Joy

I cried today.

And it was because I was laughing so hard. It felt great. Awesome in fact.
I'm not sure if I've ever laughed as hard as I did this morning. Maybe the stress of these circumstances brought that out. We were having our monday morning book discussion time where the servant team, John and Josh and Robin (our leaders) gather in the chapel and discuss whatever we read for that day. Since it's a monday, we discuss our weekends as well, because we don't always see eachother and it's great to catch up. So we went around the room telling about our weekends. I had a great weekend, especially considering that I was sick for most of it... and I re-aggravated my back injurybending over to put my pj's on :-). I went to the Orthodox Cathedral (the big pretty one we visited the first time) and stayed for the whole liturgy and then I just read the rest of the day and prayed and did language stuff. Anyway. We came around to Josh. He hasn't been feeling well at all. In fact they think he might have girardia again. That's this intestinal worm thing...not good. But he's had that before and thinks this is different - he jokingly said maybe it's colon cancer. For obviously reasons that prompted me to ask if he was going to have a colonoscopy done. I'm not exactly sure what all goes into one of the those, but I'm quite confident they're a good time. Talking about colonoscopies and such made me think of the physical I had in order to come with WMF to Romania. Because...I had to have a rectal exam!! So I wanted to reminisce with the others about the rectal exam that i assume all of us had to take. Well, it turns out I was the only stinkin person who had to have a rectal exam. What! apparently everyone else's doctor scoffed at the WMF sheet that told them to do a rectal exam - they were like, "what? who wrote this? that's ridiculous...you don't need that." Not my doctor. Nope. You know why? cause he was NEW. Fresh from the doctor incubator (no offense to any medical proffessionals reading this). I vividly remember his expression and tone of voice when, from the WMF physical exam sheet he was perusing, he looked up with a start and said, I'm going to have to do a rectal exam. He looked shaken. I was thinking "ok...not a big deal right? I mean, happens all the time...right?". I was so young. so so .. naive.
For the sake of this audience I'll stop there. That's actually all I shared with the group this morning too, but maybe it was more funny to leave the rest to imagination. So, that, and a few other timely and choice comments from the group led to intense laughter for the next 5 minutes. I was weeping. I was whinny-ing if that makes any sense. People were having a hard time breathing. it was that kind of laughter. Red faces. Hands slapping the ground. People rolling over. And I'm crying and whimpering.

It reminded me of some of my favorite childhood memories when Dad use to laugh like that. Sometimes the jokes wouldn't even be that funny, but when dad started laughing like that - the hard-time-breating, whimpering, whinnying, crying kind of laugh - who could help but laugh themselves - before you knew it you were crying...gasping for breath...making hilarious noises in the process, Slapping the table. Those moments are so precious to me. In those moments everything is well. A family is formed. For that moment there is sheer joy.

I think that was quite a gift from the Lord to us this morning. Today I'm pretty convinced that God made laughter. :-)