Brave, Anyway

Tag: bravegirlwannabe

  • April Fool’s Birthday Girl

    Fourteen years ago, in the middle of the night, I was doing the exact same thing as I am right at this moment: laying in bed with my daughter just a few feet away, marveling about her.

    Ella was born not long after midnight, on April 1. After all the post-delivery chaos of Apgar scores and examinations and congratulations, everyone went home and I was alone in a dimly lit hospital room with Ella. I had a daughter, a little swaddled baby making faint sighing noises in her sleep. I was a mother, and it was really just remarkable and unbelievable that a life had come from me. We were a team now, me and this little being with giant blue eyes that had seemed to look all around my face when I whispered to her. We were a team and that little girl should have been terrified because the Mom on her team had absolutely no idea how to care for a baby or what she was doing.

    I wasn’t a child who’d dreamed of being a Mommy. I wasn’t a teenager who’d babysat to make extra money. I wasn’t a person who held other people’s babies. In the more than three decades of my life prior to Ella’s birth, I’m not sure if I held any baby other than my nephew – and that was always supervised by people who knew what they were doing. My poor kid had a Mom with a very short resume. I’d gone to a class to learn how to breathe consistently during her birth process, I’d learned in that class that I had to always always always hold and support her neck and head, I’d read a couple of books about babies and I’d even read ahead in the infamous What to Expect the First Year manual, and a nurse maybe 30 minutes prior showed me how to give her a bath. At any Mom company on the planet, I would not get the job.

    Ella is 14 years old today. So the good news is that despite my lack of qualifications and preparedness, I did manage to keep her alive. Although I’m not sure that’s really much of an accomplishment. What you learn as your child ages and as you have multiple children is that they’re built pretty tough and I could have probably better utilized my countless hours fretting about things like possible milk or nut or bee allergies, could she get botulism if honey was simply nearby, when to switch from car seats to booster seats, and even if french fries with pointed ends could be too stabby in her mouth.

    The real fretting settles in later, and seems especially heightened at this stage. The real question to fret over is am I guiding her toward being a good person? Or maybe it’s could her life be better if I did something differently? Or maybe it’s have I laid a solid moral foundation? Or maybe it’s am I properly protecting her from bad stuff and bad people? Or maybe it’s am I properly preparing her to inevitably face bad stuff and bad people? Or maybe it’s am I setting a proper example? Or maybe it’s have I prepared her to say no and yes at the proper times?

    There is no end to the things I can fret about, and sometimes I just get exasperated with all the fretting I cannot seem to relinquish and I think I should have stuck to raising cats – I am certain I can do that! And yet I must explore all these questions and constantly assess and reassess what’s missing and what’s off and what’s right and what’s wrong. I have to do that because I’m a Mom, and because my greatest responsibility and privilege is to be her Mom. No other responsibility or people or thoughts or desires or work are more important than her and Audrey, or than what I need to do as a Mom.

    I’ve never been one of those people that wanted to throw their kids giant birthday celebrations every year. It’s exhausting to plan and host those events and it’s exhausting to take your kids to them throughout the school year. Last year we had a party because Ella was finally a teenager and because I wanted to bring her joy in a time of confusion and sadness and anger. And so until about a week ago I’d expected to have a quiet birthday with her this year. She started talking about having a friend or two over and then another friend and then another, and then it was going to need to be different people on different nights and I found myself panicking at the thought of having very little time to prepare. And just as all the panic was at its peak, I realized that Ella has only four birthdays left in her official childhood. Four. Four is nothing. A tiny number. How could there possibly be only four childhood birthdays remaining?

    So we celebrated. We had two sleepovers, two cakes and a set of cupcakes, stacks of facial scrubs and masks, trampoline jumping way after bed time, shopping with gal pals at the mall, singing at Olive Garden, and countless pieces of candy. I’m exhausted and my house is even messier than the mess it was last week. I have a recycle bin full of empty pizza boxes, a basket full of laundry, a trash can full of makeup wipes and KitKat wrappers, and a Momma heart full of gratitude.

    I am grateful for Ella, a young lady who’s lovely inside and out. A kind and thoughtful friend. A super smart math whiz. A talented singer and actor and gymnast. A child of God who prays about everything, from the need for guidance about big issues to finding her phone charger. A young lady full of empathy and the desire to care for people who struggle. She may not keep her room clean, but she will take money out of her own wallet for CHKD or to feed the homeless or to buy a treat for a friend who’s feeling down.

