Learning to flow with difficulties can be…well, difficult. While we should not cavalierly brush off the trials and sufferings that affect us deeply, it is important to remember the control we exert over our disposition. It is also extremely important to remain sensitive to the disheartening happenstance of others and to weep with those who are weeping.
I am reading this book, The Boy who Came Back from Heaven, which retells a true account of a six year old boy who briefly visited heaven after a terrible car accident (I know I was skeptical too at first -given the boy’s young age -but it’s worth a read). Anyway, the family went through a lot with the boy’s intense, long hospital stay and the trauma of it all, but the troubles didn’t end there. Hospital bills piled up, of course, and then a tree fell on their house causing massive damage. After hearing this news, the grandfather just laughs in front of his son.
In the words of the grandfather upon hearing the news of the fallen tree:
“my first response was to laugh –not a laugh of callousness, but a laugh of joy at the goodness of God. I truly mean that. For me, the question isn’t, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” but “Why does anything good happen at all?” We certainly don’t deserve it.
I told Kevin [his son], “First, consider that the power went out. What a great blessing. Had it not gone out, Kevin, you would have been in the house with the kids when the tree struck the roof. Second, you badly needed to replace your roof anyway. Now you’ll get a brand-new one, and your insurance is going to pay for it! And third, I have a question, Kevin: Which trees were taken down in this storm? All the weak ones! The strong trees are still standing. You’ve received a natural pruning, making your property safer and healthier, leaving the strong trees for your family to enjoy. By next July, you won’t be able to tell a single tree was taken down.
The hand of God was everywhere to be seen in this situation, but, as I pointed out to Kevin, we have to be willing to see it –to receive it as God’s good in our lives.”
Another wise, mentionable quote by Kevin’s father: “Does our daily focus on the ordinary events of life dampen our awareness of the providential and miraculous events occurring in and around us all the time?” It’s so easy to allow self-pity to imprison us in the walls of our own self-absorption.
I know I am trying to laugh more readily and frequently at life’s everyday problems. Just in these past couple of weeks alone I have had to force myself to just laugh…to laugh when I got my first speeding ticket (even though I felt it was completely unfair given I was unfamiliar with the area and the speed limit changes abruptly and I am the kind of driver who should get speeding tickets for going under the limit for the most part); to laugh when I chipped my tooth on a gummy heart candy (you know how you accidentally grind your incisors when trying to use your tongue to remove some of the gummy from the molars, okay maybe this hasn't happened to anyone else....well this isn’t the first time it happened to me); to laugh at losing my first real job offer which I had my heart set on because I kind of forgot to get back to the company when I said I would because I got sidetracked that day as I was traveling to Oregon for a grad school interview (but, as my now relieved mom pointed out, perhaps God closed that door because of the safety risks involved in me going into Gary, IN, which, if you don’t know Gary, it has some pretty rough neighborhoods).
Now I am trying to laugh at how incredibly anxious I am about this whole grad school process…..getting into a PsyD program is supposedly more difficult than getting into medical school…what if I don’t get in? then what will I do? Begin a master’s program? Where will I go for that? Have I passed up those application deadlines yet? This has been my train of thought for the past couple weeks as I wait nervously. My anxiousness is so normal yet so absurd! It is so laughable! God will provide no matter what happens. He always has and He always will. Some people never even get a basic education and here I am begging God to allow me to get into a doctoral program.
It is kind of funny (and ironic that I find this funny on two different levels) how there are actually laugh therapy groups out there. But it is so important and healthy to laugh at the various absurdities, incongruities, and paradoxes of our lives.
We all know of the health benefits of laughing –reduced levels of serum cortisol, increased oxygenation to the brain, increased immunoglobin A; and laughter allows us to be defenseless and open to new experiences and people in a non-judgmental way.
I like this quote: “If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you grow old.”
Maybe I will forget my marriage and family therapy practice and go into laugh therapy….
But, seriously, who are we to expect anything good to happen to us at all? Who are we to actually assume we deserve so much good and very little bad? We are not deserving of anything at all.
Laugh when something doesn't go your way -laugh at the paradox of how undeserving you are for the object or thing you can't seem to reach that you think you are so deserving of. If there is one thing in life that we do deserve, it is to laugh at ourselves for the fools we are.
