My older sister is retiring from her life-long career of special education teaching this week. She has spent her entire professional career caring for children who are the most profoundly disabled, mentally, emotionally and physically. Not many have her gift of compassion.
She and her husband invited us out to their lake house this past Sunday afternoon for a retirement party. Like all families, we tend to pick the conversation up where we last left it off. In our family’s case, that means that we start laughing within seconds of seeing each other. We laugh a lot in our family, with each other, at each other, because of each other. We’ve done our share of crying, too. But, we love to laugh.
After my near-death experience last summer followed by the trauma at church followed by my resignation, laughter was hard to come by. After I resigned, I went back to the office one day and one of the staff commented, “It’s good to hear you laughing again.” I didn’t realize that I had not been laughing so I certainly didn’t realize that I had started again. To him, it was a sign of a return to sanity and normalcy and wholeness for me.
Laughter is truly one of God’s greatest gifts. If gratitude is the only antidote to pride, fear, greed, idolatry, lust, etc., laughter is a close second (watch for the gratitude blog coming soon). It’s hard to be truly grateful and not break a smile. If you smile, it’s not uncommon for a chuckle to be far behind.
What made my sister’s retirement party particularly meaningful was that, for the very first time in almost a year, I actually heard myself laughing. My brother-in-law had been bitten by a dog while riding his bicycle. The dog was a neighbor’s and, it turns out, had never had any of its shots. The mutt is now quarantined while Phil nurses a nasty, puss-running puncture wound on the back of his right calf. All of us had advice for how he could have avoided the dog bite. We all wondered aloud whether he already had rabies and just didn’t know it. We were merciless – and we were all laughing so hard our sides hurt.
I heard myself laughing – for the first time in a year. Sunday was a good day – the one the Lord had made – for me to hear myself laughing again. If I am laughing, joy must not be far behind.
2 comments:
We wish we could hear that laughter. Maybe it would help us. We had to go through our first Mother's Day without Mom and, today, our 6th wedding anniversary - obviously, a time of celebration. It has made the grief a bit deeper and our celebrations a little less joyful with the absence of you and Nancy.
We miss you horribly...
We thought of Glen's words today as we remembered our precious wedding ceremony and the journey we made to get to each other.
I don't know if I ever told you both how I remember Mom talking about this new pastor and his wife at Cliff Temple. She couldn't stop talking about how wonderful you both are...I thought, ok, Mom! She was so impressed, actually, grateful, that her new pastor was so real...that he shared the relevance of God in our real world experiences. She had, by then, gone through so many of those with her children. She always lived her faith almost matter-of-factly. It was the most practical way to live...not mysterious at all. I think she felt a kindred spirit with your honesty about God and life.
We love you both so much.
hahaha...i love laughing and i love to hear you laughing! When you were first in Latvia, i and Madara were laughing because you were laughing even we didn't know why you laughed!Oh,you have to come to Latvia-i want to hear you laughing again:)
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