Laughter

I believe laughter is truly one of the best medicines that God created. It's one of the few things that can bring people together so that they can share the joy of the moment or of whatever is happening around them.

This is something that I seem to do very which is laugh and I seem to laugh a lot too. Today I want to take the time to share a story about laughter with all of you who are reading this. If any of you have heard me laugh well then you know the effect that it carries with it. My laugh has been described in many ways such as: Saturday morning cartoon villain laugh,  evil Santa Clause laugh, hearty, the count from Sesame Street, and the list goes on and on trust me.

The story takes place in Iraq and the date is later March of 2007. If my memory serves me correct that night we had been waken up from a sound sleep because someone had decided to shoot some tracers at our little patrol base. When your patrol base had just taken seven rounds of IDF (that's indirect fire for you civies) earlier in the year anything like that is enough to get everyone to their positions. This is all taking place during the big push in Baghdad which caused the insurgents to scatter throughout the country. Okay back to the story...................stupid rabbit trail lol I'm gonna find that rabbit and make him dead lol. So with all that said a bunch of us are sitting around in our little entertainment trailer drinking Gatorade, water, and Rip Its while watching some comedy movie. I can't remember the movie, but what I do remember is the fact we were just relaxing and having a good time.  What I remember that happened next was in just what seemed to be like a matter of seconds and the next thing I know I'm pretty much doubled over in my chair just laughing like the flood gates had just broken loose. I remember the look of my fellow soldiers faces as they watched me just be consumed by the laughter.

Fast forward to the present day and now it seems that people know me for my laugh. I was in a movie theater recently watching Thor with my brother (good movie, but to short imo) and I'm just laughing because it's one of those movies where you can hardly keep quiet. So at the end of the movie my brother says to me, " Is that so and so from church?" Sure enough there sitting down the row from us in the same isle is a couple from our church. So I turned my head to look and I confirmed it lol They got up and walked towards us,  they knew from the moment I laughed in the theater that I was in there. I guess being recognized by your laugh isn't a bad thing, but it sure is hard to go places without people knowing you're there simply because of your laugh.

With all that being said I really do believe that laughter is one of the best medicines out there for us when the times are getting hard or we're just in a downward slope. So I encourage you to get out and enjoy life, find some joy if you're having a hard time or the trails you are facing seem to hard to continue with.

" Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."

© Nathan Fahlin