Practicing What You Preach

This time last week, my family was here.  It was truly a time of Thanksgiving.  Madeline came home from Philadelphia for a few days.  Mom, Porter and Bob traveled from NC to sunny Florida to spend Thanksgiving with us.  Jimmy was here.  Jim took off a couple days of work.  We missed Joseph, but the older I get, the more I realize how difficult it is to have entire families together on occasions.  Work, obligations, finances and many other reasons contribute to this.  It is just a wake up call that each of the times we CAN be together needs to be cherished.  Who knows when the next time will be?

It was a bittersweet holiday....our first Thanksgiving without Martha.  Although her presence was certainly missed around the dinner table (and while playing Scattergories!), her spirit was with us.

We did our usual contests and games, but a highlight was a questionnaire of Family Fun Facts.  Madeline actually won the prize, but everyone else also did a good job with it.  I was pleased to know how many of the stories of family had been listened to.  That is the only way the young people would know the answers, as they were events that they were too young to have experienced.  Porter even knew all the names of Mom's siblings.  I thought that was impressive.  I am already composing some Family Fun Facts for next year's quiz!

Holiday time from Thanksgiving until New Year's usually finds me happy and extremely busy.  However, I have been finding myself in a plethora of moods lately.  One minute I am giddy with excitement about everything going on, and the next I am a weepy mess.  I have come to the conclusion that all of this is "normal," or so I'm told.  Regardless, the various moods do allow me to explore all the different things that these moods evoke, so it is a time of realizations.

In spite of the giddiness or the sadness, I am constantly reminded of the many reasons to be thankful and to count my blessings.   The first paragraph here spells out one of the greatest blessings of all....family.

During my reflections as I ride my emotional roller coaster, I always come back to that 'F word'....family.  I know that everyone feels as if they have the greatest family in the world, and it is the one thing that I am sure of.  Like all families, ours has had its share of ups and downs and has certainly endured much.  The strength that we find in one another is what sustains us.

Counting one's blessings doesn't have to come only at Thanksgiving time.  It should be something we are mindful of at all times.  I have had this reminder most of my life in the form of a framed picture that hangs in Mom's breakfast room.  It is a simple picture that many people have seen countless times.  It is an old man at the table, head bowed, obviously giving thanks for the loaf of bread sitting before him.  When I really look at this picture, I always feel humbled.

There are so many things we take for granted....such as a simple loaf of bread.

Mom told me that she thinks we have had this hanging in our home even on Woodside Drive.  I knew I had always remembered seeing it.  It has been etched in my mind.  I not only feel humbled when I look at it, but I also feel peaceful.  There is something very serene about the simple act of giving thanks to God for our daily bread.

I remember being with Madeline somewhere and we were talking about various and sundry things, and she mentioned this picture from her Grandma's breakfast room.  I guess the impact of it spans the generations and the miles.  Madeline, too, likes the picture and finds meaning in it.  One thing it means to her is simply the comfort that she finds in Grandma's home.

When I took the pictures of the things in Mom's house to use in this blog, I took a photo of this particular picture.  I took several, as a matter of fact, trying to get a good one.  I think subconsciously I aimed my camera to include the plaque hanging next to it since it appears in each snapshot.  It is an old decoupaged plaque that Jessie made for mom many years ago.  I think it is appropriate that it hangs next to the picture of the grateful man.

The plaque is An Old English Prayer.  Jessie used her own beautiful handwriting to immortalize this prayer.  The prayer was found among Donald's things after he passed away.  Donald was the youngest brother of Mom and Jessie. He spent his life in the military and in service to others.  I only met him a couple of times when he was in Shelby on leave and I was quite young, but I feel that he was such a unique and self-less man from the stories I heard from Mom and her siblings.  I know many of his letters and journals are somewhere in Mom's house.  I read them a long time ago, but I think next time I go up for a visit I am going to ask her to dig them out so that I can re-read them.  I would like to know more about my uncle.

The prayer is simple and seems so easy.  If only we could all live this prayer, life really could be simple and wonderful.  I think Donald did practice what he preached.  He was a wise man.

An Old English Prayer

Give us Lord, a bit of sun, a bit of work and a bit of fun.

Give us, in all struggle and sputter

Our daily bread and a bit of butter.

Give us health our keep to make,

and a bit to spare for other's sake.

Give us, too, a bit of song, and a tale and a book to help us along.

Give us, Lord, a chance to be

Our goodly best, brave, wise and free.

Our goodly best for ourselves and others,

Till all men learn to live as brothers.

Give us, Lord, our daily bread.
Amen.