Blessings

Every morning as part of my prayers, I ask God to help me be a blessing to someone that day. I learned that prayer in one of the Mitford books that I so love. Each morning when I say those words, I think to myself, “Was I a blessing to someone yesterday?” To be honest, I rarely say yes.

It’s not that I am a mean or thoughtless person. I just go through my day and don’t generally spend a lot of time thinking about other people. Oh, I might open up the door for a person with a handful of groceries, or wave someone to go before me in a line of cars. But a blessing? Not very often.

This morning I turned the question around and asked if anyone had been a blessing to me yesterday? Since I spent the entire day with various grandchildren, I can say absolutely YES. I watched the 6-month-old yesterday, and she is learning to crawl. She gets up on her hands and knees and looks earnestly at the toy that I have placed just out of her reach. She then looks at me with pleading eyes. I must admit I, without fail, move the toy within her grasp. I can’t help it. It makes her smile, which in turn makes me laugh.

Then we went out to dinner with our son and daughter who have four children, age 5 through 10 months. It was total joyous chaos. The 3-year-old boy simply can’t sit still. The 2-year-old had a string of St. Patrick’s Day beads that were her personal weapon of choice that night. The 5-year-old (almost 6) discovered the previous night that she has a loose tooth, and spent the night demonstrating it to anyone who would look. The baby chewed on her pizza crust, only requiring one strong pat on the back to spit out a piece. Absolute happiness!

The 2-year-old showed us that she could now say the blessing before meal (God is great, etc), only leaving out a few of the words. She can, however, say AMEN with a vengeance!

Halfway through dinner, Miss A wrote me a note on her tablemat. “I love you,” it said. I wrote back, “Me too.” She threw her arms around me.

Blessings.