【推荐1】My friend Jennifer was going to be at my school. I believed that we would be best friends. She introduced me to her friend Amy and we had lots of ______ together. But things started to ______. Jennifer wanted to be the “______” of our little group. She was controlling, and I couldn’t make new friends. If I made new______, she would decide that I was “mad at her”. Pretty soon being Jennifer’s friend was a ______.

I always waited for Jennifer and Amy after class, but sometimes when they left, they’d walk right past me ______ they couldn’t see me.

Gradually I changed — I became moody, depressed, and ______. I felt so left out.

Finally, I was tired of having to battle for ______. I stopped sitting with Jennifer at lunch and waiting for her after ______. Our friendship fell to pieces.

It was ______ at first. ______, I found many girls whom Jennifer had viewed as “moody” or “mean” to be the sweetest, friendliest people in the world.

Now, I have tons of friends. They ______ me when I am sad, and I back them too. We get along very well. It amazes me how ______our friendship is. There is no struggling to be on top — we are all ______. It doesn’t matter to me if two of them walk away. It doesn’t ______ my feelings or make me feel alone.

【推荐2】When I was 14, I invited some friends for a party at my home out in the country.

I planned it well, but something ________ happened.

When it was time for us to ride the bus, Nora, one of my friends. didn’t ________. I felt ________. Why would she tell me she’d come to the party and then ________ without letting me know? So. I decided to call Nora and get some ________. I needed no apologies but I demanded to know why.

Nora explained she had to stay away from school because she was sick. Anger still ________ me and I ________ to listen, “What kind of friend are you?” Nora began crying on the phone, hurt and surprised. For the rest of the school year, we ________ hung around (溜达, 闲逛) again, and I forgot about my ________ call with Nora. ________ had happened between us at some point, but I shrugged it off (对……满不在乎).

Years later. I began to ________ that ugly phone conversation. Now. I regretted it. I recognized how selfish, and ________ I’d been, caring only about myself I wanted to make things ________. I wrote an apology letter to Nora and soon got her ________. So finally, we did bring a sad moment from the past to a ________ conclusion, healing both of us.

【推荐3】We first met Tom and Gee in the early days of our marriage. Someone had been returning our garbage cans to the garage, and Jim and I had _______ who. Then we spotted him: an elderly man living across the street.

I left some cookies outside the garage with a thank-you _______. When we got home，a letter had replaced the _______. It was from Tom and explained how he had returned cans for people he _______ knew. Back when he’d been fighting a war I wasn’t _______ to see, his wife, Gee, had lived alone. _______ had taken time to handle her garbage cans, and he never _______. Now he paid it forward by doing the same for us.

Then Tom died. We photocopied that _______ and attached it to one of our own for Gee. We told her how special Tom had been to us and how _______ we were to have known him. She wrote back and invited us over to ________ Christmas decorations. She told us that she and Tom ________ their decoration collection piece by piece and sent them to us as a gift. I realized how hard it must be for Gee to ________ with them, a piece of Tom.

These days, we’re planning a move. The boxes are all neatly packed in our ________, but we agree to wait until January. This Christmas, we’ll ________ our tree with Gee’s gift. I'll talk to Tom, “Thank you for teaching us what it ________ to be a neighbor.”

【推荐2】Our house was across the street from the entrance of a famous hospital in the city. We lived downstairs and _________ the upstairs rooms to outpatients (门诊病人) at the clinic. As I was _________ supper one summer evening, there was a knock at the door. I opened it and saw a truly awful-looking man whose face was _________ and red.

He told me he’d been _________ a room since noon, but he had no success. “I guess it’s my _________. I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments…”

For a moment, I _________ but his following words persuaded me, “I could sleep in this chair on the porch (门厅). My bus leaves early in the morning.” So I told him we would find him a bed but to rest on the porch.

When I had finished the dishes, l went to talk with him for a few minutes. He told me he fished for a living to _________ his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was _________ disabled from a back injury. He didn’t tell it by way of complaint, but was grateful that no pain _________ his disease, which was a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the __________ to keep going. On his __________ trip, he brought a big fish as a gift. Other times we received packages in the mail. When I received these packages, I often thought of a(an) __________ our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. “Did you keep that awful-looking man last night? You may lose roomers by __________ such people!”

Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But I know our family will always be __________ to have known him; from him, we learned to accept the bad without complaint and the good with __________.