I am not in the laughing mood

There are days when humour escapes me.  When I get overwhelmed with stuff.  I would say "life" but frankly life is not overwhelming.  It's the things that make said life up which can be suffocatting.  Or should I say, the stuff I add to my life which renders itself to be just that, stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I still laugh.  Like when I saw these two elderly ladies walking across the street 2 days ago and one of them had blue polyester pants hiked to her armpits.  Not the nice blue either.  Ugly blue.  And to boot, it caused the pants to be floods.  Armpit floods.  Love it. 

Or the truck that just drove by me called the "Schwing 36x."  Like who would not want to drive that around all day.  What do you drive pal?  '97 Honda Accord.  How about you?  Schwing 36x.  You don't even need to say anything else.  I am sure that guy always gets free coffee at Tim Horton's.

Or when my youngest decided to let us know whe was going to say a bad word while we were driving the other day.  Much to our verbal denial of her proposed actions she let er rip.  Kind of hoped to hear "stupid" or "bum" or something of that magnitude.  Nope.  9.0 on the richter scale.  F-bomb.  And to boot, she tripled it.  Bomb, bomb, bomb-o.  Needless to say, chaos ensued.  My son was sitting beside her and started losing his mind. Carla chanted "Caedyn... you cannot say that."  Caedyn replied by gleefully dropping a few more bombs.   Our vehicle was in an uproar so I told everyone to chill out.  I calmly proceeded to tell Caedyn that she was not to say words like that.  That worked wonders.   She replied with... "You mean 'bomb' daddy?"   (Let me interject for one moment here:  With the complete knowledge that my 5 year old cannot read enough words to make sense of this blog (yet) I will admit that it was a brilliant reply.  Crazy good.  Which in turn makes me fret the 6 birthday and frankly every birthday after that...)  It was then we got pretty serious with the, "Caedyn, if you continue to talk like that, mommy and daddy will have to wash your mouth out with soap."  My first born, absolutely astounded boy, Brady did not take kindly to that response and replied with, "Are you kidding me?  She needs to have a huge spanking... with a bible!"  It was at this point in the episode that Carla and I lost all control.  We could not help but start killing ourselves laughing.  Cause yes, that's what pastors do, pull out the old KJV, open it up to Leviticus (cause it is super boring) and spank their children with it.  Unreal.  Brady continues his tirade and starts flailing his arms. I attempt to keep the vehicle on the road, Carla is trying to figure how in the world Caedyn would have come up with that one, and there sat Caedyn.... giggling and smiling and proud as punch that she said a bad word.

How she found out it was some sort of bad word, I have no clue.  But was it coincidence that my parents were visiting the week before...  Okay I am in so much trouble for actually posting that.  Let it be known that I have never ever heard my parents use that word or anything close to that word in my entire lifetime.  We weren't even allowed to use "uck" words growing up, never mind words containing "the other word" for donkey.  Which made it a little difficult whenever my brother and I played hockey.  Asking someone to "launch the disc I am open" may have been the reason I scored only 2 goals in my entire minor hockey career.

So yes, I can still laugh.  But I just don't feel like it sometimes. 

You see I have this tendency to get overwhelmed by situations.  Some that I put myself into and some that I find myself in.  They suck the laughter right out of me.  I want to be joyful.  I want to make people's day.  I want to be in the moment.  But the moment, the day is taken from me.  I think it is that place of being caught between the dreaming and the coming true.  The hope of something not yet realized.  It's then that I start to panic.  I attempt to control.  I use my words for effect rather than for breathing life into a person or into the moment.  2 Timothy 2:22-25 compels me to be gentle and kind in my language.  To pursue faith, love and peace.  And here's the kicker... "out of a pure heart."  I don't like that part.  You see when I find myself overwhelmed I tend to only find myself.  I become ego-centric.  I don't want to get out.  I rapidly move into survival.  The tyranny of the urgent overtakes the purity of the motive.  And when I find myself there, my ethics become subjective rather than objective.  It becomes all about me.   It is in those moments when the air seems so thin.  I can't get enough oxygen into my viens.  Everything starts looking dim.  

And laughter becomes no medicine at all

But I know better.  So today, I forced it.  I made myself look up.  I examined my heart.  And when you take an honest look there you will find your motives.  And I was soon reminded it can't be about me.  A pure heart doesn't allow that. 

And so it is... then I look up from my computer screen and out the window and see a dog pulling a guy wearing a yarmulka (said, 'Yamaka" thank you Adam Sandler) in a wheel chair.  Crazy.  Yet somehow everything seems just fine.