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Can we feel sad when we have something we longed for?

Lynne Baab • Friday December 10 2021

Heather went through three rounds of exhausting in-vitro fertilization before her healthy baby was born. In the months after the birth, she experienced post-partum depression, but she felt she couldn’t tell anyone about it. “I just felt I should not be feeling this way. After everything we’ve been through, why should I have any kind of depression?”

Kristin, mother of one child, lost a baby at 39 weeks of pregnancy, then miscarried. A year later, when her daughter was born with significant digestive issues and cried a lot, Kristin just about went crazy. She wanted to be thankful for having a child...

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Grief and gratitude in Advent

Lynne Baab • Thursday December 2 2021

“We have a prevailing feeling, especially in the west, that spirituality must always be uplifting and positive. This tendency arises out of a confusion about what love truly is. We know that God is love, and that we are called to live lives of love, but we often think of the fake love of Hollywood movies and catchy pop songs. Love is not a positive happy feeling. It is not always uplifting and encouraging. Love is selflessness, it is the rapture of being lost in the well being of others. So, it follows naturally that if we have love for creation,...

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The pivot between grief and gratitude

Lynne Baab • Saturday November 27 2021

Imagine you are crying about something, perhaps the death of a family member, the loss of a dream, an argument with a friend, or something deeply frustrating that’s happening in your body. Perhaps you feel distant from God in the midst of this sorrow, and you wonder if God sees what you are experiencing. Then imagine some time passes, and you are now laughing at a joke, relishing a delicious meal, or gazing awe-struck at a blazing sunset. What got you from one place to the other?

Almost all of the psalms of lament pivot from sadness/grief/anger to thankfulness/praise/joy. Some of them...

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Grief and thankfulness at the same time or back and forth?

Lynne Baab • Friday November 19 2021

Two years ago I began a journey of trying to hold grief in one hand and thankfulness in the other. The journey resulted in a series of blog posts (see below) and a new book. As a part of the journey, I found myself asking a question. Do we hold grief and gratitude in two hands equally at the same time? Or is one hand or the other sometimes more prominent?

I looked at lament psalms that describe grief. They almost always follow a pattern of sadness/anger/grief followed by thankfulness/praise. These psalms imply that we grieve and then we move out of...

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