A Smile!

Oh the incredible worth of a smile! I have been thinking of this a lot lately.....seeing Aidan's first smiles, and then rejoicing at each additional one! Capturing them on the camera was a challenge at first, but now they come much easier(for more awesome pictures see Megan's blog)

When I was a teenager I had a poem on my wall that went like this:
A smile costs nothing, but gives much.
It enriches those who receive, without making poorer those who give.
It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.
None is so rich or mighty that he can get along without, and none is so poor but that he can be made rich by it. ..........
Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away.
Some people are too tired to give you a smile.
Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.

Years later, Heather found it in a box of my things, and promptly put it up on the wall in her room where it still reminds all who pass thru that a smile is something to be given away! So why these thoughts on a smile?

Well we celebrate every single one of Aidan's smiles, and then a good friend was sharing about her father in his nineties, who is a recent widower yet decided to smile at every person he met in his care facility and see how many people smiled back! He announced at the end of one day, there was only that didn't smile back!

That got me thinking about how easy it is to get caught up in the difficult things that we face in our lives, the circumstances that so easily get us down. But this man has made a choice to share that which has no value to anyone until it is given away, and in doing so, brings a smile to the face of countless people every day, just because he smiled!