Grace: the mysterious and wondrous way Life works things out for us in spite of ourselves. That’s what grace means to me now. But when I was a little girl, grace simply meant the prayer softly murmured before every meal at which the family sat down together.

My parents never expressly set out to teach me the words of the grace they had been saying at every meal since before I was born. I was allowed to sit reverently and listen to the intonations around the table as they came from my older brother and sister, from my mother, and most of all from my father. His deep voice was the easiest to follow. I listened to the sounds he made meal after meal until one day—in an unknown year between the time I could talk and kindergarten—I joined in.

When the last sound was uttered, my mother looked at me approvingly; her words, now forgotten, conveyed “good for you.” And so I became part of the ritual that took place at least once on weekdays, twice on Saturday, and three times on Sunday. I had no idea what the sounds I was imitating meant. But I trusted that since my mother was satisfied, I must have it right and God was satisfied too.

Several years later, when I was in second grade, I read a version of grace that appealed to me in a Sunday school booklet.  It had words I understood, unlike the prayer we had been repeating.

I can still see my mother reading a book on the living room couch as I interrupted her from the dining room doorway. “Mommy, here’s a nice grace: ‘Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let Thy gifts to us be blessed. Amen.’ ”

“Yes,” my mother agreed, barely glancing up, “that’s the one we’ve been using.” She went back to her reading without as much as a quizzical look.

I stood there shocked and speechless. Fortunately, no one else was around. I didn’t want to explain that I had been uttering sounds, not words — except at the end, when I imitated my father mumbling “trusty, blusty men.” I didn’t want to admit that I had been wondering how trusty, blusty men fit in. Ah … to us be blessed. Amen.

That evening at dinner, for the first time in my life I said the words to my family’s table prayer. No one noticed that anything was different. Grace indeed.

This story reminds me of an anecdote I once read about a little girl with the gift of healing. The setting: somewhere in Eastern Europe quite a long time ago. After observing her healing work from a distance, a church officiant asked her what she said when people came to her. The little girl replied, “I say what you say in church Sunday mornings: Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.”