The Beatitudes of the Exceptional Child by Andre Masse

Blessed are you who take time to listen to difficult speech for you help us to know that if we persevere we can be understood.

Blessed are you who walk with us in public places and ignore the stares of strangers for in your companionship we find havens of relaxation.

Blessed are you who never bid us to "hurry up" and more blessed you who do not snatch our tasks from our hands to do them for us, for often we need time more than help.

Blessed are you who stand beside us as we enter new and untried ventures for our failures will be outweighed by the times when we surpise ourselves and you.

Blessed are you who ask for our help for our greatest need is to be needed.

Blessed are you who help us with the graciousness of Christ Who did not bruise the reed and quench the flax for often we need help we cannot ask for.

Blessed are you when by all these things you assure us that the thing that make us individuals is not in our peculiar muscles, not in our wounded nervous system, not in our difficulties in learning but in the God-given self which no infirmity can confine.

Published in National Apostolate for Inclusion Ministry - Summer 1998

We pray daily for Aiden, and I am awed by the fact that God is beginning to weave him into the very fabric of our family. Not a day goes by that I don't pray that God will preserve and protect him and bring him speedily into our home. And I pray above all that we will love him well, with the true measure of love that the Father has for him.