We are in the heartbeat of summer in Texas. Everyone is scrambling to try to find some normalcy during this pandemic in this changing world. So much fuss over so many different things. I struggle daily to make sense of it all. What should I do? What should I not do? Which way is up? Is that really up or are you just telling me it is up so I would follow without question blindly into the night?

Many of us get up each day and just go with the flow up our routine. Wake up, shower, eat, go to work. It can seem mundane at times. We focus on the negative changes and not the positive. We analyze outcomes that we can’t control.  But not this day! This day, I found a missing piece of a puzzle in the smile of an very eager child.

I watch her in amazement as she poses for me for her portrait session. She wants to be an actress and do commercials she says as she giggles. Her parents stand proudly by as they support her on this journey. Even her younger sister is in her corner making funny faces so she will smile. As I am standing there with my camera in hand, knowing exactly what I need to do I am frozen. I am still lost in her innocence, her quest for the gold, her vision of her bright future and I can’t move.

I admire her for a few moments before I realize that I have a job to do. Her portrait surely isn’t going to take itself. Her smile and her giggle reminded me that everything is going to be ok. The world is going to change and that is ok. The world looks a lot different than what I am used to but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I saw it in her smile and in her eyes.

Only if we could turn back the hands of time on how we perceive things as an adult and view them thru the eyes of a child we would remember what hope was like and what adventures lie ahead.  How do we move forward? A smile and a giggle may not solve our problems with bills, or life in general but it definitely makes things a lot easier when we know there is always a future.

Never let things get so routine that you miss out on your smile and giggle moments. They are there each day. Take a deep breath, smell the roses, sing in the rain. No matter what your smile and giggle moment is, just do it!