caring

You may have fallen down, but you can get back up again. You may have doors shut, but new doors will open for you. You may have been lied on, but the truth will come to the light. You may have been hurt, but the pain will pass. You are a survivor. You have a history of surviving.

It was two years ago that I first met Yuki. I remember that painfully thin figure covered in dirt: malnourished, exhausted and carrying a sleeping child in his arms like it's the most precious thing in the world.

No time is better spent than that spent in the service of your fellow man.

This leaves us with the urgent question: How can we be or become a caring community, a community of people not trying to cover the pain or to avoid it by sophisticated bypasses, but rather share it as the source of healing and new life? It is important to realize that you cannot get a Ph.D. in caring, that caring cannot be delegated by specialists, and that therefore nobody can be excused from caring. Still, in a society like ours, we have a strong tendency to refer to specialists. When someone does not feel well, we quickly think, 'Where can we find a doctor?' When someone is confused, we easily advise him to go to a counselor. And when someone is dying, we quickly call a priest. Even when someone wants to pray we wonder if there is a minister around.

He__ have denied it to his dying breath but Derwent wasn__ as tough as he pretended to be. For the very small number of people he cared about, Derwent would give his all. It made him vulnerable, and every now and then that vulnerability showed.

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers _ so many caring people in this world.

Women are so caring, kindhearted and soft creatures; I wonder how one could harm or hurt them for any reason.

There are times you find yourself standing by the wayside, watching as someone struggles to dig a well with a spoon, and you wish with all your heart you had arms and a shovel.

When my problems seem overwhelming and impossible to solve, I hold fast to these facts: God is real, He is right, and He cares.

Mothers care in volumes of tears and earnestness of prayers and a depth of emotion others cannot fathom.

Face it__obody cares.But so what? Their apathy doesn't diminish your worth. Learn from it. Make it your job to care for those around you so that they don't feel like nobody cares.

We want a fresh start only because we didn__ sufficiently care for the last fresh start.

Dear J.,I want to explain something.After my dad set me on fire...Well...He died in jail while I was in the hospital getting skin grafts. And I never got to tell him how much he hurt me. Not just physically, but inside, you know? So I took it out on other things for a while.I'm better now. I get counseling for it, and I'm really better. But I'm not perfect. And I'm still fighting it. See... You're like the only person I have in my life that I really care about. I'm selfish about that. I don't want anybody to touch you. I want to keep you safe. That's why I hate this assignment so much. Now that I have you, I'm afraid to see you get hurt or messed up, like I was. I'm afraid I'll lose you, I guess. I wish you could always be safe. I worry a lot. If you weren't so damned independent...Ah, well. *smile* As much as we have been through in the past few months, we still don't know each other very well, do we? I want to change that about us. Do you? I want to know you better. Know what makes you happy and what scares you. And I want you to know that about me, too.I love you.I will try to never hurt you again.I know I'll screw up. But I'll keep trying, as long as you let me.Love, Cabe

For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one's joy with others who do not have it.

Ah, jeez... She really is a cheerleader.' And it seemed suddenly that this was true- not because she was an airhead or a hottie or a nonjock, but because she could throw herself so wholeheartedly into someone else's cause, because she could care so much and try so hard from the sidelines.

Wherever you are, be loving, caring, kind, and above all, be happy.

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people.

Eritrean people are strong and caring. And despite all that we had been through we were brimming with optimism. Our country was on the verge of huge change.