Meet Rosemary. We met last year when I went on a media mission trip with The Archibald Project (check them out, link below).

On our last day together, I asked her what she would want me to tell others about her? She listed her hardships, her accomplishments, her hopes and dreams. Then she looked down at her notebook and back up at me with the protective pride of an older sister and said, “tell them she loves her brother.”

Honestly when I started writing that sentence was going to be the end of this blog. It was going to be a difficult story of loss with a sliver of triumph at the end. I’m not going to lie it would have pulled heart strings and made people cry and emoted others in to giving.

But here is the thing, Rosemary’s story is not all of things that have happened to her. She is an orphan and separated from her mother, poverty has touched her life in ways that we cannot imagine. While those things have certainly shaped her, they do not define her.

The choice she has made is to love the only one who has not been taken from her, and love him well.

Do you see that? Her highest priority is to love.

She knows that her accolades may come. That she could grow up to be a rich doctor. That God does, indeed, have plans for her. She knows all of those good things, but chooses to abide in love. For without it, we are nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2).

The most important part of our testimonies is how we love the precious ones entrusted to us. Our friends, children, spouses, parents and neighbors. Yes, even our sisters and brothers (pesky, though they may be).

So friends, may we run the race to win the prize. And at the end may it be said that we loved others well.