    I am grateful for the village of people in her life. I am grateful for the choices she’s now making about what kind of people to add to her village – I may have made the initial choices about who surrounded her, but she’s old enough to make her own choices about those things now, and she’s choosing well. And I am grateful that she’s such a wonderful young person despite all my flaws and mess ups.

    In the stillness of night tonight, in a dimly lit room just like on our first night, I laid quietly by myself and prayed for sweet Ella. No matter what she may encounter in her life I want her to know deep inside and beyond a shadow of a doubt – or as my Dad would say “that she knows that she knows that she knows” – that she is loved beyond measure and that it is a privilege to be her Mom. I pray that she would love life and be filled with joy. I pray that she would get into the college she wants and have the career that she wants and get the life partner that’s just right for her and that she will keep her priorities straight. I pray that when she’s happy or sad or mad or has messed up or done something great, she will always want to call her Mom. And I pray that I will always have discernment about how to pray for her and how to guide her and how to be a blessing to her.

    Happy Birthday, Brave Girl. I love that you are 14 and still call me Mommy, even when your friends are around. In exchange, I will no longer publicly chase you to smother those perfect cheeks with kisses.

    Picture submitted by and approved by Ella.

  • Refurbish, Brave Girl

    I hate messes.

    I don’t like sand in my car, I don’t like PlayDough that gets stuck in toys supposedly designed for PlayDough, I don’t buy glitter or powder or terrariums if I can help it, and I don’t like substances like Desitin or vegetable oil that are really hard to clean off of things.

    I hate messes, and yet my whole house is a mess.

    And when I say it’s a mess, I mean it’s in crazy complete disarray. Like, stacks of books on top of my dining room table and china resting on shelves in the sitting room and gymnastics mats in hallways and toothbrushes in the dishwasher.

    In the last three weeks, a wonderful team of people has painted our walls, baseboards, casings, doors and railings. Literally everything. As they moved from room to room, we moved our things from room to room. Every night we spent preparing for the next day, shifting what we could to accommodate the next round of work.

    The last few days of painting happened while I was in Dallas last week, and the biggest change in color – a room going from cranberry to a linen color – had not happened when I left town. I absolutely could not wait to get home and to see it and then to start putting things back together. It’s been so hard for OCD-me to embrace the mess. Every day I’ve longed to just put things back together and back where they belong. On Thursday night I came home very late to a completely quiet and still house – my father-in-law had long before gone to bed with the kitties – and I walked though each room marveling at what a brighter, lighter place it is. It’s completely transformed.

    The house that I’ve lived in for a decade has a completely different feel now. Same doors, same walls, same wooden railing…and yet with fresh paint in lighter shades, it’s different. It’s different and yet the same. It feels like my old house I’ve always loved and it feels like a new house that I’m so excited to live in.

    It’s like old me and new me. It’s all me, but I’m different than I was two years ago. I have the same core foundation of components like faith and family, but I look different and I feel different and my countenance is lighter. Just like my house, I’ve been under construction for a while. Or maybe refurbishing is the better word.

    The me that has emerged from refurbishing is stronger, focused and determined. I recognize I’ve aged as a result of anger with and disappointment in people, but at the same time I’m once again filled with youthful laughter and hope because my life is filled with genuine and kind and happy people.

    The me that has emerged from refurbishing that is accountable to and for only me and my girls is a freer and lighter me, even with the weight of added responsibility. This me sets better boundaries and fiercely guards what things get my time and thoughts, to ensure that freer and lighter me stays that way.

    The me that has emerged from refurbishing has realized that there’s a huge difference in Beige and Crisp Linen. Something can seem like it’s neutral or light, but once you’ve experienced actual light the darkness is revealed for the shade that it is.

    Now that all the painting is done my next task is to put everything back in its place. But as I’m doing that I’m realizing that I do not want some things back in the same places they’ve always been. And not only that, but I do not even want some of those old things in my house at all. So room by room I’m making more changes – some additions and some deletions and some refurbishings.

    I guess that’s what we should all strive to be as we age – a mixture of all of our learnings. We should be made up of additions or the things we’ve tried and liked along the way, and of deletions or the things we’ve learned aren’t right for us and we’ve removed, and of refurbishings or the pieces that change with us and with the times. And actually maybe we are refurbishings, if we’re doing life right – going through cycles of renewal or reconstruction.

