Love can work its way into improbable and impossible situations. Like water over stone, it has the potential to wear down our suffering, create new pathways of possibility, and support life in inhospitable terrain. Love can’t fix every situation, but it does have a way of working on us and opening portals to our closed hearts. Love keeps us company, settling in beside the unlikely good or the unlikely bad that comes our way. The house struck by lightning and set a fire in the middle of the night. The child lost. The immigration case that goes well, or poorly. The lottery ticket in the car accident. The diagnosis and the deliverance from evil. None of it deserved, all of it happening all the same....

Love cannot fix everything, but it can keep us company. It can help us imagine ourselves through the perspective of others, the ones who won’t give up, who whisper through the ages, let’s see what a little love can do.

from Take What You Need: Life Lessons After Losing Everything (pp. 74, 85)