September 2025

All these weeks of talking about the residents of our sweet community - oldies & newbies – has got me thinking about neighbors. Who is your neighbor? I think the word might be a little abused as stores are calling themselves the ‘neighborhood market’ when they aren’t located in your neighborhood at all. When you look up the definition of the word, it is described as one who lives near or next to another. I like that. Having moved a lot in my life, I was always in awe of adorable little communities where everyone knows everyone and you could get help from anyone there when needed. Block parties always sounded so fun to me. As an adult I’m getting to live in that sweet little community I dreamed of as a child. It goes by the name of Cozyhome. But pursuing the word ‘neighbor’ a little further, if we look in Scripture (as we know we should) for the definition of neighbor, we see a different meaning. (See I John 4:7-12; Colossians 4:5-6; & I Peter 3:15-16.) In Old Testament writings, neighbors basically referred to those of the same moral and social trends, such as the Israelites. Those outside your station in life were sometimes hated, certainly not included as a ‘neighbor’.

Thanks to early detection and improved therapies, many cases of breast cancer are successfully treated. However, the Susan G. Komen¨ organization reports breast cancer survival rates vary depending on the stage of the disease at the time of diagnosis. Those diagnosed as having stages 0, I and II tend to have better survival rates than those whose disease was discovered after the cancer had already advanced to stages III and IV. Although each situation is unique, the five-year survival rate among those diagnosed with breast cancer stage I or lower is between 98 and 100 percent. Stage II falls between 90 and 99 percent. The five-year survival rate for stage III patients is between 66 and 98 percent. While the organization does not provide survival data for stage IV, according to the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER), the five-year relative breast cancer survival rates for women with a SEER stage of Distant (the cancer cells have spread to other parts of the body) is 33 percent. If cancer cells have only spread beyond the breast but it is limited to nearby lymph nodes (Regional), the survival rate is 87 percent.