Finding My Laugh Post #43

     

I mentioned in my post, 'The Fricken Chickens’ that I had always had a problem with laughing at the most inconvenient and often inappropriate times.  I had hoped time and maturity would temper that but it only did a little bit.  Being a ‘peripheral person’, while the rest of the world is focusing on the unfolding, obvious drama in center court, I tend to look at the peripheral drama; that which no one pays attention to and often slips by unnoticed.   I’m convinced that that is where the best and worst of life plays out; the humor, the pain, and even the deception and crookedness of mankind. It is also where the most comical things happen and I would be lying if I said I haven’t received much amusement over the years by simply watching life unfold on the sidelines. 

        But those who knew me best in the north also knew that I had a silent laugh.  In high school, a friend (Sylvia!) was quick to pick up on that and she’d mimic me which would make me laugh more, proving her point.  Many people over the years commented on that and I had always wondered how it would feel to laugh out loud.  I had accepted the fact that neither I nor anyone else would ever hear the sound of my laugh.   

            I was probably in the south for about two months when one day something happened and I burst out laughing, a loud (for me anyway), comfortable, relaxed, hearty laugh; not the self-conscious, nervous laugh I had stifled in a world that was foreign to my spirit.   Years ago, as an ER Social worker, I had bronchitis and my co-workers, doctors and nurses, deemed it asthma.  They had me take a breathing test by blowing into a tube that leads to a box with a ping pong ball to see how high you can lift the ball.  I blew as hard as I could and it didn’t move one bit.  A nurse thought I was doing it wrong and demonstrated with what seemed to be an effortless puff and the ball smashed into the ceiling of the box.   I tried again several times and could not move the ball.  The nurse pointed at me and said, “You need to take breathing lessons!” 

            It was 1993 but I didn’t heed her advice until 2006 when I fully admitted to myself that I was living my life as a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. 

For far too long, I allowed fear, spiritual manipulation, and my sense of duty to save the world to keep me from making needed changes.  In 2004, the bottom dropped out of my world.  The mask that hid a faulty spirituality was ripped off - not by choice - and my then religious beliefs and the people who perpetuated them were exposed for what they were.  It was as though someone had stripped everyone naked, and the fat, the bones, the cellulite and dimples, and all the things we spend our lives trying so hard to hide from the world, were in plain sight spilling into my own spirit and I knew it was the source of my discomfort, anxiety, and even my silent laughter, yet it took three major life crisis’ to intersect at the same time for this to be cracked open like a coconut and expose what my heart had denied for so long; Christianity and God as I had known it had never really existed.  It was freeing, yet scary and for the next couple of years I spent floundering as though I were a hot air balloon with no particular destination. At times, I saw familiar faces and even reached out hoping to be rescued from the unknown, yet in an odd sense, I knew that the season of superficial faith was over.  But I didn’t know where it led; to atheism?  I wasn’t sure.  In 2007, I began Yoga and Meditation.

           

It was during meditation that I found strength within myself that I had no idea was there.  I realized my own spirit had given up and retreated years ago, though I had still chosen happiness.  In meditation, I found gifts that I didn’t even know I had and some that had been buried and long forgotten.  But most of all, I found God in there, deep within my heart, and that was the biggest surprise of all.  For my whole adult life, I was told that we have a ‘God-shaped void' in us and, unless we invite God in, He doesn’t come in and we are up the crick without a paddle!  I had watched too many people spend their whole lives seeking God when, in reality, he's already there. Or people ‘waiting on God’ to do what they should have been doing years ago.  It a fear-based spirituality, kind of like "Don’t step on a crack it will break your mother’s back" that makes God out to look like such an ass who plays with our heads and emotions by making His will for us a guessing game and keeping us uncertain of his presence.

         It was only through Yoga and Meditation - not prayer which is often self-directed and ego-driven - that I heard the screams of my soul.   Sometimes we just need to shut the hell up and close out all the distractions - including phone, TV and internet.   For me, it is in silence, deep breathing, being, accepting, letting go, forgiving, moving forward, embracing, and listening, that my spirit is able to soar to a place of peace and joy.  It is there, within myself, that I found that God, and his ‘will’ for us, is not so complicated after all.  The reality is, He's already in us and we have a choice to acknowledge or reject Him.  Ironically, those who proclaim to know God the most often spend their whole lives seeking Him like blind sheep - though he is right here -  waiting for Him to manifest himself supernaturally when, in reality, He does it naturally. 

Hint:  If you have the gift to be an artist, singer, dancer, carpenter, speaker, etc., you don’t need God’s special permission to do it!  He’s already given it to you!  And amazingly, the more you use your gifts, the path in which to use them becomes clearer.

        Over the years I've realized that my laughter is a gift that has gotten me through both the good and bad times.  I'm not sure if the deep breathing enabled me to laugh out loud or the other way around.   Sometimes I wish I could take that test again because I know I can blow that ball to the top just as that nurse did, as long as I can do it without laughing.