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Important anniversaries in 2020: Prohibition

Lynne Baab • Saturday February 22 2020

In 1880, a woman named Agatha lived in a small town in Kansas. Agatha had a millinery shop, so she knew many of the women in town. Agatha also had a limp, caused by permanent damage to her hip when her father knocked her down a flight of stairs at age 9. Her father was drunk at the time.

A temperance advocate, Drusilla Wilson, visited Agatha’s town to recruit women to fight for prohibition of alcohol. Agatha signed up because of her own story, and because she knew so many of the stories of the women in town. Too many of them...

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Grief AND thankfulness: What I learned from writing this series

Lynne Baab • Thursday February 13 2020

My husband Dave and I were talking about this series of blog posts, and he said, “You know, every single day there are things I grieve and things I’m thankful for. . . . Every day.” I agreed with him, and then I began wondering, why does this feel so revolutionary?

This series of posts has revealed my deep-seated adoption of a set of values – from my parents and from the wider culture – that have been destructive to me. My thinking has been skewed my whole life. I truly believed my parents’ approach to life: if you do things right,...

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Grief AND thankfulness: A story and some new words

Lynne Baab • Thursday February 6 2020

My dear friend Mike Purdy was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer nine months ago. His body is responding well to treatment, but for his kind of cancer the treatment usually only works for a finite period of time. He gave a testimony at church recently about the ways God has worked in his life since the diagnosis.

He said that four words describe his journey: sadness, submission, gratitude and relief. He talked about each word in turn, and when he talked about his sadness, I could see many parallels with the way I’ve been writing about grief in this series of...

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Grief AND thankfulness: How to listen

Lynne Baab • Thursday January 30 2020

Imagine that your friend is talking about something important. You hear hints of grief and thankfulness, and you want to listen well and draw out those two ideas. Here are some suggestions for helping your conversation partners explore grief AND thankfulness, going from the basic to the more complex.

1. Pay attention to – and avoid – typical roadblocks to listening. My personal favorite is giving advice, which turns conversations away from emotions and thoughts and focuses on practical solutions (and away from my conversation partner’s thoughts to mine!). Another common way of stopping listening is to take the conversation back to...

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