“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Henry Nouwen in Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1974) 36.
Today I make the long journey home from Manila to Denver to be reunited with person who “means the most” to me: my wife, Jenni. She embodies generosity as “a friend who cares” through how she loves people in every day and through her soul care ministry.