a handout

Today as I waited patiently outside Josh's school to pick him up I was randomly approached by a woman and given a flyer. My first inclination was to dismiss her and it, thinking it odd to be approached in a school yard and guessing it was either a sale of some kind for a local store or perhaps a handout about how the fire and brimstone will be my future if I do not repent. However, as I began to listen to her spiel I quickly heard some key words that got me very interested. This woman worked (s) for the City of Toronto, she is a Public Health nurse and there is a free screening clinic next week, they screen things like hearing, sight, speech and language... aha... now you see where I started to register what this woman was saying to me. As I tuned into what she was saying I told her a little about Josh, and my struggles to find him appropriate therapy. She told me that the school board should be the one to be taking on his care and that he was too old for the screening but as I reassured her that this would be the case, she said 'here's my card. call me. we will find something. We will get him some help'.

Isn't funny how dismissive we are of strangers sometimes, and if only we stopped for a moment and truly listened we might actually learn that they are little gifts from heaven wanting a moment of our time to bless us. How many of these moments have I missed because I have been too busy, distracted or caught up in my own 'stuff' to really pay too much attention, if any attention at all?

I don't know if this nurse can help, in fact my guess is that she probably won't be too much more help than we have already received and her advice will probably be things we have already tried or been denied. That isn't the point though is it? What I saw today is yet another display of how much God loves Josh, and how he longs to ease my fears. How he longs to talk to me and how sometimes I just need to shut up and listen. Instead of looking around for a way out I need to look these gifts in the eye and see them for what they are. Not a handout about my need to repent but rather one about His infinite love and grace.

L