Rise or crumble. We need one another.

This nation and its people have been undergoing major pressures. For me here, in this little part of the world, I have to admit it has felt pretty lonely at times, but I've eaten my fair share of holiday desserts and I'm ready to dust myself off and put on my working gloves. 

My hope is in Christ and through him I know it is for us to find common ground. 

Can we all not agree that how and why George Floyd died was wrong? 

Can we all not agree that moments like that in our present history is a symptom of things that are still broken in our country? 

Can we generally agree that many of us, myself most certainly included, don't actually have a good grasp of history and perhaps are even so distracted by the noise that we are not even aware of our own part in history? 

Can we agree that it's really nice to feel and be safe doing things like going to school, church, or shopping? And that when we don't, that there's a problem there? 

Here though are a few things that I, as a mom, a physician, a lover of this country and humanity, a believer in God and his ultimate sacrifices, hope we have learned through the wreckage:  

1. Rarely does a conversation of value fit nicely into a meme or the word limits of a twitter feed so why are we relying on those mediums for our conversations or allowing it to shape our thinking?

2. That time off work/school from any illness that causes the body fatigue and weariness is acceptable. Certainly one that involves coughing and sneezing. Yes we have a few less stocked shelves in stores, or you must reschedule appointments but what rat game are we running that people are not afforded the ability to take a break when they are ill? or that a mother or father cannot stay home for at least the first month of their newborn's life? Or to be there for their child, parent, spouse, maybe an aunt or uncle whomever when they have fallen ill? That as a nation, we will have growing pains to challenge the way we've been doing business - if we can find common ground and agree on where and how we can do some things better - OR we fail, nations do collapse. 

3. Instead of meeting a challenge, recovering from a collective trauma with resilience, strength, and unity -a vast majority of us are coming out of it dazed and traumatized. We must contribute to the healing of our brothers and sisters, particularly our neighbors, co-workers, friends, family. We must do the hard work of building bridges. We have a pandemic of loneliness and isolation and untold 1000s of traumas in the wake of covid but I argue that not only did the response from all angles, our own media, leadership, our self perpetuated memes in a technology with problems we were/are not prepared to handle trigger this greater pandemic of loneliness/isolation, it exacerbated underlying problems and cracks we have been accumulating as a nation over the last 20-30 years. 

4. To follow that, I believe despite some brilliant advances we have also slowly undermined the very fabric of America that has afforded us our health, safety and resilience in the face of challenges. The fabric of America - like any country or community, I believe is the ability of the people to be there for one another, and to build each other up, to simply know one's neighbor. Our rules and policies need to stop putting people into silos - I'm thinking about the three-strike rule - the challenges to run and start your own business, the feeling that a community's success may need the name or recognition of large corporate conglomerates but lack the same community ownership as that of a small business owner, which leads to the lack of living wages - and yes some covid policies. In writing this, except for the vast advances in technology and media for which we were unprepared to handle its problems and covid, I doubt some of the issues I mentioned are new. My father worked two jobs for the first decade of my life to advance in this country, but what we had was a community 20+ maybe 100+ aunts, uncles, cousins and because of them we could face our challenges, without it, we crumble.

A penny for your thoughts? A hug from afar for the actions you and I will step out to do together to build communities and if we can do it together, it will be better.

One last thought, we must also as a nation realize how far we've come and how good we do have it here but that that gratitude and goodness does not mean there is not still work to be done to continue to challenge ourselves...perhaps we can have heaven on earth.