Audrey Meisner, best-selling author and my best friend, has just launched her fourth book, Wake Up Smiling: 40 Days to a Hope-filled Life. A native Winnipegger, Meisner may be remembered for her popular local children’s television show Sonshiny Day and for hosting the long-running television ministry It’s a New Day with her parents, Betty and Willard Thiessen.
In her first book, Marriage Under Cover, co-written with husband Bob, Meisner transparently shares the brokenness and restorative process that her marriage went through after an affair left her with an unwanted pregnancy.
So what led her to write this most recent book?
“Jesus used the many concepts I write about in Wake Up Smiling to restore my personal life,” says Meisner. “These affected me so much that I started to write them down so I wouldn’t forget them. I turned these lessons into a document that I could send to friends and family as a way of offering them encouragement. This then evolved into a hardcover devotional that Broadstreet asked to publish.”
In this four-part devotional, Meisner delves deep into the healing process, intimately sharing the truths she has had to face and apply in order to transcend the lies and heartache of her past.
Each chapter begins with an endearing story, a struggle she has gone through, followed by the answers she has found both in scripture and in her intimate times with God. She then fashions these answers into a practical plan for restoring lost hope.
Beautifully breaking down wisdom into manageable daily steps, Meisner draws the reader in by gently explaining why joy and peace might be so elusive. This weightier subject matter is perfectly balanced with gentle reminders of the random things that make people smile, and why smiling itself is so beneficial to one’s health and wellbeing.
“Restoring our sense of value and worth empowers us to have a fun-loving, happy, and healthy life so that every day we can wake up smiling,” Meisner says.
