The I Love You Button

      Today is Valentine's Day...a day to say I love you to those who hold a special place in your heart. As soon as the Christmas displays came down in December the empty shelves rapidly filled up with candy, pink and red bears holding hearts, and artificial floral decorations.  Retailers are counting on the fact that we need some tangible sign of our Love.  They lead us to believe that saying "I Love You" is not enough.

     But it is enough..words are always enough.  

Words, spoken thoughtfully and carefully can have great power.  

    The average person's vocabulary consists of approximately five thousand words, so exactly how many words do you need to tell someone how you feel about them?  Twenty...fifty? Imagine instead you are only given a handful of words...which words would you choose?
     A handful of words is precisely what Scotty has been given and he didn't get to choose. Mama, Dada, bye bye, and a few others that only we can understand are the only words he has every spoken.  Oh...and Amen...miraculously enough this boy of so few words can say Amen...AMEN. 
    We have also been blessed with a mix of sounds that extraordinarily enough sounds a lot like... I Love You.  Powerful words...always accompanied with a huge smile and a hug or a kiss...He means them from his heart, no candy, flowers or stuffed animals needed.  

     Over the years we have explored numerous communication devices but, unfortunately we never found one that suited him. However, we recently purchased an Ipad along with a communication program called Taptotalk.   Tap to talk for the Ipad 
     With it we are able to choose pictures and phrases that hopefully give him the words he needs to help him communicate better.  With the tap of a button he can access pictures of familiar objects, activities, emotions, and people  all accompanied by the sound of my husband's voice.
     I thought the I Love You button would have been one of his favorites, but I was wrong.  He will usually only use it when we ask him to.  At first this puzzled me, but then I realized he doesn't need it.

                           It turns out the handful of words he has been given is enough...

                                                              ...It's always been enough.

Little Children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth.

1John 3:18