Hello friends!  On Saturday, I found out that the post below will be featured today at Encouragement Cafe. I had planned to write about something else in this post…but instead of writing about it, I will be doing it!  Talk about getting immediate results!   Today I am doing this: “Be Flexible.”  So now, on Wednesday I will post about the rest of my Back to School Bucket List. 

We are blessed, so we can be a blessing to others

My second child was born at the Keesler Air Force Base Hospital while my husband was on the other side of the world in Okinawa Japan. He returned, in the middle of a cold rainy night, 6 weeks later.

Less than a year later, Hurricane Katrina hit our area. A month after the storm, my husband went on his second deployment, this time to Guam. I had two children in diapers at a time when the grocery stores didn’t have milk and the gas stations didn’t have fuel. I sold our house and moved out two days before Christmas that year.  My smiling three-year-old daughter told Santa at the Mall that what she really wanted for Christmas was a Christmas Tree…and I prayed for the floor to open up and swallow me, whole.

By New Year’s Eve, I was relocated to our next duty station, in San Antonio, TX.  My husband had four more months in Guam before he would join us in a wonderfully unique metropolis. San Antonio was the biggest city I’d ever called “home”. Back then my phone had no GPS, so I had a drawer full of Mapquest maps: one to get to Target, one to get to the grocery store, one for the doctor’s office, one to church…

At church, my shell-shocked children would wail until the church nursery workers came to get me. Every week. So eventually we stopped going altogether. There were weeks and weeks when the only grown up conversation I had was with the cashier at Walmart. There were broken down cars and emergency room visits and birthdays to celebrate; and we were all alone.

God never wastes anything.  After the lean years, I understand how an elderly lady at church might not get a hug or handshake all week, and I appreciate the privilege of sharing God’s loving touch with her.  That chatty shopper in the produce aisle might be desperate for someone to take a minute to talk about the weather or the price of strawberries. I don’t always have cash to share with the homeless man at the intersection, but I try to give him a bottle of water. And to smile into his eyes.

You never know what kind of pain another person might be walking through when you meet them. Sometimes your smile is the best way to share God’s love, so use it often. It really is the gift that keeps on giving!  A smile ministry is a great thing to share with your children. It is good for them to learn that meeting someone’s gaze, and giving them a smile costs nothing but to the right person, it can be priceless.  In some cases, smiling means you might have the need to: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15, NIV). #Smile and remember, we are blessed, so we can be a blessing to others.