Take Heart

Holding Grief and Gratitude as a Special Needs Mom: An Interview With Dr. Lynne M. Baab

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 3 • Episode 133

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Sara talks with writer and professor, Dr. Lynne Baab, who shares her wisdom on carrying both grief and gratitude in one's life. Lynne offers practical tips and advice for nurturing a gratitude practice, improving listening skills, and navigating difficult emotions such as sadness and anger. The conversation also delves into the challenges of receiving unsolicited advice and the importance of finding a supportive community. 

Ep.133; June 20, 2023

Key Moments:
[2:46] Grief and gratitude both stretch you
[10:20] How we deny gratitude in our American culture
[14:28] Our perspective shift as Christians
[18:38] Prayer is key for grief and gratitude balance
[23:52] Listening is a skill that can improve
[30:49] Anger & sadness are taboo in Christian society
[33:51] Learning to listen and finding spiritual direction

Resources:
https://www.lynnebaab.com
Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life by Lynne M. Baab
Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation by Lynne M. Baab
Sabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest by Lynne M. Baab
Prayers of the Old Testament (LifeGuide Bible Studies) by Lynne M. Baab
Prayers of the New Testament (LifeGuide Bible Studies) by Lynne M. Baab
Grief AND thankfulness: How to Listen an article by Lynne M. Baab

*Lynne Baab has a friend who is expanding her spiritual direction practice, Lisa Keosababian. Lisa conducts spiritual direction by zoom, so location is no problem: https://www.spiritualdirectionwithlisa.com    

If you enjoyed the show:

Sara Clime: Hi, this is Sara Clime, and I have a special guest today. My guest is Dr. Lynne Baab. Hi Lynne. It is such a pleasure to have you here with us today.

Dr. Lynne M. Baab: Hey Sara, I'm really happy to be with you,

Sara: Lynne Baab was a military kid who lived in 12 houses in her first 15 years. She became a committed Christian at 19. She earned a Master of Divinity Degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in her 30s and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Washington in her 50s. She has served as an associate pastor in a Presbyterian Church and as a lecturer in pastoral theology. She lives in Seattle with her husband, only nine blocks from her beloved nine-year-old granddaughter. She has written numerous Christian books and novels, and Lynne blogs weekly about prayer at www.lynnebaab.com. That is LYNNEBAAB.com. Her latest book is Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude and The Christian Life. Her best-selling book, The Sabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom and The Rhythms of Rest, is now available as an audiobook, as well as paperback and Kindle. She has also written several Bible studies, including Prayer of the Old Testament and Prayers of the New Testament. 

You and I met a year ago, whenever I was getting my master's in ministry leadership. You are an adjunct professor of mine at Hope International University in California. I believe that you were still there, correct? 

Dr. Lynne: Yup. 

Sara: I have actually been an avid blog reader ever since. I wanted to mention right now to all of our listeners that we are going to have links to everything in our show notes. I am going to be dropping the names of so many things. You are one busy woman. You Have written so many wonderful things and are involved in so many things. We're gonna have links to everything in the show notes. Make sure to check that out. I wanted to make sure to mention that upfront. I'll mention it again later.
I want to talk about the book that we mentioned earlier, your latest book, Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life. This book was extremely impactful to me. I actually read a different one of yours, which I loved, called Joy Together: The Spiritual Practices For Your Congregation. I highly recommend that book as well. However, I believe that our listeners would greatly benefit from your book, The Two Hands. There's a quote that inspired this book.

