The Violin Teacher's Daughter

 

I love how God brings people together to meet needs, and sometimes it all seems rather random.   In 2004, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and train to walk the Portland Marathon, which is held in October.  The training started in January.  The gist of it was that we would walk our daily walks on our own, then meet once a week at Alton Baker Park as a group to do our “long walk”.  Each week our daily walking increased, and each weekend our long walk increased.  There were a LOT of hours spent walking and walking as a group, you find people that walk the same pace as you, you chat, and the time goes by before you know it and you have walked farther than you thought you could.
I completed the marathon that October.  But I decided I wanted to keep ‘stepping out’ and challenging myself, so later that year I started taking viola lessons.  I learned of a violin teacher in Harrisburg and rented a viola and asked if she could teach me. 
She had a little girl who was a toddler, and she taught lessons out of her home, so the child, although well behaved, was often in the background.  I did notice, though, that the girl walked on her tiptoes almost all the time.  I mentioned it to the teacher/mom but she didn’t think it odd. 
As it happens, I had fallen into the business of medical transcription a few years before and in addition to typing for various local doctors, I was also in the pool of transcriptionists for a large medical group and often got to type pediatrics.  As it turns out, I typed about a child who walked on their toes like that, learned what condition caused it, and also learned where these children were referred for treatment. 
So at my next lesson, I went out on a limb and suggested the mom look up that condition, see if she felt it fit, and suggested to her where she could get (low-cost/free) treatment if needed.  I felt that was very forward of me.  You don’t tell people how to raise their kids.  I tried to be very light about it and just leave it for her to decide on. 
Fast forward a little while.  I had transitioned to an actual viola teacher, because violin and viola are written in different clefs and it proved too difficult for my teacher to accompany me and transpose the music at the same time.  And so I was not seeing her every week anymore.  But I ran into her one day and she thanked me PROFUSELY for pointing out the condition and giving her the info on where to go (Shriners), as her daughter had needed treatment to fix the problem and there were other unseen issues that were also part of it which they were able to address before they were serious. 

I think about this from time to time, how God leads us to someone and it “just so happens” that we, in another circle of our life, run into something that person needs and are able to pass that on to them, even though the two are not at all connected, except through us.