By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

When I started this blog two years ago, I imagined that I would use it to share my thoughts about family, work, community, faith and relationships. I would have fruitful conversations with readers and pray that they lead to strengthening those bonds. After two years, what I learned is that Being in Community has become more than reading and conversation, but a real community that has come together not just to think about relationships, but to take action. We’ve done a lot together in 2018.

Together, readers, we have provided twelve Kindle Fire Kids Edition Tablets for over 40 children to use for educational apps at Birdrock, an orphanage for children in Egypt run by The Littlest Lamb. The Littlest Lamb chose these tablets because of their parental controls to support their staff and volunteer efforts in educating the children, some of whom must be homeschooled before they can enter formal schooling. We raised money for it as well as for Seeds for Hope, a nonprofit supporting education for youth in Africa, on Giving Tuesday.  Over the summer, we helped provide 100 “Snackers” bags filled with toys and goodies to bring some joy to children spending their summers at Colorado Children’s Hospital, and sent books to refugees in Arizona through the Florence Project.

We decided to be more conscious of consumerism, excess, and the ramifications of our purchases, with my guest post Guide to Socially Conscious Gift Giving directing hundreds of readers to retailers making a difference in vulnerable communities. On social media, I collaborated with Coptic Voice and Coptic Dad and Mom on the #copticmaker campaign to highlight some wonderful up and coming Coptic entrepreneurs, many of whom are also running socially conscious businesses.

We read books together, and judging by the number of pageviews, our all-time favorite book recommendation was Parenting Toward the Kingdom by Philip Mamalakis. In 2018, judging by Amazon purchases, the new novel Lights on the Mountain by Cheryl Ann Tuggle takes a deserved place on many of our nightstands. Our favorite children’s book, judging by the number of pageviews, was Everything Tells us About God by Katherine Bolger Hyde, based on a story told by Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory.

We all love a good love story, so it’s not surprise that my most popular post of all time is “The Moment that Taught Me About Staying in Love.” But in 2018, our most popular post was my short memorial for His Grace Bishop Epiphanius of blessed memory, “From White Martyrdom to Red.” We still came back to love in this post as Bishop Epiphanius reminds us to  “Make love the strainer over which we filter all our thoughts.”

Being in Community has been a space for remembering those we have lost. In addition to Bishop Epiphanius, we have remembered other great losses in 2018, including Fr. Youhanna Guirgis, Mrs. Awatef Gerges, and Mrs. Souad Sorial. We have also mourned yet another group of Christian martyrs in Egypt, a group of pilgrims returning from a monastery visit.

2018 was also a year of firsts for the blog.  Our 2018 Being in Community Book of the Year is The Icon Hunter, and I posted my first author video interview, with author Tasoula Hadjitofi.  I started an Instagram page that you can follow here. Several writers have written excellent guest posts on the blog for the first time this year, including Fr. Peter Farrington (on Loneliness and Community), Allison Backous Troy (on Socially Conscious Gift Giving), Irene Noor (on Circles of Community), and Gretchen Garnecho (a book review on social impact investing). In 2017, Jessica Ryder-Khalil (on Motherhood and Authenticity), Mary Jasmin Yostos (on Seeing Beauty), and Maria Andrawis (on Finding a Home Where there is No Home). also wrote some wonderful guest posts. I have also written a guest post for blogger Traci Rhoades on Traces of Faith (on struggling through Good Friday) and published essays on Talking Writing (on our civic crisis) and Red Tricycle (on why having children was the best thing I did for my career).

We’ve grown as a community, with over 650 of us following the Facebook page and over 220 email newsletter subscribers. Subscribers have been accessing my free resources – the most popular are a children’s Valentine’s Day craft I created with a blog reader, Caroline Gurigis, and the Annual Reflection and Planning Printable, a tool I put together to help reflect on last year and look forward to the new year.

We have more tools and resources on the blog for the new year. Here are a few books and blog posts about building better habits, time management, and productivity to help start your year off:

1. Annual Reflection and Planning Printable
2. How to arrange your time and your life to have the time to do what you love (with a book review of Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam).
3. How to Leverage Regret, Thanksgiving and Community to Achieve Your Goals (with a book review of Michael Hyatt’s book, Your Best Year Ever)
4. How to Get Stuff Done (with a book recommendation of Gretchen Rubins’ The Four Tendencies).
5. How to build better habits (with a book review of Gretchen Rubins’ Better than Before).

This new year promises the excitement of the April 2019 release of my new book, Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirits from the Early Church, which is now available for pre-order! When you pre-order your book, save your receipt. I have some wonderful and valuable pre-order bonuses I will be announcing soon that will be available FREE to those who pre-order the book. Be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter to find out as soon as they are available!

We did wonderful things together in 2018, and I am looking forward to all the good things we’ll do together in 2019, building and strengthening our communities, one relationship at a time. Happy New Year!

Some of the links above are affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase via those links, I will receive a small commission for referring you at no extra cost to you. You are under no obligation to purchase the items through my links, but if you do, you will be helping support the cost of running this blog and providing you with the writing and reviews you enjoy. Your support is much appreciated!