Michelle Van Loon

Author: Michelle Van Loon

  • The view from So FL

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    Michelle Van Loon
    in

    First, the update: My mom continues to fade – she’s now asking for pain and anxiety meds round the clock – a big change from a week ago. She has only short periods of relative alertness, and her waking/sleeping are nearly indistinguishable to the naked eye. She’s eaten or drunk very little the last few…

  • A note from the cancer rollercoaster

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    Michelle Van Loon
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    Writing from a Starbucks in Tamarac, FL: We learned last week that my mom knew she had breast cancer for at least 2 years, and hid it from everyone in her life: she continued to work at a doctor’s office and volunteer at the hospital, and never sought treatment for herself, even as she watched…

  • Strapped onto the cancer rollercoaster

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    Michelle Van Loon
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    I got a phone call 11 years ago to tell me that my dad had just been diagnosed with leukemia. I remember thinking that I’d just been put onto a roller coaster I didn’t actually want to ride. And I couldn’t get off. Not until after the funeral. I just learned that my mom has…

  • Growing pains – part 3

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    Michelle Van Loon
    in

    “Leaving a church because you’re not ‘being fed’ is a sign of spiritual immaturity.” This might be true. Or false. I once had a conversation with a person who headed both children’s and women’s ministry in her mid-sized church. Sunday mornings, she circled through the church like an electron in an atomic accelerator, overseeing children’s…

  • Down the rabbit hole and into a writer’s life

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    Michelle Van Loon
    in

    I wasn’t paying attention to some big things God was doing in my life 30 years ago, but I had an opportunity to do a little bit of time travel yesterday. Birthday boy Bill and I went to see “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in Bloomington at the Illinois Shakespere Festival. (2-1/2 hours from Chicago, this is…

  • Growing pains – part 2

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    Michelle Van Loon
    in

    One reason the question of whether it is possible to “outgrow” a church keeps coming back to me is because of the process described in Ian Michael Cron’s semi-novel Chasing Francis. The book is an interesting hybrid of history lesson, travelogue, church diagnostic, and love story. It tells the story of an evangelical megachurch pastor…