Frozen Smiles

Botox is a wildly popular cosmetic therapy. People have it injected into their faces and it makes them look younger. It’s not a one-time thing, though; the injections must be repeated every 4-6 months for as long as the patient wants the effect.

From a spiritual perspective, Botox is intriguing. Don’t get nervous: this is not back-to-nature indictment of cosmetic surgery; something about Botox just seems ironic.

If you’re not sure what Botox is, it’s a drug made from botulism, a deadly bacteria that paralyzes and kills people. The CDC says that “[a]ll forms of botulism can be fatal and are considered medical emergencies. Foodborne botulism can be especially dangerous because many people can be poisoned by eating a contaminated food.”

Several years ago, scientists figured out that botulism could be refined and developed into medicine. It has been used to successfully treat various spasmodic disorders. Somewhere along the line, scientists also figured out it could also be used to remove the appearance of wrinkles. As one doctor’s website says, “[the] repeated muscle contractions from years of smiles and frowns and surprises…deepen facial lines. Once Botox is injected, it seeks and finds just the right nerve endings that cause the contraction and halts the spark that contracts the muscle by blocking the release of a neurotransmitter. The nerve is then incapacitated by the Botox until it starts to awaken again in about 4-6 months. Then another shot of Botox restarts the process.”

If you didn’t catch that, it freezes the nerves in your face. People inject a disease into their faces to freeze the effects of smiles and surprises!

Smiles, frowns, surprises; the effects of a life lived. Injecting a disease in your face to wipe out the sleepless nights holding a sick child, or a dying mother. No, repeatedly injecting a disease in your face to eliminate the laughs at the dinner table, and the surprise of a 40^th birthday party.

Halting the spark of life so you can look good. And as Saturday Night Live’s Fernando says, It's better to look good than to feel good."

Many of us have our own spiritual Botox. We have our own ways to inject low-levels of death into our lives to freeze the effects of life. It seems better to be frozen than to feel the smiles, frowns and surprises. For non-believers, this is the normal course of things; life is Botox. Even believers, though, can be fooled into believing that numbness equals contentment, and that contentment equals peace.

A prayer for today might be, “Lord, let me find your grace in the stuff of life, in the passion of smiles, frowns and surprises. Let me not seek to freeze them out of my life with my ways. Amen.”