For those of you who don’t know, today is Pitt Hopkins Awareness Day. Monkey has a friend with this rare genetic disorder. This post is for him.

We know he and his parents through our hometown and therapy. Crazy right? Small place, small world and everything (at least as I have come to know it) comes through here at some point.

This amazing boy is one of about 400 worldwide with Pitt Hopkins. That is rare. Check out the Pitt Hopkins Research Foundation. Also see the incredible kids at Eastside High School in the upstate of South Carolina who have raised a lot of money for Pitt Hopkins research as part of their Spirit Week.

Lastly click here to see an incredible video that the Pitt Hopkins Research Foundation has put together.

Now, if you didn’t click any of those links. DO IT NOW! No kidding, don’t even read the rest of the post unless you do it. DO it. Do it, do it now.

Clicked yet? NOW! I’m sorry if I was sitting beside you this would be like a childhood game of ‘I’m not touching you!” Have you clicked them ALL? How about now? Ok. I trust you.

Did you do it?

For real this time.

A pastor I once knew (and not specific to them, I’m sure) said and probably still does, “Preach the Gospel, use words when necessary”.

Is that enough said? Probably.

Our son and his brother in the world of rare genetic disorders don’t do much in the way of talking.

But I guarantee they have a lot to teach you about your life. About how to live. About how to love. About being better. About amazing, incredible, awesome, struggle and hope. Most of all about love and hope. Might sound familiar to something you know (1 Corinthians 13:13).

It’s like this. We do a lot of things with our mouth. Some of them are fairly valuable, like eating and drinking. Speaking, we do that too. Compared to the others? Might take a back seat. I’m not saying I wouldn’t love for my son to burst into strings of sentences about how he feels and about what he sees. I would be lying if I said I don’t hope for such a thing. But it still would not be his words that would do the teaching.

So today, what’s left of it, think about those with Pitt Hopkins and remember, these kids are not just rare because of their genes. I have come to the conclusion that they are probably more rare because they can teach us more about how to love and hope than we could ever hear from someone’s words. So if you’re ever given the life changing opportunity to get to know one of these superheroes, don’t let it pass you by, you will truly be missing something awesome.