For every specially abled child

Mahima Thomas
Jul 11, 2018
3 min read

Updated: Jul 12, 2018

I came across this poem at an especially down time, thinking how come I am in this profession. These words seemed a gentle voice saying Yes!! I am in the right profession to help each parent and child take on one day at a time. To remember that every parent with a special child is carefully chosen by the one above, to ensure that they receive the very best. A motivator for all those with a specially abled child.

Heaven’s Very Special Child

Sharing the story from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Reader's Choice 20th Anniversary Edition

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

~Rabindranath Tagore

We were on our way to visit an institution in 1954 with our three daughters: Mary, twelve, Joan, nine, and Ruth, eighteen months old. Because of little Ruth, handicapped since birth, we were making this sad and silent trip. We had been advised to place her in a special home. “It will be less of a burden;” “Ruth will be better off with children like herself;” “Your other children will have a home free of the care of a disabled person.”

To break the silence, I flipped on the car radio and heard the voice of a former classmate. I remembered him as a boy without legs. He was now president of an organization employing persons who are disabled. He told of his childhood and of a conversation with his mother. “When it was time for another handicapped child to be born,” his mother explained, “the Lord and his counselors held a meeting to decide where he should be sent . . . where there would be a family to love him. Well, our family was chosen.”

At this, my wife Edna leaned over and turned off the radio, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

I touched Ruth’s tiny face. She looked like a beautiful symbol of innocence. I knew at that moment Ruth was given to us for a purpose. How miraculous it was that the voice of a friend, with whom I’d had no contact for twenty years, should that day speak to me. Mere coincidence? Or was it God’s unseen hand helping us hold on to a little girl who would enrich our lives immeasurably in the years that followed?

That night, Edna awoke at three o’clock in the morning with thoughts that demanded to be written. A pad was on the night table, and in the morning we pieced her notes together into the poem

“Heaven’s Very Special Child”:

A meeting was held quite far from Earth;

“It’s time again for another birth.”

Said the angels to the Lord above,

“This special child will need much love.

Her progress may seem very slow.

Accomplishments she may not show,

And she’ll require extra care

From the folks she meets way down there.

She may not run or laugh or play,

Her thoughts may seem quite far away.

In many ways she won’t adapt,