Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was painful and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and _________ all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved another one soon follow.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each other on a high _________. Once the three pots began to boil, he placed _________ in one pot, eggs in the second and ground coffee beans in the third. He then let them _________ and boil, without saying a word to his daughter. The daughter complained and _________ waited, wondering what he was doing.

Twenty minutes later, he took the potatoes out of the pot and put them in one bowl and the eggs in another. He then ladled (舀) the coffee out and placed it in a cup.

The daughter _________ that the potatoes were soft. Her father then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she _________ the hard-boiled egg. _________, he asked her to drink the coffee. Its rich pleasant smell brought a _________ to her face. “Father, what does this mean?” she asked.

He then __________ that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity (逆境) — the boiling water. However, each one reacted __________. The potato went in strong, hard and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak. The egg was fragile (易碎的), with the thin outer shell __________ its liquid interior (内部) until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. Yet, the ground coffee beans were __________. Exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and __________ something new.

“Which are you,” he asked his daughter. “When adversity __________ on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

Five days a week I go out for a run—a short and slow run. The only way I can _______ to it is to keep it a habit. It’s a spiritual approach to making exercise a habit.

We’re meant to treat the _______ with respect, doing all we can within our power to keep it _______ and serviceable.

I have a wild heart history. I have _______ heart surgery twice in my life. After each procedure, I signed up for cardiac rehab (心脏康复) where I worked with a nurse, a physical therapist (治疗专家) and got exercise three days a week, building back my _______ and my confidence.

The last time I wanted to _______ running, the nurse and therapist urged me on, for running is _______ for my body and my soul.

Their _______ was a reminder: keep it up. _______ jogging up and down hills, I’m not out to ________ any races. Recently, as I came up the hill running with a friend, a neighbor cried out, “You look like the last two finishers of the marathon.”

“You must really ________ to run,” people will say to me. Love is a too ________ word. But I love to finish a run. That feels good.

The only way I can do it is make it a habit. Sometimes I do it ________ in the morning. As the weather gets cold, I prefer going later in the day when I won’t ________. I can learn and grow while running.

Good habits are, in turn, habit-forming. I find it ________ if I simply make it a rule, trying a spiritual approach to making running a habit.

Michael Evans was standing in line at the Treasurer’s Office last August, waiting to pay his taxes, when he heard a(n)____sound ahead of him. The elderly woman at the window was crying. He heard the cashier ____the woman that her house was in foreclosure( 丧失抵押品赎回权) and headed for auction(拍卖). He also heard the woman tell the cashier that her daughter had recently died. Evans, a businessman who had just buried his father, couldn’t____the idea of this woman losing her home ____after losing her child. He ____the window. “I don’t mean to butt in,” he said to the cashier, “but ____you can get her house back, I’ll pay for her taxes.” The amount added up to $5,000.

The old woman was shocked. Her despair turned to ____. The cashier left for a moment to___ that it was all right for Evans to pay it. Evans promised to go ____to the bank and come back with the money. But when he returned to the treasurer’s office, he asked   someone else waiting in line to hand the $5,000 check to the cashier. Evans was trying to ____quietly and, preferably, anonymously(匿名地).

“I didn’t want this attention,” he explained.

___, attention found him. It’s not every day that someone pays a stranger’s tax bill. As is reported, Evans often finds himself on the giving end of charitable situations, though for years he went unrecognized for it. ____ paying the elderly woman’s taxes, Evans said he did it for ____ but to make sure the lady stayed in her own house.

A few weeks after the tax____, Evans received the Spirit of Detroit Award for his lifetime of ___. Again, he didn’t want the attention, but his son felt the honor was overdue. “It was good to see my dad finally get the____ he deserves,” his son said. Michael Evans is nearing 60 and will retire soon. Before he does, he hopes that his son will ____ him in a fund-raiser to pay for a wheelchair for a boy with an incurable bone disease. And he’ll continue to___ the local youth football league team, paying for their equipment, uniforms, and out-of-state travel. His son is willing to___ the business, saying that he ____ his life after his father.