Dr. Lynne: It was 2019 in about September. All of us now orient our lives to the events of February and March 2020, the beginning of the pandemic. This was about six months before the pandemic. I was reading something. I don't know where I found this quotation. That's the joke. Later, I looked it up in the original form, but I don't know how I first heard about it. The guy writing it is a psychotherapist in California, Francis Weller, and he's written quite a bit about grief. That's one of his topics. I'm gonna read you the first sentence of the quotation, and then as we go along, maybe I'll read the rest of it. Here he goes, "The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand, and gratitude in the other, and to be stretched large by them." So to be stretched by both grief and gratitude. Now, at the time that I read this quotation, my husband and I had this long-standing gratitude practice. He and I pray together once a week for half an hour, 45 minutes. For a long, long time, I mean, three years or so, we've been starting that prayer time with thankfulness, prayers. These thankful practices have transformed me. There's that book of 10,000 Gifts, whichever it is, that book on thankfulness. People are encouraged to make thankfulness lists and use Post-it notes to write thankfulness things down. I've really tried to do that. But I viewed everything as kind of black and white. Either I'm thankful, or I'm sad, and thankfulness should take away the sadness. This quotation helped me to see, oh, the wrong paradigm. The paradigm is to hold thankfulness in one hand and grief in the other. You can imagine that during the pandemic, this was the single most helpful thing I did. I could not get over how helpful it was in the pandemic because our lives were up-ended, and I was so sad. Yet in the midst of it, there were all these things to be thankful for. Without this quotation, I would have gone into the pandemic thinking, Well, thankfulness should take away the sadness. But this way, both are true. As a parent and grandparent, this is hugely helpful. As a wife, this is helpful. As a person who does a lot of writing and ministry and who has friends who have needs, this is helpful. It's just been helpful to me in so many ways.

Sara: Yes, in your book, you had a quote that just really stood out to me.

Dr. Lynne: Yeah, so it's interesting to think about what it looks like to hold them in two hands because, in the Psalms, they are not actually held simultaneously in two hands. If you imagine grief on one side, gratitude on the other side. In the Psalms, it says if one hand is heavier for a while, and then the other hand is heavier for a while, and then back to the other hand, and then back to the other hand. 
There's a sense in the Psalms that we go back and forth. We toggle back and forth between grief and gratitude. That seems to be very common in my life, too, back and forth, back and forth. There really are moments when it's simultaneous, where you think of the example of maybe your child is in the hospital. You've got this amazing nurse who is so loving and kind, and caring to your child, and you are so worried. You are so sick of having been in the hospital numerous times. You are so sad that your kid has to deal with this and that you have to deal with this. In that instance, imagining yourself in the hospital room, one hand has grief, and one hand has gratitude. While you're holding them there, look who appears a friend or family member who's bringing you a balloon or some flowers or some cookies. That's one more thing to be grateful for, but the sadness doesn't go away. In that instance, you've got two hands at the same time. It's kind of useful, I think, to think about what is this look like. Is it back and forth? Yes, sometimes. Is it both in the two hands at the same time? Yeah, sometimes.

Sara: You do talk about the Psalms in this book, too. That's one of my favorite parts of the book, too, is the Psalms. It's an invitation to bring all of our emotions, to go into God's presence, and to bring them honestly to him. That is one of the things that I feel that I felt lacking growing up. I did not feel that I was invited to do that, honestly. Not that people in my life weren't inviting me to do that, but I was not picking up that invitation. It's not that I'm blaming anybody, but it's you feel you have to put maybe that "good Christian girl or that good Christian mentality." I love the way that you put that in there. You called it a rhythmical life moving back and forth between those emotions. You mentioned the Psalms quite a bit here that it's a perfect model for feeling and talking about those emotions.

Dr. Lynne: I'm with you completely with the need to be a good Christian girl, although in my childhood, we went to church, and then we didn't talk about God at home at all. What my mother talked about was optimism. My mother is the queen of optimism. You do not be sad. You do not express anger. You do not express any emotion that might be construed to be negative. You just have a positive, upbeat view of life. That's part of where I got this idea that these are opposites. You're either thankful or sad; you can't be both, and yeah. When I became a Christian or a committed Christian, as I say, at 19, I could not get over how rich the Psalms were. I could not get over how many emotions are in there, and as you said, God invites us to bring them to God over and over and over. That was my first invitation to begin to feel some of those emotions we label as negative.

