I’ve been working on writing on my blog once a week this year. So far, it’s been going well. I expect to pass the total number of views that I had for last year sometime this month. I’ve already passed the total views for most of the years that I’ve written since 2018. It’s feeling good. A friend inspired a second piece for this week.

I was grocery shopping this past weekend and ran into an old friend in the store. She surprised me, coming up from behind me. I turned at the sound of my name and was delighted to see her glowing smile. She asked me, “how are you?” Before I could answer her smile faded just a bit and she apologized for asking, telling me that she felt she shouldn’t be asking people that question in these troubled times. I didn’t know how to respond to such an idea, so I just welcomed her and jumped into a pleasant though brief conversation.

She was right that these are troubled times. There is a great deal of pain and sorrow in the world these days and that pain and sorrow almost certainly promises to grow. But, after we each moved on to our grocery shopping I continued to think about her feeling that she shouldn’t ask people “how are you?”

I hope she doesn’t stop asking. I hope none of us stop asking each other, “how are you?” Admidst the pain of war, destruction, the tearing apart of our country, and just so much pain, there are children being born, flowers blooming, rainbows crossing the sky, people falling in love, trees budding, and just so much beauty and joy hiding in the corners if we can only see it. I hope we continue to ask each other “how are you?” so we might not only hold each other up as we face our sorrows, but show each other the beauty that we’ve found and celebrate those joys together, helping each other grow strong and sustain ourselves with joy.