Choosing Community Over Constant Crisis

Headlines pull at our attention, but our bodies keep asking for a slower rhythm. We open up about leaving the 24/7 outrage cycle for something gentler and far more human: rest, scripture, and neighbors on the porch. A simple story from a Facebook Post - Wi‑Fi out, apple pie offered, an hour of real conversation - becomes a case study in how safety, presence, and small rituals can reset a stressed nervous system.

We explore how faith and science complement each other in healing. From Sabbath to heart rate variability, from prayer to the ventral vagal system, we trace how spiritual practices move the body from threat to safety. Crisis response offers powerful proof: communities recover faster when people are kept near familiar faces and places. Rebuilding homes matters, but rebuilding belonging changes outcomes. We share insights from field work and family life, including monthly dinners that become “church” at a small table, and how trimming inputs - fewer doom-scrolls, more books, jazz, and baking - creates the margin needed for joy.

Expect practical takeaways you can use today: prune one anxiety-spiking input, add one ritual that grounds you, and make one neighborly move that invites connection. Along the way, we touch on thoughtful examples of God’s design - like the timing of vitamin K in newborns - to remind us that rest and community aren’t trends; they’re woven into our biology. If you’re longing to feel calm, connected, and clear again, this conversation offers next steps that are simple, humane, and faithful.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a gentle reset, and leave a review so more women can find a community that lifts from the inside out.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission
• 0:32 The Post That Sparked A Reset
• 2:05 News Overload Versus Rhythms Of Rest
• 3:05 Baking, Traditions, And What We Forgot
• 4:25 Internet Down, Community Up
• 6:17 Why Community Heals In Crises
• 8:45 Designed For Connection: Body And Soul

Transcript

Melissa: 0:01

Welcome to the Heart and Soul Elevation Podcast, where Jesus is first, wellness is lift from the inside out, and women find the connection their souls have been craving.

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

We're your hosts, Melissa Holman and Stephanie Pasniokis, two women passionate about weaving scripture and science into everyday life so you can live aligned in spirit, mind, and body in that order. Take a breath, settle in. Let's elevate together. What bothered me was um I was reading something and it's like, oh, it was a Facebook post. And I actually thought that the um intention behind it was really interesting. And it was one of the three things that God did just recently to, you know, you absolutely need to stop and really rest, not just like sit down and take a break and then get back to work. Like I needed to take that rest yesterday, and one of them was this really cool post, and I'm not gonna read the whole thing because it was long. But she was just talking about how her husband, he was so caught up in what was happening in the world that it was stressing him out, and he was, he was, he wanted to run off and live in a commune, but he he called her, he called her sleeping. She just couldn't see what was going on. And she was exhausted by who all of they were that he was constantly talking about. They're doing this and they're doing that, and and geopolitical conspiracies and global warming and all the kinds of things that you know he was just absolutely crazy about. And he left. And he was like, I can't do this anymore. I need to be around people who are awake, you know. And he went to live in a commune and everything. And she said, I I canceled my subscriptions, I got a library card, I bought a secondhand radio that only picked up the local jazz station and the Sunday baseball games. I started baking, not the sourdough starter trend for Instagram, but real baking. And I'm like, dude, sorry, like just hard stop there. But I mean, the rest of it is fantastic. It was a fantastic post. But I'm like, this isn't a fad. This is how people originally did it to make grains digestible and healthy. Like, this is the OG baking was fermented.

Melissa: 2:21

But but yes, but you also need to remember that people stopped making anything for decades. Nothing was I was weird because I made everything from scratch. Oh my gosh, we went on a camping trip one time with the older scouts and they wanted to make chicken fajitas over the campfire. So, what did I do? I cut up the chicken, I marinated it in my own homemade fajita seasoning. And they were amazed because everybody else just buys their fajita seasoned chicken at the market.

SPEAKER_00: 3:00

Like people stopped cooking, people stopped baking. Uh, one afternoon she said her internet went down. A year ago, this would have caused a meltdown in our household. Mark would have been screaming at the service provider. I would have been panicked about missing emails. Now I just make a cup of tea and sat on the porch. A young woman walked by pushing a stroller. She looked frazzled, a Bluetooth earpiece in her ear, talking rapidly about quarterly projections or something. And she stopped when she saw me and she's like, Are you okay? pointing at my house. Power's out the whole block, no Wi-Fi. And she goes, I know. Would you like a slice of apple pie? It's still warm. And they actually ended up just sitting in community and talking for an hour.

Melissa: 3:37

Well, and that and that is what is missing today. That is what is missing. That is absolutely what is missing today. My son, um, who's a missionary with Reach Global Crisis Response, came and spoke at our church. And that's what he talked about. That's what is missing, even among crisis response. The the reason that Reach Global makes such an impact when they go into a crisis area is not because they're helping people rebuild their homes. It is because they are helping to build community, and that's what makes it, that's what matters. That's what we miss today. We we sit in our air-conditioned homes with our fences around us and we never see our neighbors.

