Smile!--Even If You're NOT on Candid Camera!

My brother and I looked at each other in confused astonishment. Although seven years younger than myself, he seemed to mirror my own bewilderment, looking as slack jawed as I felt. Who was this woman we were looking at?

Seventy years old if she was a day, our usually sedate Grandmother pranced around our backyard in a joyful, spontaneous dance, using a paper plate as a pretend tambourine. As she circled around in front of us, high stepping and kicking, she sang in a catchy tune, "Ain't she nice? Can she make that kind of rice?"

Now, don't get me wrong. I mean no disrespect to my Grandma. I really do respect and love her for a myriad of reasons--one embedded in the truth of what my brother once said, "All that we are we owe to her and her prayers." Truer words have never been spoken.

Statistics show that children who grow up in dysfunctional families tend to fall into the same awful patterns of their environs--children of drunks drink, children of abusers grow up to be abusers themselves. But despite all the negatives stemming from having a mother who drank heavily when not working, my brother and I both grew up to love and serve the Lord Jesus and be productive members of society. Why? How is it that we didn't fall into the "same as the dysfunctional members of the family" category? First of all, because of God's mercy. Second of all, because of some immutable laws He has established. Data from research reveals that children in "challenging" environments (a polite euphemism for a terrible home life) with at least one stable adult in their lives buck the odds. For my brother and me, that adult was Grandma. She was there for us when mom was--well, in a word, not there. Grandma poured into our lives much of the love and stability our little hearts craved. We owe her an incalculable debt.

But … having said that, it is with great reluctance that I am compelled to admit that (surprise!) Grandma was not perfect. In her early years, she rarely showed joy. While, thankfully, in her 80s and 90s beautiful, gentle smiles began to grace her visage, early on the only times I remember Grandma smiling were when she was talking about Jesus.

How well I remember her sharing with me glorious truths about the Savior she revered and the great delight she felt in His presence through time spent in prayer. She would gesture up towards Heaven, her face radiating total enthrallment, a truly passionate joy lighting up her face. No bones about it, Grandma sure loved to share that joy with others! But smiling during any other conversations or the humdrum events that make up daily life? I can't remember a single time. That's why her silly, girlish behavior that one afternoon stunned us.

Nope, Grandma wasn't perfect.

It is quite possible that her lack of smiling stemmed from the hard knocks in her life. Her own mother was a widow, so her childhood years were marked with the hardships that fact entailed. Later, her own husband died after a lengthy illness when her youngest was only three. Her daughter rebelled when Grandma obeyed God's call to serve Him as a missionary to her own people. And always, money in her little family of three children plus the care of her mother was tight. In the natural, I can see how she didn't have a lot to smile about other than her walk with the Lord. It stands to reason, then, why I did not know the power of smiling until a whole new world opened up to me when I met--ta da! my bonus mother, that is, my husband's mother. In a word, she was a smiler!

After I got to know her, I ventured to ask about that inner joy she always wore on her face. She turned to me, looking up earnestly (seven inches shorter than I, she really had to stretch to do that). With quiet grace, she spoke to me in that serious, earnest manner that defined her. Questions and requests for prayer were never taken lightly by her.

"Janine," she told me, " early on I learned that it costs as much to smile as not to. I learned that we can choose to be happy. I began to purposefully wear a smile because circumstances should not be what defines me. A person will be as happy as they determine to be. And so I choose to walk in the joy of the Lord no matter what." Then my very practical mother-in-law smiled again, turned, and continued with the task I had interrupted.

Now, my husband's mother had her own litany of obstacles to overcome in life, she wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth--but she chose to show the joy of the Lord with a smile on her face. Always.

If you google the physical benefits of a smile, you will find research that shows that when we smile, our brain responds and starts a looping process that makes us "feel good," which then causes us to smile, which in turn makes us feel good, and the process goes on and on ad infinitum. With some extremely desirable effects. Stress is reduced, mental health is increased, anxiety diminished. One study even found a correlation between the size of our smile and longevity! The people with the biggest smiles lived 7 years longer that those who didn't smile! While all these benefits are nice, the best effect is that when you smile, your attitude and outlook change!

Something had made me pretty grumpy and I was wacking carrots for a salad in the kitchen with a fervor that would make a madman (woman in my case) proud. My husband walked in and offered some calming words, then a, "Come on, you can smile. Smile for me!"

I bared my teeth at him in my own imitation of an angry lion. It was not my best smile--but the simple act of stretching my facial muscles into an expression of joy while I was not at my best caused laughter to bubble up and, despite my upset, I ended up giggling. "I knew you could do it!" my comforter praised.

What I learned? If you smile, even if you don't "feel" like it, feelings will follow after.

And that, dear friends, is how my mother-in-law's determination to choose joy in every circumstance--and to show it through smiling-- became the go-to leitmotif of my life.

Until in recent months, when I allowed the vicissitudes of life to overshadow God's joy and envelope me in a very ungodlike miasma. It got so bad I found myself crying out to God like David of old, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation" ( Psalm 51:12)! Did God answer? You betcha! An unexpected visit from a family member who had suffered the tragic death of a loved one--and yet was able to laugh! In one of our talks, she shared how God had encouraged her. With her broken heart, she called out to God for comfort, for a reason to go on living--and He, ever faithful, answered, encouraging her not only with a special word spoken to her, but even with a vision!

As I meditated on the greatness of God in restoring joy in a joyless situation, He gently reminded me of my own call for help in the area of joy. This is how you regain lost joy, His Spirit witnessed to me: you cry out to the Giver of joy. And He, whose name if Faithful (Deuteronomy 32:4), will stretch out His hand to help you over the obstacles trying to steal that joy.

The end of the matter is this: we are called to walk in joy and smiling is that teeny tiny act of faith that reaches out and grabs that divine joy to make it ours. And when, for some reason, we stumble and fall and find ourselves wallowing in a loss of joy--all we need to do is call out to our Heavenly Father and He will always lift us up!

There are 159 Bible verses about joy in the King James Bible (other versions--other totals). I challenge you to start living them! Choose joy!

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost" (Romans 15:13).