Sara: As you said, the lessons from our childhood, our families of origin, they carry with us. Some of those can be good and bad. You gave some examples in the book that were wonderful, which helped orient that in a way that was very moving as well. It was in chapter five, overcoming your inner voices that deny both the grief and the gratitude because you can deny gratitude as well.

Dr. Lynne: Absolutely. We can deny gratitude by falling into the consumer culture. The consumer culture tells us we need more. We need more possessions. We need better-behaved kids. We need whatever. We can deny gratitude. I think, as a Christian right now, it's harder to deny gratitude because there are so many voices out there telling us to practice thankfulness. I mean, we can still deny it, absolutely. I think it's much easier to deny the sad and angry voices. I want to emphasize that it's not just our family of origins, the American culture, and in fact, the culture of the whole Western world... You read in my bio. We lived in New Zealand for 10 years. New Zealand has this optimism thing, just like Americans. We're supposed to be optimistic. We're supposed to put on a bright face; we're supposed to look at the best. There's even a sense that you won't heal from diseases unless you're optimistic. There's that whole thing about fighting cancer through optimism, fighting the word fighting associated with optimism. I believe every single adult now living in the Western world needs to grow in acknowledging the wide range of emotions that human beings feel. These include the emotions that we label as negative. I don't know how else to describe them. I keep saying sadness and anger, but there are other ones too. At least I have viewed them as negative for so much in my life that it's really important for me to sit with them and take a deep breath. One of the questions we have to ask, Sara, is, what does grief actually look like? We hold grief in one hand. There's an enormous body of literature out there on how to grieve and what grieving looks like. We have to be willing to access some of that. One of the things that it looks like is sitting with sadness, breathing, breathing, breathing, and then letting it go if it's ready to go. I mean, part of our fear of sadness is that we think it's going to last forever. We think that once we feel sadness, we're falling into this huge pool that we can't climb out of. We're going to fall into the sadness pool, or we're going to be there the rest of our lives, and it's going to be awful. Everybody's going to judge us because we're not being optimistic and upbeat, and thankful. And we're going to be in this dark pool. We're going to be there forever. Emotions come and go. That's one of the other things we have to learn is emotions come and go. Okay, I'm sad right now. Okay, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, feel the sadness. I'm ready to let the sadness go for a minute and talk to that nice nurse who walked back into the hospital room. We have a lot of growing to do in living with, sitting with emotions, bringing them into God's presence, and then letting them go for a while.

Sara: You talk about that in your book about how you became very comfortable; you had to learn about your body, about what that looked like, physically in your body. You realized anger became part of that grief. You could feel that rising up in you, how that felt in your body. I don't want to put words in your mouth. For me, once I really lean into my emotions, whenever I began to heal. 
Whenever I started to really put them all out there, it is hard. You feel like, man, if I'm going to put it all out here, am I ever going to come off the brink? You feel like you're white-knuckling on the edge of that cliff. Am I gonna be able to pull myself back up? What I get from your book is, you're not over the cliff; you're actually in God's hands, and that's the difference for me. 

Dr. Lynne: That's beautiful, Sara. I don't think I wrote those words. I'm really glad you got that idea out of the book because that's really beautiful. We feel like we're hanging on the edge of a cliff, or in my metaphor, we feel like we're going to dive into this dark pool that we're never going to come out of, but in reality, we're in God's hands. I love what you said about the physical body because, yeah, I have identified where anger is in my body. I can feel it in my chest. I can feel it in my throat. I'm only just beginning to learn where sadness is in my body. Christians are so largely disembodied. One of the things that seem really important to me in this journey of being honest about emotions is using our bodies, whether that's walking, dancing, bicycling, or moving around the house with a little bit of zip in our step. But learning to grow back in touch with our physical bodies because, again, in the same way that the Western world and the Christian world kind of say be happy, don't be sad. I think a lot of our Christian churches are saying your body doesn't matter. It's your soul. It's your spirit. That's where the real things happen. We really are physical beings. God made these bodies. How can our bodies help to teach us how to feel some of these sad emotions?