    Beneath the Crisp Linen that covered a deep cranberry tone in my sitting room are the same four strong walls that have always been there. The walls look different now but they are the same walls that hold up a second floor and a roof, that sit on a foundation that has not changed. It’s already kind-of hard to remember what that room looked and felt like, which makes me so glad I have this snapshot of the transition time – the time when some of one coat of primer covered the cranberry walls so you could still see the old room and yet start to envision the new room. In a corner where two of the walls met, it looked like there was an arrow.

    An arrow is hidden deep within my home, in my favorite room, reminding me that refurbishing is an opportunity for me to be brave.

    An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means that it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming. ~Unknown

  • Know Who You Are, Brave Girl

    Know Who You Are, Brave Girl

    Somehow the teenage years are here and I feel woefully unprepared. Woefully unprepared to navigate all that these years come with. Woefully unprepared to help her navigate all that these years come with.

    I realize this child lives in my home and I have planned a birthday celebration for her every year for the last *almost* 14 years. And so it seems like I’ve had ample time to prepare for her to be in relationships of her own, but this responsibility has really snuck up on me. If I’d thought about it carefully in advance, I might have prepared one long talk about how to behave and how others should behave, but I didn’t think of it in time – I didn’t think of it before I was in the middle of what I realized after-the-fact was actually one of many quick conversations about things that are really, really important. Things that need time to be discussed. Things that need to percolate, in my brain prior and in hers after.

    Because how your child treats people and how people should treat them is actually just a pretty small part of what you have to cover. I’d forgotten in the thirty-ish years since I was a teenager how much of our growth and learning actually comes by watching and “experiencing” the stuff that happens to and with our friends. Remember how it felt to be 13, 14, 15, 16 when everything that happened to your friends, whether it was good or bad or happy or sad, was soooo big and it felt like it was also happening to you even though it was sometimes just happening to one of your friends? It’s like we all group-experience a few years of our life.

    While kids are in elementary school, parents have the luxury of knowing most, if not all, of the kids their children are spending ample time with. But that changes as they get get older and suddenly you’re answering questions that really aren’t about what’s happening to your child, but about what might be happening to Tiffany from Spanish class.

    1. The first challenge is that you have no context – you know nothing about Tiffany’s life, her parents, her friends, anything.
    2. The second challenge is that even though something may be happening with Tiffany, young people feel the things happening to their friends really deeply and they don’t always separate themselves from it.
    3. The third challenge is that your child may never have had an experience like Tiffany’s but this is her first exposure to whatever it is and so she is going to learn a lot from it one way or another – so helping her process exactly what might be happening and why is important because it will shape her future relationships and her unconscious bias for possibly the remainder of her life.
    4. And the fourth challenge is that as a parent you are always missing part of the story because your child, who is learning, is missing large details when they tell you things – things that adults would ask or focus on, but she doesn’t even know are important yet.

    THIS. IS. SO. HARD.

    And you know what happens as you are mulling over your advice and wondering if you covered all you should have and you’re realizing all the other things you should have said or asked or focused on? You find yourself suddenly terrified that Tiffany doesn’t really exist, and this might actually be your child that had the question but they’re afraid to tell you.

    THIS. IS. SO. HARD.

    I now need so much more than the old “Don’t forget who you are and whose you are.” I need to cover so much more than the typical sex and drugs and alcohol talks we all give our kids.

    I’ve been keeping a mental list and an actual list in my phone. Multiple lists actually. A list of things we’ve talked about and a list of things to talk about and a list of things I need to go back and touch base on when the time is right. If I could just get out my phone and review my lists when it’s time to have these talks, things would be so much simpler.

    My lists may seem neurotic but one of the benefits to seeing what you’ve “written” down over time is that there are almost always a handful of bigger common themes. I don’t think my teenager is going to sit through a list of 37 things to remember while she and her friends are navigating first relationships. But maybe I can get her through a top 5…

    YOU ARE WORTHY. You are worthy just because. Because you’re human. You are likable and loveable, but you are not and will not ever be liked by everybody. It’s OK that some people aren’t your thing and that you aren’t their thing. That has nothing to do with your worth and value, and everything to do with the fact that we weren’t made to all like each other. We need to coexist peacefully – in middle school and all around the earth – and that happens when we understand that all people have worth, and we should treat them with respect as we want to be treated.

