Reba believes that another beautiful thing about aging — and another key to looking like she's not — is that petty dilemmas no longer send her into a tailspin. "Of course, when you have serious problems, then you have to deal with them," she says. "I'm talking about silly stuff like, 'What dress am I going to wear to the CMA Awards?' "

Nowadays, when she feels "an attack" coming on, "I just rebuke it," she insists, laughing, "and tell it to get away from me. You can't sweat the little stuff. That's what will kill you." While she also admits to being a mild control freak in the past, Reba now recognizes there are some things she can't change: "I just go through with it and get on with life. My problems are not that big or important."

She also notes that watching her older sister Alice, 56, raise her own daughter Hallie, who was born with Edwards' syndrome — a condition caused by the presence of a third 18th chromosome, which leads to mental and physical disabilities — has gone a long way toward keeping her priorities in check. "Hallie is handicapped and never walked, and never will," Reba says. "She is 21 years old, and so I think, 'Wow, here I am, stressing out about what to wear somewhere or how I'm going to deal with this small problem, and Alice has a child who will never walk.' "

Yet it doesn't all come down to simply being humbled. "Hallie has brought so much into our lives," the entertainer continues. "She made us realize that you don't have to be perfect to be loved. You can contribute something to everyone else's life just because you are here on earth."

Always Game

Indeed, it's the special, and often playful, bond she shares with her family that provides the icing on the keeping-Reba-young cake. (In addition to her son and stepkids, she has five stepgrandchildren.) "I cherish the children and grandchildren. I have my family with me as much as possible."

When she isn't working, Reba tells us, she uses her Mac Book Pro-Complete
to create family scrapbooks featuring music and narration. "I also love to play board games," she says. "I am the game Nazi. Whenever we're on vacation, I let everyone hang out by the pool, and I'll go and work on my pictures inside, and then I'll come out and say, 'OK, I've left you alone enough. Let's go and play games.' "

True Believer

"I do worry sometimes," Reba says, "but a lot of times I just put it in God's hands." When concerned about Shelby, for example, "I say, 'Put the armor of God and the blood of Jesus on him, and you watch after him when I can't.' " And though she does admit to worrying less about her son now than when he was tiny, Reba recalls Narvel's admonishments at the time: " 'You have to quit walking in there and making sure he's breathing,' he'd tell me. And I'd say, 'Well, that's a momma!' A momma can hear a child turn over in the middle of the night, where a husband never will. It's instinct.' "

What Reba never worries about anymore is forgetting the words to her songs while performing. "Oh Lord, yes, that happens all the time!" she says.
"I read people's lips in the front row. I make up words, and sometimes I look at them and say, 'Sing along if y'all know it. I forgot the words!' "