Seven simple words that changed a little girl's life forever

Mary Ann Bird condensed from Guideposts Magazine

I grew up knowing I was different, and i hated it. I was born with a creft palate, and when
I started school my classmates made it clear to me how I must look to others: a little girl with a misshappen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth and garbled speech.
When schoolmates would ask, "what happened to your lips?" I'd tell them I'd fallen and
cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family would love me. Or even like me. Then I entered Mrs. Leonard's second-grade class.
Mrs. Leonard was round and pretty and fragrant, with shining brown hair and warm,
dark, smiling eyes. Everyone adored her. But no one came to love her more than i did, And for a special reason.
The time came for the annual hearing tests given at our school. I could barely hear out
of one ear and was not about to reveal something else that would single me out as different. So i cheated.
The "whisper test" required each child to go to the classroom door, turn sideways, close
one ear with a finger, while the teacher whispered something from her desk, which the child repeated. Then the same for the other ear. Nobody checked how tightly the untested ear was covered. so I merely pretended to block mine.
As usual, I was last. But all through the testing I wondered what Mrs. Leonard might say
to me. I knew from previous years that the teacher whispered things like "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes?"
My time came. I turned my bad ear toward her, plugging up the other just enough to be
able to hear. I waited, and then came the words that God had surely put into her mouth, severn words that changed my life forever.
Mrs. Lenoard, the teacher I adored, said softly, "I wish you were my little girl."