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In my Spirit “Hang on a second, something is happening.” Obviously what the doctor was talking about was actually seeing my stroke happen. There was no way for him to see what was doing in my spirit in the days after my stroke. It is even hard for me to see what is going on in my spirit. But something was going on. I was in the…

The Blog Year I don't know why I decided to start a blog. But I'm thankful that I did. I’m thankful too, for the support group and Valentina the speech therapist who facilitated the group. Without her or them, and those goals, I don't know where I would be.  Starting the blog required me to work on things that needed work, figuring out how to actually start…

The Whirlwind Year Looking back I often call the first year of my rebuilding journey the whirlwind year. All the ups and downs, figuring my medications, canceling plans over and over again because I didn't feel well, lots of doctor visits, and back again a couple times to the E.R. at the hospital. It was a chaotic year. The next trip to the hospital happened about a…

A Family of Builders  My name is Karl Hostetler and for my entire life I was a builder. I learned my trade from my dad who was a builder, he learned his trade from his dad, my grandpa, who was a builder and a pastor. My son, Bryan, is a builder as well. Four generations of builders. I guess building is in my blood. Maybe five generations?…

Well, I have a new nickname, Wordy. I guess it fits. It happened while I was working with a coach with an organization called Beyond Stillness. Their mission is to help people who have a brain injury tell their story. To guide someone to tell their story is pretty impactful. Even with me. I’ve been writing about my brain injury for four years with thousands and thousands…

Or, What the government used to harm me. God used it for my good. (A loose paraphrase of Gen 50:20) But before I tell you the story about why I built my porch, a prequel of sorts. Before the age of Facebook, our family had a program called something like “My family”?  It was a good way to communicate what was going on in your life and…

One of the advantages of having a stroke is you can see the individual parts where they sit, broken away from the whole of your life. One of the disadvantages of having a stroke is figuring out how to put pieces together again. Yeah, that too. This story is about one of the advantages, something I discovered while the pieces were broken apart. To see your spirit,…

That is the question I’m exploring. I’m no expert, just a man with lots of questions, and no answers. There will be no sage advice, I have nothing for you. Probably you will read it anyway 🙂. And if it bores you, blame my cooking skills.  I started to think about that question while I was at a symposium at Mt. Sac college for those who experienced…

Many years ago, my cousin Neil Stern built a set of stained glass windows for the Upland Brethren in Christ church. If you grew up in a church with weird church words, they sat between the narthex and the sanctuary. If you prefer normal words, they sat between the entryway and the auditorium.  Regardless of what words that were used, they lived there for forty years.  During…

You might ask, cost you what? Well, that's the question I'm struggling with. I was decluttering my office, cleaning up some of the files that are laying around, and organizing my bookshelf. And I saw a white notebook sitting in a line of notebooks that I didn’t recognize. What is that I thought? So I picked it up and opened it. I was looking at a schedule…