Finding Grace in the Sound of Laughter

In general, I'm a woman made of contrasts. Lighthearted faith mixed with intense thoughts and emotions. Laughter and healing wounds, all swirled together like marbled ice cream. It can be hard to find laughter and love in a culture where every joke is offensive and so much of our society profits from keeping us divided. It's hard to share encouragement and inspiration, Christian or otherwise, when your soul is aching. With everything going on in the world today, it's easy to get bogged down by the onslaught and forget to harvest the joy in ordinary moments.

I get it. I've done it. But while it's important to acknowledge our feelings, even when they're hard to handle, it's just as important to hold onto gratitude and joy—especially if you struggle to find light in the darkness.

The last several months have been filled with emotional intensity on every front, and lately, every word I wrote felt like excavating a boulder superglued to the bottom of a molasses pit. I don't think I realized how much I'd been missing laughter and grace in the last few weeks, but rediscovering laughter this week reminded me of two solid truths I'd lost sight of: "a cheerful heart is good medicine," and "a crushed spirit dries up the bones." (Proverbs 17:22)

Simple sentiments, perhaps, but valuable all the same. Fear, anger, depression, and worry hurt us, like the slow death of a thousand cuts. Small moments of happiness and the beauty of laughter heal us, like a high dose of antibiotics waging war against infection.

Maybe that's why this week felt like a much-needed break—because I found emotional renewal in what I'm choosing to call "laughter therapy."

Finding peace in small things isn't always easy for me, but as I battle small space living and struggle to declutter and organize my tiny home, each new home improvement project is a spark that lights hope in my heart. The latest effort? Pantry organization.

It's a small, almost meaningless effort to create calm in the chaos of my life...but when the doorbell rang in the middle of my weekly Bible study video chat, I didn't even try to hide my excitement. My friends oohed and aahed appropriately over the coming improvements, laughing at my obvious glee—and once the chat ended, I spent the rest of the week as happy as Harry Potter's Voldemort with a new wand, arranging horcruxes by type and toxicity.

It's proof that small things have big impact, because that joy bubbled over. All week long, seemingly small things sparked flames of laughter in my house. Misspoken words. Endless rounds of Mancala. Long-forgotten inside jokes newly remembered. Twice, my oldest daughter and I got to giggling so hard she had to jump up and race her bladder to the bathroom, and as we bonded over silly things, so much of the tension that often hangs between us like fog was suddenly...gone.

But I think Thursday morning won the week. In her trademark weekday rush, my youngest made a breakfast sandwich to eat on the way to school, and plopped it on a plastic Pyrex lid to avoid leaving a plate in the car. Halfway through the drive, she finished her sandwich, took a drink from her water bottle, and reached for the button to roll down her window.

It was one of those moments where someone's about to do something, and you already know what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how it'll all go wrong.

She was planning to roll down the window, hold the lid out, and shake off the crumbs. She was trying to be careful. Trying to protect her wheat-allergic mama.

And I tried to warn her. I did.

I opened my mouth right as she slipped her hand out the window, her little fingers grasping the edge of the lid. The wind did the rest, and by the time she realized her hand was completely empty, I was watching the lid bounce on the road in my rearview mirror.

She looked at me, blue eyes wide with surprise and remorse. "I didn't know that would happen! The wind took it—I didn't mean to do that!"

But she found me laughing around the minor irritation of a lost dish. We laughed at what the person driving behind us must have thought, how silly that lid looked rolling away down the street, and the stunned expression on my daughter's face as it happened.

Later, we looked for Pyrex replacement lids on Amazon and grouched about the prices—but then we found them in pink, and we laughed about that, too. My daughter said maybe losing the lid was worth it after all.

And maybe she was right. Because lids (and Mancala marbles) are replaceable. But the gift of laughter and joy in motherhood? Well, that's priceless.

*****

It’s been a while since my home echoed with this much laughter, and while it doesn’t make life’s challenges disappear, finding joy again certainly softens otherwise sharp edges. Every shared moment of mother-daughter laughter reminded me to look at joy as worship and laughter as grace—and this week, we found both, hiding in the rhythms of our everyday life.

And maybe grace doesn’t always arrive in grand gestures. Maybe it doesn't need divine revelations. Maybe sometimes, it shows up in the simplicity of shared laughter.

Either way, a lighter week meant great things for the editing process. STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM is flowing much more smoothly toward the finish line this week, and we're just over 21 weeks away from release day! I'm so excited to be nearing the end of The Freedom Series, and I can't wait to share this second part with the world. Christine's story is powerful, not because it ignores bad things or covers trauma with false happiness, but because it looks deep into the reality of what goes on behind closed doors and still offers hope.

Like this week's laughter, Christine is a reminder to look life's challenges right in the eye, laugh even if it's through tears, and always, always...

If you've ever thought, "Aw, dang, I meant to read that!"—same. That's why I'm pulling everything into a once-a-week roundup you can actually find right in your email inbox. I'll include links to recent blog posts and social media, and you might even find occasional surprises or giveaways!