Sara: Right. You also talked about how Jesus never apologized for his tears; he never indicated that sadness shouldn't be expressed; those emotions should be expressed.

Dr. Lynne: I think that's astonishing that he never apologized. Jesus Christ, twice, as you may remember, once when he's looking over Jerusalem and saw the disobedience and lack of interest in his own ministry, he cried and says, "How I've long to gather you together, under my wings, like a hen gathers her chicks." Then the other time that he cries is at the tomb of Lazarus when he's there with Mary and Martha, Lazarus sisters, and the village. They all cry together. He's not the least bit defensive. He's not the least bit apologetic about either of these. It's very straightforward. I think if we could put ourselves in the mindset of the Jews of Jesus's time, or the Jews of the time when the Psalms were written, some in the community, I think we would find that people cried a whole lot more easily than they do now. Many of us, not maybe all, but many of us have been shamed out of crying.

Sara: Yes, absolutely. I think part of it is the fear of falling into that pit. Am I ever going to fall back out? We hear repeatedly from people in our community; we fear people will get tired of listening to our issues or to our problems. Our problems are our lifetime issues, and it is repetitive. Will they get tired of hearing us? 
I think you touched on something like that in your book, as well. Sometimes there feels like there's a timeline to grief. I think yours was in relation to death in the book. It actually sparked something. Sometimes it feels like, okay, well, we've been over this for a few months. Let's move on. Can we move on? We've often talked about it, at least with my house and with some friends in our community, as well as the special needs of the disability community, that our lives kind of make people uncomfortable. It's a very difficult life, but it's a beautiful life.l It makes people uncomfortable. What advice would you give to people to help that person grieve in a healthy way that might not have that support?

Dr. Lynne: Yeah, it's a huge challenge. The advice-giving is just brutal. My parallel is that my husband has had a chronic lung disease since 2015. I cannot get over how if someone asks him how he's doing and he mentions anything about his health, the first thing out of their mouth is advice. I would imagine that a lot of your moms and dads and family members who listen to your podcast and read your book have the same exact experience. On the one hand, when we're sad and we need support, we've got to develop a community of people who actually will support us. That's part of what you're providing with your podcast and your book. I do think that's where support groups of people who have the same situation are so important. I also think that's where prayer is really important because Jesus gives that support consistently, without advice-giving, and with love and care and is present there with us in his way of crying with us, just like he cried over Jerusalem, and he cried with Mary and Martha. One of the things I really wanted to say on this podcast today was prayer is my big, big topic these days. I've spoken a lot on prayer. Every time I speak on prayer afterward, people come up to me. It's almost like a recording. They all say I don't pray enough. I wish I prayed more. My passion is to help people gain some freedom to enjoy when they do pray. Sure, try creative new ways of praying, and lighten up about prayer people, and do it the best you can. I think it feels like a lot of people are limited in their prayers because they feel so much guilt about not praying often enough. It's like, prayer makes me feel guilty because I haven't prayed for a while. I want to say Jesus is there waiting, loving you. He's right beside you. He's there. He's been there all the way through. He's been there with you in every setting, with your child. To even imagine Jesus beside you, and turn to him and smile, without even needing to have words, just a smile, or a tear, turn to him with a tear. That's something I really wanted to say today, both the grief and the gratitude portions of holding these things in two hands, both of them involve not just the grief. Turning to Jesus with the grief, not just feeling gratitude, but turning to Jesus with gratitude. Gratitude is about being grateful to someone, the person who's brought the balloon to your kid or Jesus, who lies behind all the good gifts that we have in our lives. It's all about turning to Jesus as much as possible. It's not that we don't need people, we absolutely need people, but we also need prayer, both of those two things.

