4.8.10

Over the past several months I’ve gotten calls from different people telling me about women and her child that they encountered at a grocery store or convenience market who needed help. The women appeared to be in late 40’s or early 50’s and the child was pre-teen. But what made the situation so touching and concerning was that the child had Down syndrome. It was obvious they were either homeless and/or experiencing pretty severe poverty. I would get a call from the store manager or from the person trying to help asking me for advice or recommendations. There have been several times I asked them to see if they could keep the lady occupied with a cup of coffee while I tried to get to her. I even asked the folks to give the woman my name and number and on one occasion I got a message from her asking for help but not telling me where she was. So she knew my name but we had never met – until today…

I got a call from one of the best outreach workers in Nashville to say she had lady in her office with a child who had Down syndrome. She called to say she’d like me to come over rand see if we could figure out how to help. I headed to her office and finally met the mom and her daughter. We talked for a while and could tell she was very nervous about trusting us. I felt we were pushing her a little too hard to allow us to help so we backed off and just asked if we could provide her and her daughter a hotel room for the week. Eventually she agree. We talked about her need for food and offered to take her to Kroger where she could buy what she wanted and warm it in her room on the microwave. That her off about not wanting a hotel room with a microwave because of the smell.

We headed to a hotel that we have used before. I didn’t know for sure but I thought that they had some rooms with microwaves and some without. When we got there we found out that all the rooms had microwaves and she started to leave. We calmed her down and she agreed to try another hotel provided that it had outside room entrances and she could be on the first floor. Finally we found a hotel that met all her expectations. As I drove from the check-in desk around to her room I looked in my mirror and expected to see her following me in her car. But what I saw touched my heart. The mom and her daughter had left their car in the front of the building and she was carrying her daughter on her back in the parking lot and literally running to the room to meet us. Maybe I was imagining but I could see joy and love in that mom’s face that was beyond anything I’d recently experienced. It felt like we had broken through with her and she was beginning to trust us…

Where this goes with this family only God knows. She seems to have quite a few needs – bother personally and for her daughter. We’ll start on those tomorrow. For the rest of the day we told her she could just enjoy the room and relax. She deserves it. Be praying that she will continue to trust us and let us walk with her. I’m sure God will be teaching us as we try to be his hands and feet with this family.