There's something healing in a good belly laugh, and no doubt I need to experience that more often. A particular day could be stressful or hurried, and if I stop and really laugh......all that hurriedness or stress simply melts away. One of the belly laughs that Chrissy and I had was when she was working for a pest control business, and it was regarding a roach with really long antennae. I was probably in my early twenties and she had to be 19 or 20 years old. I suppose she had worked many hours so her mind was preoccupied with "bugs" and so began her dream of the roach in the phone book. It was a short dream, but it was so funny that it woke her up in the wee hours of the morning, and of course, it was way too funny not to wake me up along with her. We slept in the same bedroom so she nudged me as she was chuckling, barely able to speak. "I've got to tell you this dream!" Between short snippets of laughter, she was able to relay to me that this huge roach was sitting in the middle of an open phone book and looking for a reliable pest control business. What put me over the top is how she explained the roach searching for this special place. She said that the roach was licking its antenna and in the next motion was using it to flip each page of the yellow pages. Both of us broke down into laughter, and anyone who heard us would have thought we were nuts, but I don't think we were able to go back to sleep that night thinking of that nasty pest searching so frantically. Thinking of that dream to this day makes me chuckle, and I depend on it some days, especially at night when the kids and Marty have fallen asleep, and the house seems so lonely and quiet. That is the dream that is vivid in my mind, and it will still make me bust a gut to this day.
It takes a lot for me to belly laugh now, but certain television commercials can set me free to the biggest belly laugh. Those laughs can change my melancholy mood to a light-hearted mood in seconds. This is not an adverstisement for any product or service, but when I am laying in my bed and these commercials turn up.......well, all I have to say is "GENIUS"! The latest candy commercials where the the m & m is protesting the pretzal being put inside him. How about Bush's Baked Beans where the Golden Retriever is secretly plotting to discover the recipe to the bean empire, and last but not least the certain commercials for pest control. Yes, there is one that is simply brilliant, and I think of Chrissy when this big roach or creature-like bug is standing at the doorway of a house and dips his "extention" into the man's sweet coffee. Who couldn't have a good belly laugh with that one as the deep-voiced roach is trying to edge his way into the house. The expressions on the people and the bugs are priceless!
Look at the little things in life that make you smile, laugh, feel joy......as they will take you through the more difficult minutes when you feel the pangs in your heart. Sometimes, you feel that the grief is so intense, it leaves you speechless. There's so much joy to feel, and I want to feel it; yet, my mind tells me that I'm leaving her out or somehow forgetting her if I allow myself to feel. Perhaps feeling brings on too much pain. Those that grieve understand what I mean. It's a constant battle of telling your mind to feel joy, but your heart feels the loss, the pain and we don't want to let go of our loved ones. So my thought for the day is to find atleast one joyful moment and hold on tight because you'll need for the cloudier days.
Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
By Marianne Williamson
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