Sara: Absolutely. That was one of the most profound things I personally got from your class was prayer. And it has been one of the things that I struggle with the most. And I think I carried that through from your class was simple ways to pray that it didn't have to be so complex. I could be in the car and feel him next to me. To anybody who is listening, that is a loved one or a friend or a ministry leader of somebody who has disabilities or special needs or who is caring for somebody with disabilities or special needs, and you want to be a better support. I'm going to drop a link in the show notes. It is an article that Lynne wrote. It is called Grief and Thankfulness: How to Listen. It is phenomenal. It is that simple. In addition to praying for us, is to pray for your loved one, to pray for your friend, to pray for those that are in your ministry. How to listen to them, and how to ask important questions. Say, tell me more about your loved one. Sometimes we need to talk about it and have somebody listen to us. We've talked about that numerous times, and it cannot be stressed enough. To have somebody to listen because our lives can't be fixed. Quite frankly, we know that, and we don't want anybody to fix them. This article is beautiful. It's going to be in the show notes. I think that that is one of the things that we forget how simple it is to be good to other people, to be good humans to each other, and to model Jesus; how many times he just sat and listened to people.

Dr. Lynne: I'm going to disagree with one little thing you said. I agree with 99% of it. The word “easy,” I'm going to disagree with. That's because listening is not easy. At the same time, it's a skill that can be learned. I think that's something people don't know is that you can work on listening skills. There's lots and lots of material out there on how to grow as a listener. Listening is a big topic of mine. I wrote a book on it about 10 years ago, exactly. When I did the research for the book, it was fascinating that in communication textbooks they’ll have a section on listening. They all say listening can be learned. Empathy can be learned. We can learn how to watch for signals in the other person of what they're thinking and feeling. The biggest challenge in listening is to deal with what's going on in our minds when we listen. Let’s even give the example of this podcast. Sara, it’s your turn to talk. You talk along a little bit, and my brain goes, oh, I could talk about that the next time she asks me to talk. Then you talk a little bit more, and my brain goes, oh, that reminds me of such and such. Then you go on a little bit more, and I think I can say something about this, and then you go on a little bit more. That's what we do in conversations. Our brains are generating where we might jump in next. A lot of the experts on listening, talk about double listening. You listen to the other person, and you listen to what's going on in your head. You stand a little bit back from what's going on in your head, and you think oh, that topic is there. Is it wise for me to jump in with that topic? Probably not, because the other person is still on a roll. It’s probably better for me to let them go. Then another topic comes to mind, and the other person is still talking. You can see that they're feeling sad, and you think, oh, I've got a great sadness story, I could tell. No. Instead, you say, “Oh, you look sad; now, tell me about that. 
Then you're keeping the focus on the other person, which is obviously a listening skill. It's reflecting back on what you're seeing or hearing from the other person. That idea that we are listening to the other person and we're listening to our own brains, the inner noise in our brain at the same time is double listening. I came across an article that was talking about Christians doing double listening, but that was completely different. That was listening to the other person and listening to what God wants us to say to the other person or not say. I decided, really listening. To be a good listener is to listen to the other person, listen to all the stuff going through our brains that we might say next, and listen to God's guidance. It might be, oh, that's my story about the sadness that I have. Would it be right for me to tell that? What do you think, God? No, I mean, all this happens really fast, of course. That triple listening, that Christians are called to do is really challenging. I guess I want to say we can work on it. As you were saying, Sara, in your question, for those of you listening to the podcast, who are caregivers of parents of kids with special needs, or your grandparents, or your people in ministry, you can really work on listening skills. You know, the parents can work on their listening skills, too, with children. All of us can grow and grow in listening. I'll tell you one other really funny thing about this book that I wrote 10 years ago. The people who were most enthusiastic about it among my circle of friends and acquaintances were all people who I view as the very best listeners I know. They all said, “I've got so much to learn about listening. Thank you for laying out stuff about listening” Isn't that fascinating that they're aware that they work hard on being good listeners, but they're aware that they have a ways to go, so all of us have a ways to go. We can lighten up, do our best, and really try. When somebody is telling that story, and we jump in with our own story because we just can't bear not to say it, we can kind of laugh at ourselves and say, “See, I need to grow a little bit more listening too.”


Sara: Yeah, no, you're right. It is definitely not easy. It seems like it should be. Well, I don't know. I guess maybe grieving and gratitude should seem easy. It all seems like it should be, but it’s not.

