The Smile Factor

I smile with satisfaction now as I recall the Sunday I set my face and my gait and headed for the front section of the sanctuary. Following me was our sixteen-year-old son, six-feet-tall, crest-fallen—a failure. He’d faced the consequences of a significant boyhood folly that week and the news had sped through the telephone network at our church. I wanted everyone who wondered about me that day to know his father and I were not finished with him yet. I think of it now all these years later when I listen to my son’s passionate preaching. One woman in that congregation years ago told me that was the day she loved me most. She said, “I knew your heart was broken.”

I am smiling even now as I jot these lines remembering the late night I found my pastor husband in the fetal position, laughing, on our family room floor. He’d locked up the church and bumped along for twenty minutes, heading for home in the beat up Volkswagen van the church allowed him to use. He’d held to himself the trauma and humor of a “visitation team visit gone wrong” he’d led that evening.

His team had landed at a near mansion in the most prestigious part of town. After his octogenarian teammate had catapulted out of a platform rocker into the arms of the hostess and later lost her undies on the same porch, Ray wondered how we’d ever build a church. Those visitation groups actually functioned effectively at some churches. Somehow he avoided having to confess his unsuccessful visit at the night’s end victory round-up report time. He held onto the secret of the disaster until he got home. Wearily he regaled me with the details of the “Murphy’s Law visit” he’d just experienced. Choking with deep belly laughs, he recounted the incredulous experience he’d encountered. Enveloped in gales of laughter, his face wet with tears, he’d catch a quick breath and roll from side to side finishing the story.

I’ve earned these laugh lines and crow’s feet on my face. I got them pulling nursery duty, at church potlucks, finishing up science projects at midnight on Sunday, picking up carloads of kids to take to Sunday School, and cleaning throw up off the car, Sunday dresses, and anything else that got in the way while we were on our way to church.

But the real smile is in my soul. I’ve spent my days serving others, taking my turn, getting tired, learning lessons, filling in the gaps, listening to my best friend Ray dream, despair and doubt. We’ve shared hilarious joy and shouldered nearly unbearable burdens.

Now? Well, we’re watching our children doing the same. W

JUDY RACHELS is district Women’s Ministries director for the Southern California district.