LET THERE BE LAUGHTER

By Lisa Payne

Let us talk about laughter for a minute. It’s been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve been navigating a lot of down time due to a surgery.

There have been situations pop up, as they do in everyday life, where we can be irritated or choose to laugh about it.

I have the best friends and family. They have been taking good care of us while I lay low for a few weeks. The biggest gift to us has been all the meals. My husband does not cook. But what he must do each morning is make lunches for the kids. My guy can run a company effortlessly without showing stress, but ask him to make four lunches and it is like he was told he has ten seconds to diffuse a bomb.

The other morning, I was on the couch, a full hour before the kids had to be at school. I asked him to come sit with me and he was like “heck no I have LUNCHES to make.” And once he gets started there is no interrupting, no changes to be suggested, no jokes to be made. It is all serious because this is not his comfort zone and he wants to do it well.

On this particular morning, kids started coming down for breakfast and I wanted to make light of the chaos going on in the kitchen. This is my moment to choose between two things. Be irritated that cooking stresses him out or make light of it. Well, I chose light.

So, during his lunch making frenzy, and in my typical speak before you think, I told the kids it was their lucky day and that dad was going to make them any kind of breakfast they wanted that morning. Just say the word and it was theirs! (Pause, pause, pause, oh shoot, why did I just say that to the bomb diffuser?)

And then my hubby had the same decision where he could have been irritated right back at me or make light. And lucky for me he chose light. He relaxed, started laughing and was like yep whatever you want kids. I’ve got this.

Another example. The floors have not been vacuumed since surgery.

There were brownie crumbs on the family room carpet. My tired husband, who has been so busy taking care of everything kept saying yeah, I will vacuum soon. Several days later we noticed the brownie crumbs were gone without vacuuming. Instead of being irritated that they are now drug all over the house, we laughed about where they could be. Maybe on the bottom of socks? Whose socks? Maybe the kids wore them to the neighbor’s house and they now have our crumbs? Did Cooper our pup finally eat them? We entertained ourselves for a while on this topic and decided why ever vacuum again if things magically disappear.

So many times in life we have the choice. Do we stress or make light? Once you make the decision to choose laughter it’s freeing. It’s fun to come up with ways to laugh at something that would normally make you feel stress. It can even become a competition between spouses as to who is funnier. And the health benefits to a good belly laugh are endless!

It’s easy to laugh when we feel good, but it’s when we feel bad that we need it the most. I wish for you extra laughter on your cloudiest days this month and always.

Lisa Payne writes about food, family, and home. You can reach her at paynefam6@gmail.com.