Solidarity: The Gift of Community

     I was texting my sister-in-law today, a truly amazing and overall cool person, and I came to a realization, what a true gift community with others, sharing like convictions is for us all.  Not just family, but with similar belief systems.  

    If you read this blog, you are aware that my community is one of Christian believers.  I feel such a sense of support and belonging when I am with those who share my beliefs and participate in study and worship.  Just attending a service where I am surrounded by fellow Christians, raising our voices in song and prayer, being  there to voice prayer requests and lift others up who are on our hearts fills me with peace and comfort.  I love standing at the welcome center, greeting people, smiling at those entering the church and answering questions to make others feel valued and heard.  I like sitting in a room with women who are diverse in their stages of life, yet have commonality in their love of Christ and the church.  Such a blessing.  

     Now, that's just my community.  But today while texting I realized that people can find that sense of belonging that fills them through various  factions.  For some it may be a political movement. Sharing like convictions and working together to enact a change instead of sitting idly by and complaining about the problem.  Just being amongst like minded citizens can fill them with enthusiasm and energy to help create the change they want to see happen.  That gift of community in common goals is a blessing as well.

    Another community might be sharing a similar life situation.  Whether it is a suppport group for a particular personal challenge or illness, or a living arrangement.  As hard as it is to join a support group or make a change in where one lives, the gift of solidarity, of being in a community with others who share the same circumstances is one to be valued.  Those may be more difficult to accept, as often we are placed in those arrangements versus choosing them for ourselves.  Yet over time, the community we are in can become the blessing we need. To be included and loved by others as we receive the care our minds,  bodies and souls must have.   

While I was texting this morning, and doing my bible devotions, all these thoughts of community flooded my mind and I just felt compelled to share them.  My dear readers, if you have not found a community of like believers or those who share your life stage or convictions, I strongly urge you to reach out and try to discover one for yourself.  Your life, your world, will be enhanced and in turn you very well may bless others as you have been blessed yourself. 

Hugs and love....

Dwelling on Beautiful Things

     Today I was feeling frustrated.  In November I had a tear in my right shoulder rotator cuff repaired.  Today marks nine weeks since I had surgery and I still am wearing a sling and  have little use of my arm.  I am doing physical therapy at home everyday and with a therapist twice a week.  Yet I am increasingly aware that this is going to be a very slow process.  I knew this approaching the surgery, yet living the situation is so much more.  

    As I was cleaning the house one handed today (my  non-dominant left hand) I found I was thinking about many things.  I have had much too much time to think the last nine weeks.  I wanted to cheer myself up and I remembered a list I had started on my phone during one of my last frustrated days.  Things that I feel are beautiful.  Not perhaps aesthetically beautiful, but beautiful to me.  I want to share a few of those things here. 

    I always feel hypersensitive to beauty while at church.  Being in my church, any church I have attended, has always been a source of joy to me.  Christmas Eve I was serving at church, at a welcome center, answering questions and greeting members. I felt such happiness watching the small children waiting to go into the service.  Especially the little ones wearing cowboy boots, both boys or girls.  The sound of those small feet tip tapping across the hard floors sounded beautiful to me.  Toddlers in cowboy boots make a noise of pride, they stand a little straighter and walk a bit more purposeful in those shoes, It's beautiful.

    A week or so later, also at a church service, I found something else to make me appreciate pure beauty.  A special needs man, and his father in church.  The man is probably in his 30's and his father looks to be 60's or older.  I see them every time I attend church.  The son sat next to his father, gazing adoringly at him, his hand resting on the back of his father's neck.  He would pat his father's back and just look at his dad with the purest love.  I was touched by his devotion to his father, it seemed as though his father was the center of his world.  It was beautiful.  

    One more instance centers around a man and his dog.  There's an elderly man in our neighborhood.  I really don't know anything about the man.  I think he lives in a rental duplex a few streets south of me.  I don't know him, but I have seen him many times walking his dog.  I like to make up storylines in my head (imagine that)  and in my mind he is a retired farmer. He dresses like one to me. Anyway, the man is elderly, probably in his 80's, and his dog is elderly too, with a very gray face and muzzle.  Both get out almost everyday and walk together, looking like best friends.  Two old guys keeping each other company.  It's beautiful to see.

    There are so many things of beauty around us all the time. I have been noticing more lately.  I do feel frustrated with the forced sedentariness of my circumstances this winter, while waiting for my shoulder to begin healing.  But I can value the opportunity to think and look at the world around me. Definitely something beautiful to dwell upon.

     

Should The Waters Take Us by Stephanie Soileau

     My attention was first caught by the description, epic saga, when I saw the write up for Stephanie Soileau's debut novel, Should The Waters Take Us being published by Doubleday Books on July 14, 2026.  I received an advanced reader's copy of the novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.   The word "epic" means to tell the stories of historic people or of a country's history.  In Soileau's case, the adventures and deeds being told are of four centuries of people originating in France, then moving to Arcadia, and ending up in Louisianna in the bayous.  The waters are paramount in their lives from the first voyage to the new world, to the livelihoods of living and surviving on the bayous for generations.  

    As in most dynamic tales, the adventures of the people jump from generation to generation, back and forth between eras and history unfolds and is retold to subsequent generations.  We are introduced toeach generation learning from the successes and failures of the ancestors and sharing those lessons with their children.  Some to be conquered, others to be relived over and over again as the land and the wilds are forever struggling against man and it's progress.

    I enjoyed the book.  I felt frustration with the characters when the hurricanes came and devastated the land over and over again throughout the centuries.  When men took advantage of the poorer people, essentially stepping on the backs of some to rise above them.  When children were at the mercy of the parents in the fight to simply survive. 

    I can't say that this was a book I felt joy to read, but I appreciate the story showing the reader what it means to persevere for the sake of life itself.  I will give this book a rating of 4 stars, and invite others to read,  , Should The Waters Take Us.  It's important to realize that struggle is part of life and seeing others doggedness can motivate us to do likewise.