1 . I had been saying goodbye to my mom for ten years. That was how ______ she had breast cancer. At first, there was the fear that she would die. But as she ______ series of treatments, life took ______ a new normal. But cancer is an unrelenting (冷酷无情的) foe. It was a journey from ______ to hope again and again, and only painkillers could keep her ______ . At 66, my mom was dying, but we could do nothing. I ______ praying for God to heal her but rather to take her. I learned that dying is the ______ healing. How brokenhearted when a patient or family is ______ a death.

My mother showed me how to fight her foe with knowledge, humor and ______ . And when the time came, she showed me how to die with grace, dignity, humor and wisdom. ______ , while it is hard to escape from the ______ , I want to anticipate the joy of the day when all the pain and hurt of this world will be over. One day, I will die and ______ those I love. One day, those I love will die as well. I don’t want it to envelop me to the point where I cannot enjoy life and make ______ that will last not only in this life, but hopefully into the next.

In those ten years watching my mother die, I learned that we cannot ______ avoid grief in this life. But we can seek out and remind ourselves to anticipate the joy, no matter how ______ things are.

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

As we search for belonging, teenagers are looking for their identity. They are making the physical and emotional transition to independence and they are constantly looking for the thing that will define their lives. They are asking     1     in order to understand their personhood, eager for the identity that will give them meaning. they want to look to romance. School, friends, popularity, money, technology, or their bodies for that meaning.

We want acceptance, which is what we so often search for online. We fear missing out. because we never want to be the one who doesn’t fit in. Teenagers also want to be known truly and loved deeply.     2    

Some people may have the stereotype(成见)that teenagers are strictly shallow thinkers.     3     That means the teens in your Sunday school class or youth group can understand much more than just listening to simple stories.

The teen years are a time full of trouble and fear can go into almost every area of life-school work, friendships, church, family members, and, perhaps biggest of all, the future. Life feels very much unknown to teenagers. So even though they may feel confident, or promise you they have everything planned out, they are anxious about life.

    5     They have studied history and now they’re ready to take their place in it. They’re ready to make their mark. They want to change the world. Finally, they want their lives to matter forever. And for that to happen, they need the belief.