Laughter

 

On January 22, 2016 I was thinking most people have heard the saying “laughter is the best medicine.”  I would tend to agree, it makes you feel better and it’s free.  I find it’s even funnier when you randomly think of a joke or hilarious situation with people around you.  All that everyone sees is this person laughing their head off and everyone else trying to figure out what is so funny.  I find in that situation it usually ends up that everyone can’t help but laugh even though they don’t know what they are laughing about.

 I have been on the opposite side of laughter when I was a teenager.  At one point I had become very depressed.  I had always been the type where I cared about others and did not want anyone to be concerned if I felt down.  That would cause me to sometimes pretend I was happy when I was not.  This changed during my early teen years.  I stopped putting on that happy face and was generally in a bad mood.

I wouldn’t smile for anyone and I stopped caring about trying to appease others.  I even got to the point where I got really annoyed and frustrated when others around me would laugh or smile too much.  In my head I thought if I’m in a really bad mood then I don’t want others around me trying to cheer me up.  Instead of accepting the laughter and encouragement from others I pushed my sadness on them and if they couldn’t handle that then often they would turn away from me.

I can understand why it is hard to be around someone that is constantly depressed or angry as it often hurts them to see their friend, family member, etc. in so much pain.  Generally most people don’t want to be around someone so negative, as it can bring them down too.  I think there can still be hope for these people.  I would know – I was one of them in the past.  I find that what helped me was being able to talk to someone and see that I didn’t have to stay stuck forever in a hopeless situation. 

When I started to see there was hope for me I started to feel better and I realized that life didn’t have to be so serious all the time.  This is when my laughter started to come back again, and I really appreciated it more than I did before.  I found that laughter either with myself or others really made me feel better.  It helped me to relax and be less tense with others.

I know for sure even God has a sense of humor.  Back in my early 20’s I went down to Brazil to volunteer with Youth with a Mission.  I had planned to be there for 3 months, but I ended up being really homesick and came home a month and a half early.  I worked with children and youth that lived on the streets.  It wasn’t easy, but it really made me see how good my life was at home.  There was a time when I was feeling really down and we were going on another relief trip to help the street people out.  We had just parked our van and decided to pray before we got out.  I wasn’t overly in the mood to help others at the moment as I was so down myself.  Then everyone started to laugh and I didn’t understand what was so funny.

It wasn’t until I got out of the van did I see what was so funny.  It turned out that there was a street girl that was asleep outside and written on the butt of her jeans was my name Patricia.  It was likely one of the name brands or something, but I couldn’t stop laughing.  I think God knew I needed to feel better and what a better way than to see my name on someone’s jeans bottom.  After that I realized that if I focused on helping others I’d feel better, and I could actually relax, have fun and even laugh with the people around me.

I know that life isn’t always easy, but often if you give yourself a break every so often and laugh, it can really help with the stress.

Patricia <3 J

 

Psalm 126:2    Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

 

Here’s a song about being the difference for us, and our Lord caused the darkness to end and lifted our heads to know our Lord again, and our Lord brings us the life and that’s where our hope will arise in us, that even when things may be against us, that His love will make the difference.

 

“Difference” by Hillsong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgj9enu3h0w&list=PL3whQX319DaB37iB8NZpJe206iSdpe3kc&index=116