Re-Boot

I am a United Methodist pastor, currently appointed to Center Moreland and Dymond Hollow UMC's, known as the Center Moreland Charge. I have in the past used this blog to post sermons and thoughts, but was not really using it for much more. I have recently, however, come through a very singular experience. My wife, Donna Charlene (Grieten) Cottle, was diagnosed in June 2009 with a brain tumor. She died on December 5th, 2010. That's a week and a half ago, as I write this.

As part of accompanying her though that journey, I narrated for our friends and family the sometimes daily events of Donna's illness, the accidental hemmorhage during her biopsy, and the struggle to maintain her quality of life through radiation, chemotherapy, physical therapy, and the life we led after all other treatments had been exhausted.

With her passing, the time to end that other blog is coming close, but blogging has become a part of me. It was a powerful experience. I find that I want to be able to describe what life will be like after her death, for both our son and me, but her Caringbridge blog does not seem like the right place. So I'm returning here to my old sermon blog. I've changed the color scheme, and will probably change other things as well. Consider it the same thing as buying a new bed or painting the walls a new color.

I will still post my sermons as the pastor of churches, but I will also now be describing the life of a mid-forties widower and his pre-teen son, a man who is seeking to get fit and healthy after over 20 years of being overweight, a seeker into the practice of Christianity as described by the Benedictine Rule, and perhaps even a budding musician and author. There are many things i'm looking forward to learning and experiencing, and this is perhaps the place to describe it.