You Are Special

Tonight we took the family to a sweet presentation at our local elementary school.  It was a musical/dance interpretation of the book "You are Special" by Max Lucado.  We are friends with the talented teacher who organized it, and her son and daughter, who wrote the music for the production, are friends of our children.  It was an extremely touching presentation. 

If you are unfamiliar with the story, here is a summary.  The Wemmicks are puppets who live out their days in their village putting stars and dots on one another.  The stars are like "praise" and the dots are "criticism."  Some puppets are covered in stars while some poor puppets have nothing but dots.  Punchinello is one of those unfortunate puppets.  He can never seem to do anything right and is covered in dots.  But one day he meets Lucia.  She is different than all the other puppets.  She has neither stars nor dots sticking to her.  In fact, if someone tries to give her a star or a dot, it just falls off.  And yet she seems so happy.  Punchinello is intrigued and asks why the stickers don't stick to her.  She tells him that it is because she goes to visit the Eli the woodcarver every day.  The woodcarver is the one who made each and every puppet.  Punchinello decides to visit Eli himself and learns some important truths. 

He learns that Eli, the woodcarver, values him no matter what others in the village may think.  Punchinello asks him, "Why do I matter to you?"  Eli says, "Because you're mine, That's why you matter to me."  He asks Eli why the stickers don't stick to Lucia.  Eli tells him that they don't stick because Lucia has realized that what the woodcarver thinks about her is more important than what anybody else thinks.  "The more you trust MY love, the less you care about their stickers."

As Punchinello leaves, Eli tells him one last, very important thing,

"Remember, you are special because I made you, and I don't make mistakes."

When Punchinello internalizes this last comment and realizes its truth, a dot falls off of him onto the ground.

What a beautiful story for my children, and for me too.  I started to cry as  the girl playing Lucia danced in such a free and beautiful way.  I could see how knowing what she knows can help all of us to live our own lives in more free and beautiful ways.  When we realize ourselves and can help our children realize that their true worth comes from being children of God, and that what he thinks is more important than what the world thinks, we have something truly special in our lives. 

Way back in 1973, in the April General Conference, in a talk entitled "In His Strength",Elder Marvin J. Ashton said,

"In the kingdom of our Heavenly Father no man is a nobody."

He also said,

"To mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, and children everywhere, we declare that regardless of your present station in life you are someone special.  Remember, you may be an obscure boy, girl, man, or woman, but you are not a "nobody."