…use a lemon filter!

Ok, that may not be what you were expecting me to say. I’m referencing the goofy filters (overlays to videos) on Instagram, in case you’re totally baffled.

A friend asked me today what I do to add laughter to my life. I pulled out my phone, opened Instagram, and showed her a video of me as a lemon. Just a lemon with my eyes and mouth, no body. And she threw her head back and laughed.

Now the reason I’m a lemon is not funny. I recently created a private Instagram account…named after the name another friend had given her newly discovered cancerous lung tumor.

My friend lives in a different state so I can’t even help her. The tumor had grown so large by the time the doctors realized she had cancer that she can’t get enough breath to talk anymore…so I decided to talk to her.

We log into the account, I post videos, and she writes comments on them. They are all meant to make her laugh – because she had asked for funny cards or notes to keep her spirits up…and thankfully we have the same sense of humor.

On my second video, I discovered a filter that made my face a lemon…and since I was still recovering from shoulder surgery, it had been many days since a shampoo – so a lemon filter was perfect!

She loved it so much that I played around with other filters and have even created Season 1, Episode 2 of “The Lemon.”

Life throws so many lemons at us, so many circumstances we just can’t control. But we get to choose how we are going to face those circumstances.

Like by turning my face into a lemon to add laughter to someone’s day.

We shouldn’t deny the pain of what happens in our lives. We should just refuse to focus only on the valleys.

Charles Swindoll