Reminder

Since we live in Vancouver there are a lot of homeless people that often have signs asking for money. Jason and I try to give whenever we have some change or a few dollars on us but sometimes we just drive by.
I need to say that Jason and I were put into a financially stressful situation this month.  We had previously lent my mom 1500 dollars that was necessary for us to have Christmas, pay our January rent, and pay all of our bills.  We lent my mother this money in June and told her that we would have to have it back.  Things did not work out with my mother getting the money she needed to pay us back so this month we have been really stressed.   In fact things have been so tight that we are in the process of selling my computer and Jason's gun plus many other things to make sure our bills were taken care of--not including wanting to do Christmas for our kids.
Tonight as we went to the store we saw a woman holding a sign asking for help.  I turned to Jason and said, "I would give that lady money if we had any."  After I said that a car pulled over and gave this woman money and drove away.  As we pulled up closer to this woman we could both see that she was crying from the kindness of the people who had just helped her.  My heart broke and so did Jason's.  We drove to our apartment and grabbed our change jar both knowing we wanted to help her somehow.  While we waited at the stop light she was waving at cars in almost a frantic manner.  I walked up to the woman and immediately saw that she was crying.  It was obvious that she was hurting.  "This is all the money that we have right now and we wanted you to have it."  She immediately leaned forward and gave me a hug crying into my shoulder telling me she was all alone here and thanking me for helping her.  It was such an emotionally charged moment that I too began to cry and told her that everything would be okay because I didn't know any thing else to say.  As I walked back to the car she yelled, "God bless you" and placed her hand on her heart.
This evening after the kids were in bed Jason went back on the computer to go over the budget.  Jason checks the budget every single day to figure out our finances.  He has been over it at least a dozen times this month and tonight when he checked it he realized he had not accounted for our rent already being withdrawn.  He discovered that we actually have some extra money for Christmas and also all of our bills are completely covered.  For Jason to not realize that until tonight after going over it every single day adding up our things and figuring out bills is pretty surprising.
I believe that because we helped out that woman tonight, giving her everything we had that was not going to bills, that we were blessed.  I know some will think this is silly and not any kind of blessing other than an error but I do know that this was a reminder to us.  I was reminded tonight that although we were in a struggling situation we are not homeless and we have lots of family who will always help us if we are in need.  I know we were blessed tonight not only with our finances being figured out but also with a reminder that it is our job to give even when it seems like you can't.