    DON’T LOSE YOU. You are whole all by yourself. You are not ever a half. You may be introduced in relation to someone to provide context, but you are not someone in relation to another person – who you are is not Tiffany’s friend or Thomas’ girlfriend. You have dreams and goals, and anyone you’re with should have their own dreams and goals. When you find someone who truly cares about you and who you truly care about, in friendships or romantic relationships, you will cheer each other on as you work toward all of those dreams and goals. Some relationships and friendships will end, and when they do your whole self keeps journeying forward because you have held on to the truth that you are not half.

    BE YOU, NOT SOMEONE ELSE. Be authentic. Feel how you’re feeling, speak truthfully, like things you like and don’t like things you don’t. Don’t act or be or feel a way for others. When you like someone who doesn’t like you back, trying to make yourself likeable to them is a trap. That’s called acting, and if you start to act like someone else you will have to keep acting to maintain that relationship. Acting will always result in a final scene. You need to find your people, the people who you love and who love you, when you are your real self. Everybody’s real self is a little all over the place sometimes, so don’t expect consistency. Your people will always love you, even and especially on the days when you haven’t washed your hair and you’ve been a total crappy-pants.

    CHOOSE YOUR GIRLS. Choose who your girls are wisely, and then choose them every time. You are all imperfect, but you stick together. A group of girls will make each other happy and mad and sad, and they will cry and shout because of each other. Even so, when you go out together you are a unit and you are responsible for one another – you all make sure the others are safe and not forgetting who they are. Be very careful about choosing a boy over your girls – you probably shouldn’t have some one(s) around you if you feel you’re in a situation demanding that. Your girls will be your girls throughout many romantic relationships and life-stage friendships. When one of you is mistreated, and this will happen, believe her. Believe her.

    BE ACCOUNTABLE. The way you behave is 100 percent about you. The way others behave is 100 percent about them. You are responsible for how you behave and you will make mistakes. When you behave badly or make a poor choice, there are consequences and you have to suffer through those. When you mistreat someone, you need to own that. However, you also need to fully understand what is not your part. You live in a world of girls and boys and men and women who sometimes try to make females responsible for things they are not, and you need to be aware when that bias and manipulation are in action. The way you dress is never the reason someone touches. Something you did or didn’t do is never the reason someone hits. Something you did or didn’t do is never the reason someone cheats. When people blame-shift or victim-blame, recognize it for what it is and call it out. Any female who victim-blames other girls should not be in your group of girls.

    Are those 5 really enough? I didn’t even say have fun (but not too much fun). Or, you have decades of adulting ahead so just embrace this time of learning. And x behavior is unhealthy but y behavior is OK. Don’t let your feelings or your fears override logic. You won’t like who you are if you allow yourself to sacrifice your values for your feelings. And you need to recognize the differences between first loves and for-now loves and forever loves. And it goes on and on and on. And suddenly my original list of 37 things is getting even bigger.

    Parenting sometimes feels like I’m tripping up stair after stair, just righting myself from not properly landing on one step while having to take the next step. The only step on which I know my feet are both firmly planted on this topic is this one: If you know who you are and stay true to that, you will be just fine.

    Know who you are, brave girl.

    You. Are. Beloved.

  • Don’t Hide Half, Brave Girl

    Don’t Hide Half, Brave Girl

    One of the fastest ways to make me angry is to tell me half. “My room is clean now” sounds great, but it’s really only half if you’ve shoved a bunch of candy wrappers under the bed. “She hit me” is only half if she was pinched first. “This car would be cheaper than the one you have now” is only half if the new car comes with no warranty and requires more expensive gas.

    Just tell me the truth already. Because half is not truth. Truth is always whole.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness lately. What makes people happy, does everyone have a right to be happy, is it wrong to be happy when people we love are not, is it weird to be happy when your life has a big problem in it? Is hope the key to happiness? Or faith? Love? Xanax?

    I’ve decided that people who say happiness is a choice are right, but they are really only telling you half. The key to happiness is not in any choice in something external – it’s not in love, not in the achievement of a goal, not in a person, and not even in a faith of some sort. Anyone can choose a mate or a puppy or a bottle or a cause or a church. But none of these things, these choices, will ever be enough to get you to happy. And that’s because the real key to happiness, I am convinced, is 100 percent internal – it’s in learning to like yourself, it’s in living in a way such that you can like yourself, and then in simply owning who you are.