SPEAKER_00: 4:20

Yeah. And I remember um back when um uh I forget which hurricane it was. I can't even you'll you'll know. Um, it was the big one that hit New Orleans.

Melissa: 4:29

Katrina.

SPEAKER_00: 4:30

Katrina. It was, I was gonna say Helena. I'm like, it's not Helena, it's Katrina. No, that was North Carolina. That was North Carolina. So uh many years later. Yes. So, but one of the things they found in the tent cities is they didn't put people near the people they had lived with. They everybody just kind of went in and it and it was a huge mental health crisis at that point. And it's it just goes to show that being in community, even those temporary shelters, FEMA, whatever, to pay attention to those details and put people in the areas and regional areas that they were in in their town so that they could see people that they recognized and like again. Um, I'm sorry. What is it that we say? Uh healing happens in connection and community. I didn't have to actually really think about it. It was at the tip of my tongue. We were designed for it, literally. That is our design. That is our biochemistry. It's in our cells, like literally in our body physically. My dad makes fun of me on our daddy-daughter dinner dates. Um, I highly recommend if you have a living parent to uh prioritize that if you don't. It wasn't something I grew up with. I didn't have a strong family growing up. Um, as far as there's lots of things behind that. But um, so it's only, I don't know, in the last five years or so, my dad and I have been doing this every month because we kept saying to each other, Oh, we'll go out to eat for your birthday, we'll go out to eat for your birthday, oh, you know, for Christmas. We don't do presents, we'll go out to eat, we'll go hang out. We never would do it. So we finally just said, you know what, we've got a lot of years to make up for. We're just gonna do it for the rest of a monthly for the rest of our lives. Like we'll be fabulous. So we have everybody gets that opportunity.

Melissa: 6:06

So I'm so glad you have that.

SPEAKER_00: 6:07

Yeah, and and it's actually it's like it's like church going to dinner with my dad. Um, and it's such a blessing. I can't like I don't want to cry, but it's like it's amazing. And um well, what is church? Yeah, what is church?

Melissa: 6:22

Where two or three are gathered together. It's church, right?

SPEAKER_00: 6:25

It is church, yeah. And uh we we talk about all kinds of things, and um gosh, I don't even remember why I was bringing that up. Call me back. Oh, uh community and connection, biochemistry. So I would bring stuff at Simon's. I'll you know, things you and I talk about. I'll bring it up at dinner. And he's like, he's like, you know, you're gonna go, nobody understands what you're saying. Nobody is gonna know what you're talking about with the nervous system and how cool that all is. He goes, You know it because you're scientists, but you know, people don't have to be scientists to know that, you know, in the Bible. So he goes, He's here's how I would say and he'd give this beautiful thing. And I'm like, Yes, but but I this that God gave me this knowledge, this understanding of our system that he created it so amazingly and wonderfully that all of the things he's asking us to do in the Bible have a science, they're based in our body, they're based in our body, they're in our you can even test it in a uh in a petri dish, in in a in a in a you know, mass spectrometer, whatever. You there's ways you can see his design, and I think that's beautiful. And and yeah, I'm gonna talk about it. I am gonna go geeky with people.

Melissa: 7:32

So I wanna I want to go geeky for just one second. So this was several years ago. We were in Sunday school, there was a pediatrician in the class, and I don't even know how we got on the topic, but she was talking about circumcision, right? And in the old testament, it talks about circumcision on the eighth day. Why? Because our body naturally starts to produce vitamin K, which is a clotting mechanism in our blood on the eighth day after birth. I mean, even that, even that is part of God's design. And he said on the eighth day circumstance. Because he knew our body, because he knew that on the eighth day I'm gonna start producing vitamin K in my bloodstream. So, like every infant born now in a hospital gets a vitamin K shot immediately. Why? Because that's the clotting factor that they need to be able to do the things that they need to do instead of waiting until the eighth day. Yeah, you could just wait till the eighth day.

SPEAKER_00: 8:35

It's hard to do that. And it's getting more and more common not to do it at all. I mean, that that was a funny, you know, there's this whole fight, right, in the early church in the New Testament, talking about well, these Christ followers, they have to become like Jews. They they have to get circumcised and everything else. And then there was this whole contingent that was sent to Rome to say, listen, no, just you know what, don't worry about that. Let's not worry about that. This is the most important thing. Get circumcised or not. And it's funny though, even that happened. It's still very common practice among Christian among Christians. Thank you for joining us here on Heart and Soul Elevation. If this conversation lifted you, share it with another woman who needs community.

Melissa: 9:17

Subscribe for more faith first conversations. And for more community, join us over on YouTube where we grow together in real time.

SPEAKER_00: 9:27

Until then, may the peace of Christ guard your heart, steady your mind, and strengthen your body.