Dr. Lynne: Maybe we have the view that it should be easy because we have a view of conversation, which is you tell a story, and I tell a story. Those kinds of conversations are really fun. I mean, those are the easygoing, relaxed conversations where nobody's in particular need. It's all fun. I think it's a challenge to be around people who are hurting, and it's a challenge when we're hurting, to know how much to talk about it and how much not to talk about it in the various settings of our lives. We talk about America being a death-denying culture; I think we're also a pain-denying culture. We all think life's supposed to be upbeat and cheerful all the time. That's what you're doing in the podcast, and that's what you've done so well in your recent book, too. How do we navigate some of this pain?

Sara: Thank you, and it is navigating it. I think that is one of the things that I loved about this book. It's not setting it aside. It's holding those two emotions. It's not. Let's wrap it up in a neat package and toss it aside. We'll just pick it up later whenever we have time for it. It's there. Let's give it to God. Let's set in it. Let's sit in that space. and it's going to be uncomfortable, but let's give that to God because he's going to help us work through that. I've spoken before, whenever I first was handed my son's diagnosis, being a Christian my whole life, I was very angry. I didn't think I should be. I didn't share it with anybody. I didn't even share it with God, which is ironic, because, of course, he knew, but I didn't want to talk to him about it. I hid my Bible and went about my business. It wasn't until I finally told him, I am so angry with you. It was that point that I started to heal. It's when you give that to God and start to work through that. That’s what I love about that this book of yours is it's the permission to feel the emotions that God gave you.

Dr. Lynne: But we don't think that God gave them to us, right? We think something's wrong with us when we're sad or angry. Let me say a word about anger as well. If sadness is hard to express publicly in Christian circles, then I think anger is even harder to express. You're probably mostly all familiar with those stages of grief by Elisabeth Kubler Ross. One of those stages is anger. Anger is a part of grief. Anger is just anger, especially for Christian women, because we're supposed to be nice, and we're not supposed to feel it or express it. A lot of us turn our anger inwards. I can speak for myself. I really feel blessed that I have healed from my binge-eating disorder. But binge eating was a huge part of my life in the first two-thirds of my adult life because I didn't know what to do with all these emotions I had. My family of origin: it was a be cheerful. I didn't know what to do with the anger. I didn't know what to do with the pain. I really do think that there's a whole lot of cookies that went down the hatch, through my mouth, esophagus and stomach, and intestines, because I was angry about things. A whole lot of cookies were connected with anger. Part of the healing has been not needing to turn that anger inward if something's wrong with me because I'm feeling angry. I better eat a cookie to feel better about it. This relates to all of us learning how to feel anger ourselves, but also all of us learning how to listen to people who are angry. When people who are angry should be able to say, “You sound angry about that. You sound upset. If I'd experienced that, I'd feel angry too. Oh, tell me more about how you're feeling. Oh, gosh, I'm really sad that these emotions have been so intense for you. Tell me more about them. I mean, Christian women, we're supposed to be good. We're supposed to be nice. 

Sara: One of the things that you've said throughout the book, and even here. It's a mission of ours here at Take Heart is community. I know you haven't used that word, but you talk in your book too about finding helpful friends and family to help us grieve and find and navigate those honest emotions, to help draw those out and explore those emotions. There's an intentionality about it.  You use the word learn, and it's a learning process, and it's a continuous process. Is it fair to say that, are you you're still learning it?

