As we make our way through the second week of cold viruses here, I am celebrating something that’s truly and wonderfully contagious here, and that’s the laughter our family shares. As my girls ate dinner tonight, I considered how much I am missing our opportunities for adventures and time outside of our home routines. And, yet, their laughter around the table transported me to that fantastical scene in Mary Poppins when Burt, Mary Poppins, Michael, and Jane head off to visit Uncle Albert who has gone and trapped himself up near the ceiling of his home because he cannot stop laughing. I have always loved that whimsical scene and the way each of them begins laughing, joining Uncle Albert in his floating shenanigans.
While I cannot profess the magical qualities of Mary Poppins, I will embrace the ways our family tends to embrace joy and laughter regularly. Sickness or no, there is still the sound of joy reverberating around our table and in our living space, and I am grateful for that. As we all know, laughter can be contagious and it is also often referred to as a good medicine. These truths are definitely at play here this week. Even as I look forward to healthier days ahead and new adventures, especially with the weather warming up and spring colors dawning in the daffodils and first dandelions in the greening grasses, I am choosing to find contentment in the joy-filled moments of laughter and silliness we share together when we come together at the end of the day.
Recently I started reading a new book, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us about the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive by Russ Ramsey. The premise of the book encompasses the idea around what we can learn from great art—that it can teach us about the joys and struggles of the human experience. The front flap captures some of this in a letter Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, sometime around June, 1888, describing the colors and scene near the Rhône River: “…but I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken and therefore utterly heartbreaking.” It is Ramsey’s premise that much of the world’s great art originates from places of sadness and it is in that sadness, the artist’s difficult personal experiences, where most of us connect with great works of art.
As I consider this idea and dive into this book of essays, it ignites in me an acute desire for the joy and beauty of our ordinary lives. To me, it is in the ordinary and mundane of daily life where we encounter sacred opportunities, like joy, hope, and, yes, laughter. For me, sharing life in the moments that cause us to laugh, that provide the whimsy of floating toward the ceiling, help balance the brokenness of this world. Too often I’ve heard people say we need to toughen our kids for a tough world like it is somehow doing our teenages a favor to strip away the joy and beauty the world offers because there is also pain and sadness and struggle. This approach to parenting or mentoring children and teenagers has always struck me as odd.
Isn’t it a better idea to empower our teenagers to bring their elements of joy and hope and beauty into the world? Isn’t it a better approach to encourage our teenagers to see the world as a place they get to elevate and enhance by their efforts? I can still hear the words of my childhood, telling me the world was a hard place and how I needed to brace myself for it. Honestly, I’ve discovered that perspective was more than a bit exaggerated. Color me naive, but I think we see in the world what we learn about the world. If we learn fear and anger and scarcity, our experience and attitude is influenced by those ideas. But if we learn beauty and joy and hope, our journey is colored with as much laughter and whimsy and the divine as it is the struggles of a broken world. After all, there is beauty in brokenness; we’ve seen it again and again in great art, in the stories of those who encountered Jesus in the ancient world, and in ourselves.
And so, as we ride out this second week of sickness, I am counting us blessed to find laughter and joy in togetherness. I am thankful I get to spend time in the presence of these two remarkable young women each day. Even more, I am over the moon that we still share a good laugh together, just like when they were quite young and made up their own jokes or they told knock, knock jokes (usually the same one) over and over. Teenagers are a whole lot of fun to hang out with and these two bring me great joy.