...“Do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain.

“There are 2 things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel. [...] Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way."

I did not know, as I listened to Father's footseps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far greater rooms than this --places where therewas not, on a human level, anything to love at all.

Corrie ten Boom, (April 15, 1892 – April 15, 1983) was a Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II

I'm not going to pretend I understand (much less possess) that kind of love, courage, altruism, what it means, and what it's all for. Regardless, I can't help but respect. And it's interesting -at least to me, to see from where people pull such extraordinary strength.