Egypt - Part 4 “THE DAY OF THE UNSTOPPABLE SMILE”
May 12th 2009 -
I hope you can tell by the direction of the title where this review is going. More importantly, I want you to remember the last time you had an “unstoppable smile”. These smiles don’t come around too often for some of us – sometimes, these smiles even cause us to get tears in our eyes. Maybe the tears come because we are smiling so hard that it puts too much pressure on our tear ducts. Many times these smiles, just moments afterward, leave you feeling like you pulled a face muscle – much like a hamstring attempting to turning a double into a triple.
When you see the pictures you will know why this is my focus. You will see the faces of kids who don’t know the joy of a family or the security of a dad’s arms, experiencing the way it was meant to be. We got to surprise 10 children with the joy that comes when you have someone who loves you surpass your wildest imagination. You think you are heading on a bus for a normal trip out for a day of routine, only to discover that your family wanted the day to be anything but routine. They had no idea that they were getting to spend the day at an amusement park. Even as I am typing this, I am reliving the moment and my eyes are filling with tears. These children smiled so big you could see their wisdom teeth! They, for a day, felt the joy of family and a dad’s arms. I only wish we could have been there when they got back to there rooms where we had two new outfits (complete down to the shoes) and several pairs of underclothing waiting for them.
What would our life look like if the “unstoppable smile” happened for twenty minutes a day for at least five of the seven days in a week? Maybe our faces muscles would get conditioned to it and wouldn’t hurt the day after. Maybe we would find that others need us to make them smile too. Let’s commit to the 20-minute’s a day workout, but let’s not attempt this alone. Let’s commit to doing this with people who don’t have cause much to smile.
Here are a couple of pictures… but sorry… I can’t post pictures for the kids on the internet.
