"Keep Smiling" by Sue Wright

August being my birthday month, people are already asking me, what do you want for your birthday? My answer, which has been my answer for several years now, is nothing. I don’t need anything; I don’t want anything. My closets are full.  Our house is laden with treasured mementos.

Of course, truth be told, I actually WILL be receiving a gift on August 21, and to be honest, one I’ll be thankful for with every throb of my beating heart. Who cares that gift will be a duplicate in substance to the 27,738 gifts like it I have already received at my age—the tied-up-with-a-bow package that’s me by a count of one-day x 356 + a leap year twenty-four hours every four years x 76!

Indeed, what better gift could I ask than receiving the gift of another day? Each day has been an education—and I might add—not one day’s teaching the same. For sure, I’ve squandered much of what I should have learned from the lessons I was taught. Even so, I have to believe I have grown wiser as I have grown older.

At times during this pandemic, I’ve felt like you and I have been transported against our wills to a lost planet in an only recently uncovered galaxy called, “Waiting for our normal lives to resume.” No need to get stuck there, however, at least not spiritually, for wouldn’t you know, our Creator provided us, centuries and cultures ago, just the uplifting Bible verse required to carry us through these fraught months of confusion and back home again. Its instructions challenge our desperation, and may not be easy to follow when we’re at our lowest, but for certain, are a perfect map for leading us through the testy days ahead.

“This is the day which the Lord hath made;” we’re reminded, “let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24, KJV).  COVID translation: “Keep smiling under that mask, friends!”