Home & Blog | Lynne Baab

Creative prayer: Joy spot sightings

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 11 2019

Choosing habits that nurture thankfulness has changed my life. I always found it easy to see needs, and even as a young adult I was a champion intercessory pray-er. I struggled with depression for 16 years of my early adult life, so I had a lot of practice in seeing the half-empty part of the glass.

Twenty-five years ago, Dave and I decided we would always begin our prayer times together with some thankfulness prayers. We made that decision because, at that time, life was filled with challenges. Our prayer times, a couple of times a week at bedtime, were filled with...

Read full article »

Friendship skills: Obstacles to thankfulness

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 12 2018

I’ve been writing the past two weeks about the importance of asking, giving and thanking in friendships. Why don’t we do those actions more often?

Perhaps we are slow to thank people because we really don’t want to admit that we need others. We don’t want to admit that kind of weakness. Perhaps we don’t express thanks because we are so caught up in the stresses of our lives that we forget to take the time for that note or word of thanks. Perhaps we are so caught up in our own lives that we forget to notice what other people have...

Read full article »

The friendship skills of asking, giving and thanking: We belong together

Lynne Baab • Friday July 6 2018

Giving and thanking shape friendships. When we ask for help, we are giving our friend a gift, the opportunity to give a gift back to us. And when we thank our friend for that gift, we acknowledge we depend on our friend. We need our friend, and we honestly admit that need. And this binds us together.

Brother David Stendl-Rast – who I quoted in last week’s post on giving, asking, noticing and thanking – believes that the person “who says ‘thank you’ to another really says, ‘we belong together.’ Giver and thanksgiver belong together.”[1] When we ask for help, we create...

Read full article »

Friendship skills: Giving, asking, noticing and thanking

Lynne Baab • Thursday June 28 2018

Giving in friendship can involve providing help in a variety of ways. Giving includes presents. In the broadest sense, all acts of kindness in friendship are gifts: listening carefully, sending a card or message expressing sympathy, or accepting that a friend is experiencing extraordinary challenges at work and won’t be able to spend time together for a while. Acts of initiative can also be viewed as gifts of friendship: reaching out to someone who is new in town or new on the job, or sharing a vulnerable feeling with a friend to indicate they can do the same with you. Offering...

Read full article »

<< Newer | Older >>