I have a vivid picture in my mind of the biggest toothy smile I’ve ever seen on the face of 10-year-old girl with thick black hair. The thought of her grin brings tears to my eyes every time I hear her favorite song that she’d sing every time I’d see her for her occupational therapy visits with me. I’ll call her Sara for this article.
Sara and her siblings had been removed from their home with accusations of sexual abuse and other child abuse from her parents. She had been referred to me to address her sensory processing difficulties and helping her to learn to calm herself appropriately. She had been placed in a wonderful, nurturing home with a foster mom who happened to have a background with disabilities and was determined to help Sara and her siblings find the help they needed.
Sara loved intense swinging on a flat platform swing. She swung as high and as hard as she could, occasionally hitting the wall of the therapy room that no other child had hit with the swing before from swinging so high. Sara had one volume of voice that I’d describe “as loud as you can”. Her foster mom and I had finally problem solved that she could quiet her volume while chewing on Slim Jim beef sticks and swinging.
Sara had been going to church with her foster family and attended the children’s class. She had memorized one of the songs she’d learned and would sing it for me while she swung as high as she could on the swing in her loudest voice.
As I watched her, I often thought of the awful, terrifying experiences of abuse she’d experienced in her short life. Then I’d watch her up in the air singing at the top of her lungs, “My life is a gift. My life has a plan. My life has a purpose in heaven it began…”
In those moments, I felt at peace that this young girl was being nurtured and loved out of her past horrors. She had already begun to show the effects of that nurturing, developmentally and emotionally. But those words sung with such fierceness, were the perfect soundtrack to accompany her on her new path. Her life WAS a gift. Her life COULD have a plan. Her life DID have a divine purpose that was not lost through the crimes committed against her.
I’ve been fortunate to be the pianist in the children’s class at my own church for the past 2 years, where the children sing this exact song. Tears run down my face every time I listen to them sing this song and memories of Sara rush back to me, swinging up high, singing as loud as she can, “My life is a gift. My life has a plan. My life has a purpose in heaven it began…”
How important are these words for a young girl whose purpose for almost 10 years seemed to be nothing but an object to be acted upon to satisfy the desires of self-serving adults who could not see or understand a child’s worth? And how blessed was Sara that within a few months of love, nurture and the right treatment could start to feel the healing effects and the new path of hope she was on? I hope and pray that Sara engraves those words into her mind and heart as she travels through life with love and nurturing and she begins to truly understand her true value and worth.