Growing up, I always marveled at my mother’s gift of blessing everyone she ran into. It was like she owned the words “Dios te bendiga.” She was the one who blessed my son every day, making the sign of the cross on his forehead and kissing him on both cheeks. That was a comfort to me until the day she died.
I was left without owning the words “Dios te bendiga.” I never felt capable or worthy to bless anyone or anything, much less my beloved son. This fact bothered me very much because I had left the church in which I was raised because of its treatment of women, the divorced, and gays. So after mom died I felt that I needed to become worthy to bless my son. I found the Episcopal Church in 1984 and loved it the instant it was evangelized to me by a man who is a priest.
I decided to “prepare” myself to be worthy and capable of blessing by taking the Education for Ministry course. I graduated four years later so very informed about Christianity, history, theology, the Bible. I became so settled in my mind as to why I was Christian and why God loved me and had sacrificed his son for me and my soul.
I began to own my spirituality and my faith and, most of all, clearly understand that I was on a path with Christ. So, I went to study Spiritual Direction at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest. With every class, every person I met, every experience, my love and understanding of Christ grew, my faith grew and my heart became enlarged with the knowledge that God loves me no matter what.
Do I bless my son now? Yes, I do because I can. Because I prepared myself to go out and get the tools to be able to do that with total understanding of what a blessing is. It comes from the heart through the soul.
A blessing given to others comes from deep inside my heart where God dwells and lives in every breath of my life. My mother blessed me with her heart and soul, she was capable of that. I had to learn it. I had to learn that I had faith in God all along, but I just didn’t understand it until the Episcopal Church embraced me and prepared me and helped me acquire the tools to do what God wants me to do. It was His plan all along.