Dr. Lynne: Oh yes. I can't get over it. I turned 70 last summer. It was a real landmark birthday for me for a whole lot of reasons. Actually, I was very happy about turning 70, which is crazy. I don't know where that came from. But hey, tried to enjoy it. It's remarkable to be 70 and to think, oh, wow, I'm still learning this. I'm still learning that. I'll tell you. One thing I'm learning right now is with the different friends that I have, What part of my inner world they are interested in, and how long they are interested in it? My brother and I are really close. He's always been a confidant for me. I'm so blessed to have a brother like that. He's happy to listen to me talk about what I'm thinking about or struggling with, briefly, not a long period of time, briefly. I try to take advantage. I'm trying to learn from him what he wants in conversation. I'm not going to shut up about what's going on because he has a limited time that he really is comfortable listening to that. I have other friends who I can really talk pretty much endlessly with about struggles. Well, I have one friend like that. I have another friend who definitely willing to listen to my struggles. Again, I think it's in the range of maybe 15 or 20 minutes, or possibly 30, but not endlessly. I think this is really hard for your moms and dads who are in such pain because they really need places where they can talk about it endlessly. If somebody in their life is willing to listen for 15 minutes, well, that is a huge blessing. I noticed it's only a portion of the question you were asking. One of the things I think is learning where the settings are, where we can talk, and then how much and how long we can talk. Also, can we find the emotional strength to listen for the same amount of time to the other person's struggles, whatever those happen to be? It's really hard when you're deep in pain to listen to the other person, but any friendships are completely reciprocal. For these various friends I'm mentioning and my brother, I want to listen to him somewhat the amount of time that I talked. Let me just say one more thing, I'm sure that you have moments when you encourage therapy for your listeners and readers. I don't know how many people in your tradition would be familiar with a spiritual director. Spiritual directors are people who listen to you talk about where God is in the midst of what's going on. For 25 years, I've had a spiritual director, but not the same one because my first one retired. My second one, we moved away, and that was, you know, before Zoom, and then my third one couldn't see me anymore. Now, I'm on my fourth one. I've recently nagged my husband. That's really the only word for it, into starting to see a spiritual director. He said, “I've got you. I've got a couple of really good men, friends, I don't need to talk about this stuff.” He's seen a spiritual director maybe six or eight times, and she has really helped him identify where is God as he deals with the decline that comes from his chronic lung disease. Where is God is the central question in spiritual direction? A lot of times, Christian friends can be mutual spiritual directors to each other. Those would be called soul friends. 

Some of your listeners may have a soul friend, where they each help each other figure out where God is. I really think spiritual direction is a cool thing. You can look online, where there are networks where that identify where spiritual directors are. Now that there's Zoom, you don't even have to find one in your area. My spiritual director actually moved away from Seattle. I now have spiritual direction with someone in Spokane, Washington. She's not even physically here anymore.

Sara: That's a great recommendation. Thank you. That's wonderful. We had a podcast in March, a series about therapy because it is something that I think is so overlooked.

Dr. Lynne: There's always more to say, Sara. Thank you so much for inviting me on and for all your kind words about this book of mine. I really appreciate it.

Sara Clime: Thank you so much again. If you will, just pray us out. I wanted to again mention for all of our listeners that you write a weekly blog review writes specifically about prayers, and it about praying, and it is been something I look forward to getting in my inbox every week. Thank you for that as well.

Dr. Lynne: Let me spell my name for your listeners who don't want to look at the show notes, so you can get to my website, no problem. I have an unusual spelling of Lynne. LYNNE. My last name rhymes with Saab cars, but it has a B at the beginning. BAAB. My website is just www.lynnebaab.com. You really have to know how to spell both the first name and last name. Let me pray for all of you. 

Lord, there are listeners who are grandparents of kids who they worry about. There are listeners who are aunts, uncles, caregivers and moms and dads, and other relatives, friends, and neighbors. There are listeners who minister to families that have challenges. Lord, we just want to pray for everybody. We pray that you would enable us to be better listeners to those in our lives who are hurting. We pray for those who are hurting that you would help them to know that you are right there, right there in everything we do, because I'm struggling too, like everybody else in the world. You are right there with us, Lord, and you are listening to what we say. You are receiving our smiles when we turn and smile at you. We pray that you would use Sara's ministry to strengthen families who need your help. We pray for Amy and Carrie, also. Lord, we pray that their book would bear great fruit, and we pray that this podcast also would be so helpful. Lord, will you bless their ministry, and will you bless the families to whom they minister? In Jesus’s name. Amen