Loving the differences

One night my husband, Toni, made a joke that just shocked me. I had never realised that he was harbouring inside so many grudges and misunderstandings. I thought: “What? He had all this inside him and never told me?” I was completely downcast. We had tried to have a Christian marriage, and I always admired his transparency, but this time Toni proposed going to his parent’s house for the holiday. Even though the thought was a bit burdensome (since we needed to be alone with one another), I said yes. Nevertheless, we agreed to find as much time as possible for ourselves: to begin over, to regain our communion. So, while my in-laws took care of the children, we went out. I was feeling a bit fearful of what might come out. We went to a nice little place, had something to eat and, first he and then I, opened up in complete honesty. Since that had not happened in such a long time, we both tried to put aside our own point of view, in order to embrace the other. We understood one another and were able to choose one another again, along with those differences that had made us fall in love.

G. P.- Italy

Refugee Camp

I’m Muslim. I come from Afghanistan. I applied for asylum in Holland, for me, my wife and two sons. We lived for nearly three years in a small room at a refugee camp. Once in a while I went to the city to look for friends. It was in vain. We have a saying: “If you want to pray, look for a mosque. If you don’t find a mosque, then go into a church because both are places of prayer.” There was a church beside the market. I went in and came to know a family, through whom we met other Christians. We never felt alone again. Since then we learned to put love into practice, beginning with the refugee camp, a place of misery, problems and wounds. We ourselves were seeing a psychiatrist specialised in war trauma. But after meeting these new friends, we gave up psychotherapy. Because of my work as a writer and translator, I had received an electronic typewriter as a gift, which I then gave away to someone who had been a journalist back home.

G. M. – Holland

Toys

Even though I’m only seven, I can do something so that the world can be more good. For example, when someone gives me some money, I share it with the poor, and my heart feels happy. As I was thinking of the children who don’t even have one toy, I looked through the ones I had; I fixed them well and put them in a box, for them. It’s not so easy to give away your own things, but when I knew how happy they would be, I was happy too. Just as I was about to finish preparing the box, a telephone call arrived from Grandmother: she told me that one of my cousins had left some toys for me, that she was no longer using. I jumped for joy. It was God’s answer to me.

J. E. – Brazil