    If we are honest with ourselves about who we are, and if we like ourselves when we’re alone with ourselves, we can be happy. And if we can be ourselves no matter who’s around and no matter where we are, we can be happy. But if who we are is different based on who we’re around, one of two things is true: either we don’t know who we are yet, or we are well aware of who we are and we don’t want others to see that person. It’s when we speak half or live half – only showing a part of ourselves in hopes others will like us – that prevents us from being wholly happy.

    We must stop living half. And we must stop half-telling our story.

    If we tell people we need forgiveness for hurting others because we struggle with an addiction or a disease, but in private we don’t seek professional help to help ourselves…we’re telling half.

    If we only show people the pictures where our hair is in place and our house is clean…that’s half.

    The thing about our halves is that we may be hiding them from others, but we’re not hiding them from ourselves. We know we’re showing half – and if we’re at all good people, we can’t really get to happy by showing half. The halves that we hide because we’re ashamed of them or because we think they make us the most unworthy or the most bad will actually lose their power over us when we own them. It’s in our transparency, in our ability to reject the urge to only show half, that we find the freedom to be happy.

    Real humans have a whole story, and in every one of those stories the human is imperfect and/or their life has something wrong with it.

    This weekend I watched a group of young people tell my seven year old they missed her at an event a while back. Her face fell and her entire countenance changed. Her confidence was gone in an instant, and that’s because she remembered why we missed it – she doesn’t have a traditional family anymore and that’s been a very tough reality for her to accept. And just as I was about to smooth things over, she blurted out that her Dad doesn’t live with us anymore and he has a different life. I could not have been more proud that she spoke a truth that hurts her deeply. And two seconds later my heart burst with gratitude as I watched a teenager reply, “Yeah, my Dad, too. But I’m still gonna be a doctor. What are you going to be?”

    I realized in that moment – the moment where I almost spoke half to smooth things over, which would have cheated my daughter of a wonderful moment – that not only does our transparency about our whole self and our whole life allow us to free ourselves of a bondage, it also allows us to see that others are like us. If we don’t share our whole selves we can’t possibly feel the grace and love others have to offer us. If we live and speak only half, we’re essentially cheating ourselves of our ability to heal.

    I’m determined not to live and speak half – not just because I’m not smart enough to keep up with all the omissions, but because I want to spend my life doing stuff other than hiding and pretending.

    So…I go to church and yet I sometimes drop F bombs (especially when in traffic). I’m a Mom who doesn’t like to cook and I’m a Mom who embraces restaurants. I will not hide that from bus stop Moms who are good cooks. I’m a Christian who has gotten so angry that I have shouted that I hate people and that I can’t wait to attend their funerals. When my pastor asked how I was doing later that day and I said “fine,” that was half. Because while I am actually a good bit more than fine at this point, there’s still a shameful, angry truth – a half – that I hide.

    A few months ago, I was wandering around an antique store and I came across a couple shelves of old books. To my surprise and complete delight, I found an old copy of one of my favorite books: The Scarlet Letter. I read it the first time in high school, loving the story but thinking it was outdated and didn’t really apply to life now. That was more than 25 years ago, and I’ve found The Scarlet Letter speaks to me today more than ever. While I’d love to see some people have to wear a scarlet A upon their chest, that wouldn’t send a message most people around them don’t already suspect. The timeless message is this: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

    I’m not bewildered about who I am. I know I’m a person who doesn’t really wish harm on others and that loves people and that does her best to live the right way and that is a Christian…but still, that’s just half. I’m a Christian who has a heart that has hate and anger in it, and that’s not a half of which I’m proud.

    But you know what? That’s my whole.

  • Find the Funny, Brave Girls

    Find the Funny, Brave Girls

    Find the funny in all things, and life will be fun.

    I don’t know where I heard that in my youth, but it has stuck with me. I really really wish I could remember the context, but it is deeply hidden somewhere in my mid-forties Mom brain which must prioritize school lunch components that need to be purchased and after school activities that require speedy cross-town transportation.

    I love funny. I laugh at weird things, things that sometimes make others uncomfortable, and I laugh at silly things. I laugh at Ellen and Chris Rock and Jon Stewart. I probably laugh the hardest at a loud noise from the ketchup bottle. I love what some others might call inappropriate humor. I love kid stories.

