GO THIS WAY

So I had planned to go to church today and I was going to take the kids. I haven't been in a while and I haven't taken Christian in even longer. Daddy usually hangs at home for Sunday football and is quite content to stay with a kicked back, t-shirt and diaper wearing Christian. Who am I to interrupt this father-son Sunday ritual?

But I was going to attempt to take Christian and Lola. The house was a mess, Lola was screaming and her nose was running like a faucet (thank you, teething), I had a headache and I was this close to ditching the whole idea and staying home.

Manny suggested I go because I'd feel better, so we went. It was a good service. I was only half listening because Lola likes to yell at people in church, spill banana flavored puffies, and unpack my purse during the service. It was still uplifting, though.

Believe in the ridiculous so God can show you the miraculous.

After the service was over, we spilled out into the lobby and lingered until we found random family members. I spotted a little girl in a stroller. She was like Christian. I knew right away.

Having a child with special needs, you get good at spotting other kids like yours from a mile away. It's like a radar goes off, a connection occurs, and you're tuned in.

I contemplated for a couple minutes whether I should go over and introduce myself. Would her mom be open to me just coming over and imposing myself upon her situation? Would she wonder why this wacko lady with a baby that she has never met before is so interested in her daughter?

I decided to go say hello. The little girl was just like Christian and only about a week older than him. She actually reminded me so much of Christian's little friend, Cici. I talked to her mother for a while, who I'm sure, at first, was weirded out, but when I explained my plight, she was really open. Her daughter has epilepsy, or a seizure disorder, and cerebral palsy. It's such an immediate pull for me and I'm not sure if this is the same kind of feeling for other moms of children with brain injury or CP. But it's like telepathy or something.  I don't even have the right words for it but it's an immediate discovery of common ground.

But it gets better.

As we're talking about seizures, she tells me she put her daughter on the Ketogenic Diet last year and it was the best thing she ever did. No medicine worked for her and she was having hundreds of seizures a day. So they went to Phoenix and decided to start the diet. Her daughter started crying for the first time, started moving...it was a success!

Okay, so here's where I thank Manny for pushing me to go to church. Here's where I start analyzing the whole meeting. I really and truly believe that God put this meeting in my path, He put this little girl in my path as if to put up GO THIS WAY signs on our journey.

If I had decided not to go to church and, instead, stayed home and sulked in my messy house I never would have met this family. God had something waiting for me at church and in thinking about the events of the day as a whole, I was supposed to go today. After about a month of not going to church, and this family divulging that they only attend sporadically, we were all supposed to be there. Wow.

So what happened next? I came home to a house that had magically cleaned itself (Thank you, Manny and Gabe!!!), which is, I think, better than flowers. As far as the future, playdates are involved and I plan to follow all signs that say:

>>GO THIS WAY>>