Chicken Soup For the Soul

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Chicken Soup For the Soul

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Heaven’s Very Special Child


Inspirational Stories of Hope, Devotion, Faith and Miracles



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,

And she’ll be known as handicapped.

So let’s be careful where she’s sent,

We want her life to be content.

Please, Lord, find the parents who

Will do a special job for you.

They will not realize right away

The leading role they’re asked to play,

But with this child sent from above

Come stronger faith and richer love.

And soon they’ll know the privilege given

In caring for this gift from heaven.

Their precious charge, so meek and mild,

Is heaven’s very special child.”


----John and Edna Massimilla---

Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul



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