Blessing Bags!

Quality time with those you love is so important. I wrote this book/discussion guide for mothers and their daughters to discuss why it’s beautiful to be a woman. The book explores all sorts of topics related to femininity and there are several discussion prompts. Grace and I have had a great time going through the chapters together and I have cherished our conversations.

At the end of each chapter, there is an activity for moms to do with their daughters too. So in Chapter 1, our activity was to do something kind for someone, pointing them towards the Love God has for them. I suggested baking cookies for someone, leaving a note telling them that God loves them and posted my chocolate chip cookie recipe.

When I asked Grace if that is what she wanted to do, she said she wanted to do something else. When we went to Oklahoma for Spring Break to visit family, she remembered seeing bags that my dad (her grandpa) had in his car. They were blessing bags for the homeless. Grandpa told her whenever he saw someone who was begging on the side of the road, or someone who was homeless, he would give them a blessing bag.

She asked if we could assemble blessing bags for the homeless. I got teary eyed for so many reasons. First of all-what a beautiful heart she has! Second of all, she must have really been listening to the content of Chapter 1 which illustrated that true beauty is something that draws others towards you so you could lead them to God. Third of all-It is the PERFECT suggestion and I want to change it to include blessing bags for the book’s suggested activity.

Quality time gave me an opportunity to teach Grace some things, but more importantly, it gave me time to listen to her responses.

Grace’s beauty inspires me. My daughter continues to teach me about being selfless and leading others to Christ.

We spent the rest of our allotted quality time researching on Pinterest ways to make blessing bags the homeless could use. We found that many toiletry items are easy to find from shelters so there was no need to include them in our bags. So here’s what we did for blessing bags: We decided there should be two different kinds, one for summer and one for winter. We start with resealable plastic bags in gallon size.

For the summer bags, we included travel size sunscreen and an extra plain white t-shirt.

For the winter bags, high quality wool socks (#1 asked for item), warm gloves and hat were the most requested items. You could thrift some good finds or buy new.

Both versions of this include a bottle of water, bag of peanuts, chewy granola bar, lip balm, bandaids, baby wipes, and applesauce. We also wanted to include a prayer, signed by Grace.

“Here is a blessing bag for you. We hope that this bag blesses you and brings a smile to your face. Know that you are so loved by God. Also know that we are praying for you.”

The idea is to keep these blessing bags in our car/van so when we see someone begging for money on the side of the road, we could bless them with one of these bags instead.

I pray this idea inspires you and your children!