I love to laugh.  There’s really nothing I’d rather do than laugh – especially with a group of people, who are also laughing.  (It’s generally not as much fun if I’m the only laugher in a large group of non-laughers – it tends to elicit those “looks” that I try so hard to avoid.)  There is something healing about laughter – physically, spiritually, and emotionally – and there really is nothing like it.  It is one of the great joys in life.

In addition to loving laughter, I also love to make other people laugh.  It feels like giving them a gift, and it is so much fun to watch them “open” it.  I don’t mean this in a cocky way or in an “oh, wow, I’m funny” kind of way.  I just mean that being goofy is sort of my thing that I do.  I can’t sing, or cook, or dance, or stand on one foot, or plant flowers that live more than 2 days, or wash clothes without shrinking them, or refrain from eating carbs late at night, or draw faces that look even remotely human.  Or a thousand other things.  But I can occasionally make people laugh.  And that’s fun.

In addition to loving to laugh, I also love to write.  I’m rusty at it – I used to write a whole lot as a kid and as a college student, but adulthood came around (chronological adulthood at least), and life got busy, and it just sort of faded into the background.  I had teachers in elementary school who encouraged my love for writing, and I will be forever grateful to them, despite the fact that I think they probably encouraged me to write because it kept me sitting in my chair for more than the customary 5 minutes I could usually maintain inertia.

So last summer, assisted by my cousin Jill, who is much more of an expert in all things world-wide-webbish than I am, I decided to do a blog, and to combine two things that I loved – making people laugh, and writing.  And I did it.  And it sucked.  And that was that.  I didn’t enjoy it – it felt “forced,” and I had to make myself write, and then I found myself wondering if other people thought it was funny.

Over the past six months, God has been teaching me much about who I am in Him.  It has been a time of growth for me – a difficult time, but I am learning that my identity is based solely on who I am in Him, and not on anything I can do – including make people laugh.  And I have found myself writing again.  But this time, it’s different for me.  I feel the desire – actually it’s more like a need – to write, because there are things on my heart that I want to write about.  And I’m not so much concerned about whether people think it’s funny or not – because I’m not sure it’s always going to be funny either.  It probably will be at times, because there is just way too much bizarreness out there to not write about it – I don’t think I can help it – plus there’s light and fluffy stuff to write about too, and I’ll have to do that sometimes – but it is probably going to be a bit deeper at times too.  And if people want to read it and chime in that’s wonderful.  If not, that’s okay too – they can always go to www.feelfreetoreadanotherblogthatisfunnierthanthisone.com.  (Hee hee hee that’s not really a website…)

Tagged: God, Identity, Laughter, Writing on Sunday, July 4, 2010 · 1 Comment »