A tribute to Angel, mentally handicapped but not at all handicapped in love, written years ago by her father….

No one laughed at her the day she graduated. No taunts. No mockery. Maybe they were too focused on their own achievements to remember to ridicule the retarded girl. Or maybe she just looked so radiant, so beautiful, that even the least sensitive among them couldn’t bring themselves to mar her special moment.

Throughout her school years Angel endured hurtful words from a handful of fellow students whose IQs were higher than hers but whose hearts were much, much smaller. As changes in life brought her to different schools, the names and faces of her tormentors also changed, but the insults didn’t.

“Daddy, what’s a retard?” or “Mom, what’s a dummy?” she would sometimes ask, tears streaming down her face as she came in from school. But on her graduation day all of that was forgotten, relegated to the realm of unpleasant memories that deserve no afterlife.

Technically, Angel didn’t graduate from high school. In our state special education students may attend school until they are twenty-one, learning from their dedicated teachers about important matters like the value of money, reading, and other specific life skills. Then they participate in graduation with that year’s crop of seniors. Instead of diplomas they receive a certificate of completion.

Scanning the line of incoming caps and gowns, I stood ready to click the record button as soon as Angel came into view. But when I saw her, my hand faltered and the picture on the tiny screen jostled crazily.

It wasn’t just her smile of unadulterated joy that nearly dropped me to my knees. It was an instantaneous, deeply emotional realization that what we’d taught Angel her entire lifetime was true. She is different in some ways, but she can dream and work and achieve just like all the rest of us. God may have gifted other people differently than He did Angel, but He used just as much care and thoughtfulness when He chose Angel’s special gifts as He does with every other person on this planet. She isn’t mentally handicapped because God forgot her or ran out of materials the day she was born. Whatever the causes of her mental disability, God gifted her for His own unique purposes. He made her a marvelous example of a human who gives unconditional love and gentle acceptance.

With careful words, we’d told her that so many times. In plainer language I’d lectured large audiences with the same truths—not just about my daughter but about all our children, handicapped or not. But it was when she walked through her graduation with that Cheshire cat grin that I finally felt the truth I’d spoken a thousand times. Our Angel was proving to us that mental retardation was a limitation of life only if she—or we—let it be. When they called her name, “Angela Michelle Beam,” and she crossed that stage to take her certificate, Alice and I wept openly, ignoring the surprised stares and whispers from nearby seats.

Angel believed what we taught her about her abilities quicker and deeper than we did. Maybe that’s why she carries absolutely no recollection of the taunts from her school days. They have no reality for her because she knows they aren’t true. She knows that she can do anything her heart sets itself to do.

She has the graduation pictures to prove it.