As Long As You Try You Can Smile

When I was in Kindergarten, just recently turned a big ol' 5 we had picture day. Apparently it seemed like a good idea to allow us to have recess first. 🙃
I believed I knew how to fix my hair...after all...I felt how my mother did it for me each day. So ponytail pulled tight and bobby pin reinserted I very proudly walked up for my turn to have my picture taken.
Who knows if the teacher and photographer did not have the heart to tell me my proud accomplishment was misguided, but this is the picture I received a number of weeks later to take home. My comment to my mother? "At least I smiled nice."
This is not an experience unique to me. We all have moments, when we have everything in order, life set the way we expect it to be framed and then we start to run. We forget why we had everything so ordered and we rush onwards, flushed with the moment, forgetting what comes next. Someone calls time, and everything slows to a stop. As our hearts steady to a rhythm of the earth, we remember..."I was supposed to be good!...Oh"
We attempt to return to that controlled place where we were neatly put together. Tucking and tightening, trying to contain everything which is trying to assert its independence. And then we step back into that tidy world. We think we have done it. In a time of those so ready to tell us when we are not showing up as expected, there is silence. Something stops anyone from pointing out that we are not as expected.
Maybe, just maybe it is because they sense something. You and I have these moments many times through our lives. We are prepped for what we believe we are heading towards, and then we get caught up in the excitement of what we really want to do and be. It can't help but discombobulate anyone who isn't willing to sit on the sidelines. Then when we try to step back in line and fit in again, there is something that doesn't quite work. We try, we adjust ourselves and step forward in order, but as we look into the lens of life, the disorder remains and something stops anyone from trying to straighten us out....because in that moment, as they gaze through the lens and filters of their existence, we (you and I) smile. Click, this moment will be there with us forever, saved in our hearts and we will each of us defiantly carry this image home and declare to anyone who will listen, At least I smiled nice!
My mother showed me this picture again a while back...some nearly 50 years from it's taking. It seems this moment repeats. I still sometimes get all straightened up and tidy, but then I hear nature calling from the giant playground of life and I race out to laugh and whisper with my friends the trees and wind. I return flushed and askew, but now I am not so ready to worry about the buttons and bobby pins. Now I shake the hair out put on something comfy and cozy and allow the lens to be the eyes of the beings I find myself lucky enough to step in front of on any given day. The picture is always being recreated and nothing is ever in place because this is not who I am, I am a messy unique child of life. But now I know.....if I smile nice it is because it is the only part of the picture that matters, because that smile is a reflection of my heart. ♥️

As we step into the dying of 2020 (the end of autumn), I have one wish for you in this ever changing life and year. I wish you the gift of being able to let yourself get messy and not care what anyone else thinks. Let your body move, let your heart pound and let your voice reach out from your toes.....and when it is time to go inside, don't look in a mirror...that's not the real you. Instead let the smile you share be the picture each person takes with them in their heart. Those are the pictures we all remember.