The Blessing

When you saw today's blog title, I'll bet you thought I was going to talk about my blessing jar again.  Right?  Wrong!

Does your family have a favorite movie?  Do y'all have a movie that you quote quite often?  We love watching Christmas Vacation every year (multiple times!). . .and this is one of our favorite dialogues in the movie:

Clark: Since this is Aunt Bethany's 80th Christmas, I think she should lead us in the saying of Grace.

Aunt Bethany: [turns to Lewis] What, dear?

Nora Griswold : Grace!

Aunt Bethany: Grace? She passed away thirty years ago.

Uncle Lewis: They want you to say Grace.

[Bethany shakes her head in confusion]

Uncle Lewis: The BLESSING! (can't you just hear his voice???)

Aunt Bethany: [they all pose for prayer] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands/ One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Clark: Amen.

What blessing did you teach your children when they were young?  We always said,
God is great.
God is good.
Let us thank him for our food.
By his hands, we all are fed.
Give us Lord, our daily bread.

We all prayed that until just a few years ago every Sunday at Grandmother's house, too!

When our kids were in elementary school, they learned all sorts of other blessings.  One of my favorites was sung to the superman tune!
Thank you, God, for giving us food.
Thank you, God, for giving us food.
For the friends we meet and the food we eat . . thank you, God!

At some point, they learned the Johnny Appleseed prayer.
Oh, the Lord's been good to me,

And so I thank the Lord,

For giving me the things I need,

The sun, the rain, and the apple seed

The Lord's been good to me.

Now, we all just pray as we say the blessing but we still always say something like:

Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and our bodies to your service.  It just fits! :-)

We have this really long empty wall in our kitchen . . .see it below.  The wall is to the left of the island.  (I have no idea what Mark is doing in this picture nor do I have any idea of why I snapped this picture!  This might be the night that we hosted supper club at our house.)

So I decided that we needed a blessing on that wall (now do you see where I was going with my Christmas Vacation story at the beginning????)

Mark brought a pallet home for me and Glenn took it apart and nailed it back together.  I painted a base coat of tan paint on the pallet (similar to the wall color).  Then I cut letters out of vinyl using my silhouette cameo.  I very carefully placed the letters on the pallet and painted around them with some of the leftover paint from the dining room.  The paint is much more vibrant on the walls!!  I let it dry and peeled off the vinyl . . .and the letters weren't dark enough.  Imagine my surprise when I came in from work on Christmas Eve.  Laura had painted each letter blue and had freehanded a dove and some swirls and a star in the top corner.

My giant BLESSING is ready to hang on the wall.  I love this blessing.  I wish we had known it when the kids were growing up.
Bless the food before us,
the family beside us,
and the love between us!

We feel like everyone that eats at our table is family!

If Aunt Bethany came to visit at our house, we could tell her to just read the blessing on the wall!!