I was waiting a couple days to see if anything worthwhile came about to post. The following post is perhaps the most real one I have thought to write for a long time.

This afternoon, I made a trip to the chaotic hub of the American teenage social life - otherwise known as "the mall." As I walked through the crowded thoroughfares (strangely reminscent of freeways, down to the "don't walk on the wrong half of the strip," which I incidentally always do anyways), I began to pity my misfortune at being me. Drop all arguments you may begin to formulate at this point in time about how lucky I am to be me- I've heard them all. However, no matter how hard one tries, in a place crawling with stick-figure women in short skirts and flawless makeup and hair, insecurity insists on wedging himself in between truth and perceived truth.

I moaned as I passed Abercrombie, I groaned as I walked by Hollister, I shuddered when I walked into American Eagle, all the while wallowing in mental (and somewhat verbal, to which I am sure my mother will attest) self-degradation. "What in the world makes me different from everyone I see here?" As I darted out of AE into the center of Interstate Mall, I noticed a parting of the crowds and one of the most exquisitely painful and beautiful things that I could possibly see at that moment.

There, in an apron labelled "Auntie Anne's Pretzels" and holding a tray of pretzel samples was a woman with Downs Syndrome, softly calling to the passing crowds, "Pretzels...? Pretzels..." My face fell and my heart dropped and tears started squeezing from beneath my eyelashes, no matter how hard I tried to stop them. Who cries in the middle of a mall, anyway?

I have a special place in my heart for people that have Downs - if there was a logical explanation for it, I'd gladly give it, but there isn't. I've not (yet) worked with any in a speech-therapy setting, nor have I ever interacted with anyone of that population much at all. But they, along with autistic children, grab me and pull me in, perhaps because of their simple and childlike love and temperament. They get mad - and the world knows it. They love you, and the world knows that, too. There are no games; it's all real. And I love that.

And then I realized what it is that makes me different. As I stood there, I watched one beautiful girl after another walk glibly by my sweet friend with the pretzels - not one stopping to give her more than a glance. Is it not better to have the Almighty God working in your heart toward unconditional love and beauty than to have been "blessed" with the perfect outward body after all? That's how we are different - in learning to see His light, we learn to see others by His light. And soon we shall no longer see as in a mirror, dimly, but face to face with that Almighty God. One day we shall be free.