Psalm 139:13-14 (NLT)

FROM TODAY’S READING (1/8/2020)...

Ten-year-old Benjamin Giroux has Asperger's syndrome...a form of autism. He was a fifth-grader at Cumberland Head Elementary School in Plattsburgh, New York back in 2016. His teacher asked Benjamin and fellow students to celebrate National Poetry Month by writing a poem about themselves, beginning every few sentences with "I am."

Benjamin dove in and excitedly started writing at his kitchen table. The following is his transparent poetic expression of his most intimate self-awareness.

I AM...

I am odd, I am new

I wonder if you are too

I hear voices in the air

I see you don’t, and that’s not fair

I want to not feel blue

I am odd, I am new

I pretend that you are too

I feel like a boy in outerspace

I touch the stars and feel out of place

I worry what others might think

I cry when people laugh, it makes me shrink

I am odd, I am new

I understand now that so are you

I say I, “feel like a castaway”

I dream of a day that that’s okay

I try to fit in

I hope that someday I do

I am odd, I am new.

Psalms‬ ‭139:13-14‬ ‭(NLT‬‬) You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

Image: Public Domain