    And, probably most importantly, I love laughing at myself. I laugh at myself when I dance and I know it’s bad (it’s always bad) and when I do something dumb like buy a car that’s a blue color I like and then drive it off the lot without knowing where the gas tank is. We have to laugh at ourselves. It’s one of the keys to true happiness, I think – not taking yourself too seriously while loving yourself just as you are.

    My friends and family and work family are all a bunch of people who love to laugh, and I realized today – in the middle of a sermon about God’s Presence – that one of the ways that I know that God is present in my life is through laughter. My life is filled with people who find the funny. I am surrounded by just the right people at just the right time each day – and that is a daily miracle in my life. It’s true today and it’s been true my entire life.

    When Audrey was an infant and still had cancer in her body, I remember my Dad praying for me as I held her in her rocking chair. He obviously prayed a lot for Audrey, and he prayed for my health and my energy and my peace. But the thing that surprised me was that he prayed that I would have joy.

    Beth has peace. Beth has joy. Beth is filled with peace and joy.

    He understood a truth I am only just now grasping a bit of. Joy is necessary. Funny is necessary. Laughter is necessary. We have to pursue them and we have to surround ourselves with them and we have to actively focus on them. They are keys to our healing. They are keys to full lives. In order to live our lives and accomplish what we need to, we can’t just think we’ll be happy when things are going our way. We have to decide to be happy and decide to pursue joy and decide to find funny when things are not going as planned.

    One of the little running jokes with some of those funny people who surround me each day is “that’s one of the reasons.” I love camouflage pants…that’s one of the reasons you’re getting divorced. I’m a big meanie about deadlines…that’s one of the reasons I’m getting divorced. I don’t know what teams are playing in a big game and I can’t stand that some people plan their day around sports on TV…that’s one of the reasons you’re getting divorced. Every time I say it or someone else says it, I laugh out loud – and it feels awesome.

    I have watched people look at us strangely when we joke about it, so I know that finding funny about this subject is awkward for some people. But I really just do not care. And you know what else? it is totally okay to laugh and joke about dark things. It is totally okay to have moments of happiness and laughter in the midst of dark stuff. That’s one of the things that puts the dark stuff in their proper place. Very often, I think people feel compelled to be serious about something, or they actually have to be serious about their situation when they’re at home – in my case that’s where little minds are still wrapping their heads around family changes. So that means it’s even more important to have those moments of funny in safe spaces with friends and family. Every one of those one-liner wisecracks is and was a step to a happier person.

    Another thing I have laughed about for an entire year is that the book I was reading at the time I discovered my then-husband was in another relationship was The 5 Love Languages. A friend had recommended it, and I was just reading about people who regularly need words of affirmation. That’s pretty far outside my wheelhouse because I am not a person who needs that sort of thing, so I just didn’t even know what to do with that. And I found myself wondering why I should thank someone for stuff like taking out the trash. All household chores should be equally managed by the adults – do people really need a thank you for doing their part? I mean, we’re all grown-ups here and this is chores we’re talking about. But I digress, and clearly I am not well-matched to words of affirmation folk. The point is I was reading a book to understand the ways that people show love, when I learned that I was in a relationship that was in no way about love. I used to think that was sad and tragic, and it is but at the same time there’s funny in that irony. There’s also endless crass commentary about the love languages of people who do not honor themselves or marriage – which is probably what helped me get to the place of seeing the funny in that irony.

    Today during that sermon on God’s presence, the pastor talked about Jesus attending a wedding and it struck me in a new way that He was a person just like us. And yet it seems like the majority of stories about Him are serious – He wept or He was angry or He was grieved or He was hurt or He was compassionate or He was teaching. He talked about salvation and how to pray and how to treat your neighbor and how to live. There was nothing specific I could recall from the Bible where Jesus talked about laughter. So I came home and Googled it. And I did find something He said about laughter and it’s in the Beatitudes, which I should have thought about. But I hadn’t read the Good News Translation of Luke 6:21 which says “…Happy are you who weep now; you will laugh!”

    I don’t know with any certainty if Jesus laughed or if God has a sense of humor, but I feel strongly both things are true. Jesus was human like us and we laugh. I’ll concede He probably doesn’t like my crass commentary. But perhaps He laughed with his Mom when they recounted childhood stories or perhaps He laughed with His friends at weddings. And aren’t we are made in His image and made for fellowship? Part of fellowship is laughter. I have to believe God finds the funny, and He’s present with us all the time rooting for us to do the same.