Here is for the courageous ones. For those who say, “yes,” despite the personal cost. For those with the outrageous audacity to love those from whom they have nothing to gain.

Here is for the California preachers wife, who at the comfortable age of 52, said yes to a dying missionary’s desperate request, “I’m giving you the orphanage.” Dozens of abandoned and orphaned children, some deathly sick, needed someone to care for them. Who would keep them clothed and fed?

Mere weeks after the missionary’s funeral, the preacher’s wife boarded a plane to Uganda. Thirteen years of hard and steady work later, the children’s home that she inherited — Welcome Home Africa — continues to save hundreds of abandoned and orphaned children. All because someone had the courage to say, yes.

Here is for the hurting ones. For those without hope. For those waiting to know that they are loved.

One year after resurrecting Welcome Home, the preacher’s wife rescued two little girls with no hope of a future. One- year- old Yvonne was blind, severely asthmatic and had cerebral palsy – the results of her mother’s attempted abortion. Ruth, the same age, had cerebral palsy too. Hearing tests would later reveal that she was also profoundly deaf.

Why spend so much time and money on children who aren’t likely to live long anyway? some asked. Because it is our duty, the preacher’s wife said. Thanks to her bold determination — and the generosity of dozens of doctors and volunteers — both girls arrived in America for medical care and were eventually adopted into permanent, loving homes.

Here is for the foolish ones. For those who love and lose and continue to love anyway.

“So do you want to adopt her?” my husband, Dana, asked that hot summer day we met Ruth in the sanctuary of our friend’s church.

Despite having three young children, we’d often talked of adoption. But a child who might never walk? Or talk? Or care for herself ? After falling in love with Ruth and overcoming our fear, we adopted her anyway.

God uses the foolish things of this world to astound the wise. His strength is revealed through our weakness. His mercy never ending. Our years with Ruth floodlit these promises. Ruth enriched our lives with love and laughter. She overcame daily difficulties with uncommon courage and radiated joy despite having the physical abilities of an infant.

As a teenager, dreaming of the life God had planned for me, I sang lyrics by Margaret Becker, “ It’s never for nothing, when you love with no return. It’s never for nothing. Light your candle in the darkness, ‘cause it’s never for nothing.”

This week Ruth would have turned 13. Five years ago, we lost our smart, funny, precious daughter to complications from cerebral palsy. Each year on her birthday, we celebrate her life. Because, while the empty hole in our hearts tempts me to believe that our love was for nothing, Ruth knew that we loved her. And that made all the difference.

“ If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost,” I Cor. 13:7 says.

So if you love and lose, have the audacity to keep loving anyway. You won’t have to look far to find someone who is hurting, someone without hope, someone waiting to know that they are loved.

This wide, hurting world is waiting for more people who will say, “yes.”

MEADOW RUE MERRILL is a Mid-coast Maine writer who shares about God in her everyday life through “Faith Notes.” For more, go to www.meadowrue.com where you can follow her on Twitter or Facebook.