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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

I’ve known a beautiful young lady at my church for several years now. Her name is Samantha, but most of us call her Sam for short.

When so many families left the church two summers ago in the split, Sam lost some friends that she adored. I know it was pretty hard on her. Not to worry, she fell deeply in love with our new pastor and his wife shortly after they moved here last June.

Sam is a pretty talkative girl one on one, but she’s not been real expressive in front of a crowd. She has told me many times that she’s going to sing with us up front on Sunday mornings, but we rarely convince her to actually join us when the time actually arrives.

Before I continue with this story, I need to tell you something about Sam. She has Down’s Syndrome.

This past Saturday, the church held a benefit spaghetti dinner and Sam’s family was there helping out. While we were cleaning up afterward a teen turned on the microphones and somehow Sammy got up on stage and started singing her heart out. For probably 20 minutes, we were regaled with “I love Marrrrrrk” and “I love Robinnnnnnn”. Everyone there was smiling about her love songs. When I told Hubby about it later he was surprised at her boldness and bummed he’d missed it.

Pastor Mark looked up during the singing and told me that Sam also types pages and pages of notes to him, and that while a lot of it is indecipherable, every now and then you can pick out the words “mook” and “sam”. He said that he’s got one note in particular that he keeps in his Bible, and that on days when he’s feeling down he takes it out and looks at it and remembers “Sammy loves me.”

Two things really hit me.

1) The little expressions of love that we make can have great meaning to others.

2) There’s value in every life my friends.

Earnest Parenting: helping parents remember what’s really important.