I wrote this story for a young friend who was recovering from an accident.
If any of these lines are helpful, then they are yours as well. Be strong and take courage!

Once upon a time there was a young girl who looked quite a lot like you. She was almost exactly your age, and her hair looked kind of like yours. Her name was Katie Lynn.

Katie Lynn was filled with spunk and pizzazz. Almost everywhere she went, she turned the world upside-down with her unstoppable curiosity and fun. I’m certain you would have liked her. She did things in a sparkling and fresh kind of way, almost like the sun coming up on a May morning, or the moon hiding behind the lilac tree in June.

One of Katie Lynn’s specialties was making people laugh. Perhaps it’s because when she laughed everyone around her wanted to laugh too. And her laugh was so musical. It sort of got into your heart if you listened for very long.

“Where did you get that laugh?” Mr. Higgens used to ask. Mr. Higgens was the mailman, and he was always bringing things to Katie Lynn. There were packages, and postcards, and notes, and sometimes catalogs from places Katie Lynn didn’t know anything about.

“I don’t know. I’ve always laughed this way,” Katie Lynn answered. And then she’d laugh right there, that musical laugh that made Mr. Higgens feel like the world was okay after all, or at least it was getting that way as fast as it could.

Katie Lynn was also a dreamer. In her heart she was always dreaming - big things, little things, and things in-between - grand things, wonderful things - things for herself and things for everyone else she knew and loved. “I never knew a girl with such dreams in her heart,” her mother told her once.

“Dreams are like seeds,” Katie Lynn answered. “Someday these seeds will grow up to be a forest of dreams come true. I know it will be that way, for it must. That is the way dreams are.”

Katie Lynn’s mom looked at her and smiled. “I wish I had your sweet sense of confidence.”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Katie Lynn told her. “Confidence is born of trust.” And then she would go outside where the wind caught her hair, wrapping it around her face, and raced with her across the backyard out to the edge of the field.

One day Mr. Higgens handed Katie Lynn something that wasn’t mail. “I found it a few doors down,” he explained. It was a bird with a broken wing. “Oh,” she said, and stopped what she was doing to look for a small box. She reappeared a minute later.

“I knew you would be the one to care for it,” Mr. Higgens said. “No one I know loves things like you do.”

“That’s the secret,” Katie Lynn said. “Love is the secret ingredient. It makes things grow, and plants new things, and fixes them when they’re broken.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Higgens as he watched Katie Lynn hold the bird close. “That’s the way it must be.”

“That’s the way it is,” Katie Lynn answered. “Someday my little friend will fly again, for I am dreaming it in my heart, and dreams are bigger than broken wings.”

Mr. Higgens stood silent a moment, his mailbag in his hand. “I wish I had your never-ending optimism,” he said.

“It isn’t optimism,” she said. “It’s hope. Deep down never-ending hope.”

“Where did you get a heart so filled with hope?” he asked.

“From the Heart of all things,” she answered, smiling, then turned to carry the box into the house. Mr. Higgens continued his mail route with her words echoing in his thoughts.

Days went by, but time was Katie Lynn’s friend, for all things growing come to be what they were made to be in time, and none of Katie Lynn’s dreams were ever rushed. You might say she understood the inner rhythms of life and knew not to hurry things along. “Love has its own calendar,” she would say. And so there was never any anxiety in her thoughts, and when she played outside she seemed almost as free as the wind that caught her laugh and spun it into a million joy-tossed whispers.

Of course, there came a day when the little bird flew again. Mom was there. So was Mr. Higgens, for Katie Lynn waited until he arrived that afternoon. She placed her feathered friend on the porch near the stairs. It walked around a little, and looked things over, but before long the call that’s deep inside everything that was made to fly welled up in the little bird and away it went.

“What a beautiful ending to the story,” Mr. Higgens observed.

“That’s not the end of the story,” Katie Lynn told him. “It’s just another bright beginning. That’s the way Love is; always bursting with new beginnings.” Mom smiled.

“Today I have seen a miracle,” said Mr. Higgens.

“I see them every day,” Katie Lynn answered, “everywhere I look. That’s the way of dreams and Love.”

And so Mr. Higgens went back to his mail route, and Mom had a few things to see to in the house, but Katie Lynn ran again with the wind, and laughed again with the sunshine that painted the backyard, and lost herself once more in the beauty of endless new horizons.

Get well soon. Love surrounds you!

Copyright 1999 Steve Mugglin
Permission is given to make not-for-profit copies.