The first speaker at church today said many things, but one that stuck with me is that her father had told her, if your heart and your head are ever not in agreement, pay attention. Sit down and figure it out till they are. We are to follow the Spirit that leads to all that is good in our interactions with God, ourselves, and each other.
The second speaker talked about his little sister Katie.
Katie was born with hydrocephalus. I grew up with a kid my age around the corner with that, so I was particularly interested to hear him tell about his sister, whose case was clearly far worse than my friend’s; Katie wasn’t just a little slow, she had definite mental retardation.
Her brain shunt got infected and she passed away recently.
People her family didn’t know not only paid their respects but showed up in their lives to tell their stories. Things the family had never known. Lives she had touched.
And one of those was a girl who, twenty years earlier in kindergarten with her, had been, she realized later, bullying another child in the class.
Katie’s reaction was to step in, hug the victim of the moment, and tell her, Stop! She’s my friend!
To Katie, everyone was her friend.
The woman told the grieving family that it had made a permanent impression on her: from that moment on, she wanted to be more like Katie.
A kid who was different.
A kid who set the example for everyone else around her to live up to.
A kid whose heart and head were forever in the same place.