’s journey and struggle. The journey is not mainly [Sam’s],...

April 18th, 2012 | Essays | Read More

The Arrogance of Charity

I’ve been getting a lot of “social justice” input lately. In addition to Christian’s blog which focuses a lot on the subject, a friend lent me the movie The Help, another friend lent me the book by the same name, and Blockbuster finally sent us Blind Side after months on the waiting list....

April 9th, 2012 | Essays, Social Justice | Read More

Pray Hard

One day last week I was reading one of the blogs I follow and saw a word cloud based on Romans 12. One particular phrase jumped out at me: “Pray hard.” This is a phrase that I’ve seen and heard quite a bit, especially over the last few years, and it’s always raised questions in my mind. What...

April 1st, 2012 | Meditations | Read More

How Am I Doing with My Messy New Year’s Resolution | by Linda Brendle

According to most of what I’ve heard and read, most New Year’s resolutions don’t last more than a couple of weeks. We’re a little over six weeks into the new year, so I thought I’d check and see how I was doing. In case you missed it in my post called “Wishing You a Messy New Year,” here’s...

March 11th, 2012 | Essays, Family, Featured, Meditations | Read More