Home & Blog | Lynne Baab

Spiritual diary of self-isolation: The lifeline of limits on thoughts

Lynne Baab • Saturday March 21 2020

At the two and a half week mark, I am doing reasonably well with this new and difficult pattern of self-isolation, as long as I think about each day as it comes. When I wonder how long we’re going to have to do this – a few months, many months, a year, longer than a year? – I can literally feel the fear sweep over my body. Physical tension builds in my chest, and my whole body becomes rigid.

When I wonder who will die that I know and love, or when I think about the future of the world economy, I...

Read full article »

Spiritual diary of self-isolation: God's grace as a lifeline

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 19 2020

A lifeline is the line or rope used to keep contact with someone in a dangerous situation, such as a diver or astronaut. What is the danger in the covid-19 pandemic? Obviously the virus itself, but for Christians an additional major danger is that we will lose hope in God, that we will let our anxieties obliterate Christ’s “peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).

Two weeks ago my husband and I chose almost total self-isolation because my husband has a chronic lung disease. In my post two days ago, I wrote about two lifelines for me in the past two weeks:

1....

Read full article »

Spiritual diary of self-isolation: Weeks 1 and 2

Lynne Baab • Tuesday March 17 2020

Here in Seattle, covid-19 exploded into our daily lives on leap day, Saturday, February 29. We had known for weeks there were a handful of cases in the Seattle area. On that Saturday, we learned of the first confirmed death in the United States – in a Seattle suburb about 20 minutes drive from us. On the news on Saturday we saw reports of super long lines at Costco as people began shopping frenetically.

On Sunday, my husband Dave and I went to church as usual, and people were using fist bumps instead of handshakes. On the way home from church, we stopped...

Read full article »

Important anniversaries in 2020: Florence Nightingale was born in 1820

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 12 2020

When I think of Florence Nightingale, it seems like she was always there in my memory. I’ve been trying to remember when I first heard of her. Late elementary school? Junior high school? Surely I knew about her before I entered high school. I knew she was an adventurous nurse, and I associated nurses with hands-on caring for human need, something I wasn’t very good at, so she never felt like any kind of a model to me.

Later, when I began to love learning about places, I associated her with being a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856). I found the...

Read full article »

<< Newer | Older >>