Susan's Pendulum

It's one thing to sit in the living room and debate living wills, assisted suicide, and medical treatment at the end of life. It's...

My favorite sympathy card arrived today.  I had the biggest, silliest grin on my face as I read it.  There was nothing silly about the card,...

My mom died last weekend.  It so happened to be exactly 25 years after the death of my goddaughter.  Funeral and burial were this week. ...

A movie about dying of cancer. A professor who is alone, no family, no friends. She agrees to aggressive treatment, for the sake of resear...

My friend Polly posted today about an environmentalist's "green burial ."  Although my perspective on natural burial comes fro...

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The cha...

Every time we've sung "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" this Easter, I remembered my mother-in-law's funeral.  It was the fi...

There's disagreement out there on the topic of whether healthy babies should be baptized right after birth or if it's better to wait...

Sometimes it takes a long, long time. I noticed last fall, after seven years, that the loss was still there, but the tears weren't. ...

I'm not sure what's going on at work, but there's been a lot of talk about ghosts, haunted houses, and heaven. One of the gals ...

I'm nearly ready to give up on car shopping. We just can't bring ourselves to pay the going rate for a car that's 10 years old....

Phone calls around here often proceed thusly: Maggie: Hello, [last name] residence. Caller: Hi, Susan. [blah blah blah] Maggie: Ummmm.....

So Wednesday morning in chapel (after Rachel called about the baby but while there was still a smidge of hope that the ultrasound might fin...

Sometimes, when you most need to hear "I'm sorry for your loss" and comfort and sympathy, that's when you don't want t...

The All Saints service was planned for our regular midweek service. Then Pastor Goltermann (a retired pastor in the congregation) went to b...

At anniversary time, we often recall the details of that day. For example, the oncology nurses who brought us trays of food. On the day th...

The best way to tell what a church believes is to attend a couple of funerals. Is the focus on Jesus' redemption of sinners? Is the fo...

Or maybe I should title it ... When God Doesn't Answer the Way We Want. A friend was telling me excitedly the other day about her grands...

A huge cemetery. A blanket of snow dotted with thousands of evergreen wreaths tied with red ribbons. A group of mourners gathered around t...

Praise for the first of martyrs who saw You ready stand to help in time of torment, to plead at God's right hand. Like You, our sufferin...