Sometimes all you could do for the suffering was to make sure they knew someone was suffering right there with them. Someone who had also felt stricken, and smitten, and afflicted.

Commitment to God. From the moment we began to work together, Beth and I discovered a similar commitment. We share a passion for the Word of God and for people—especially for people with hurts.

When we meet people flesh to flesh we meet people mess to mess.

It's because a country-western song can start you out at a family picnic eating buttermilk-fried chicken and watermelon on your great-grandmother's quilt, with butterflies flitting about, and before it ends, your daddy's gone to prison and your momma's run off with the preacher and your little brother's blowing butterflies to dust with a BB gun.

No other human can climb down our throats like a spelunker and hack through our trachea and try on our hearts and see how they feel. One mortal cannot fully comprehend how another operates from within.

The downside of human closeness is that, to the degree you have loved their presence, you grieve their loss. Amanda

If a brokenhearted mother could sing, I could not remain silent.

A suffering person does not need a lecture—he needs a listener.

Happiness is a choice, but grief is a certainty.

No one is exempt from the touch of tragedy: neither the Christian nor the non-Christian; neither the rich nor the poor; neither the leader or the commoner. Crossing all racial, social, political, and economic barriers, suffering reaches out to unite mankind.

If we are going to touch the people of our communities, we too must know their sorrows, feel for them in their temptations, stand with them in their heartbreaks. Jesus Christ entered into the arena of our troubles, and He wept with them that wept and rejoiced with them that rejoiced.

My heart breaks to see the world in such turmoil.