If you grimaced at the title for this blog post, I’m sure you’re not alone. In the midst of tremendous pain, it can be very easy to push all thought of fun out of our minds. It’s also easy to lose sight of the importance of laughter, humor, or even a small smile – any one of these (or especially all three) can make a tremendous difference on our spiritual and emotional health, even if they don’t bring about immediate physical benefits.

As people with illnesses that cause pain, we often feel isolated. Laughter is absolutely contagious and can be a powerful bonding tool to nurture relationships and bring people closer to us.

Humorous touches throughout our living spaces can be visible reminders of the need to look beyond out pain to something much more pleasant. They also help us understand that God wants us to be “whole” people, that is, he wants us to use all of who we are, including the parts of us that are touched by illness and pain and the parts that have the ability to amuse and be amused.

Smiling is a frequently-overlooked gesture that expresses warmth, compassion and, yes, courage. Each time we smile while still feeling pain, we defy the constraints of our health challenges and bringing up and out a sense of control and a sense of hope.

Fun is a brief, three-letter word that carries with it a profound change of heart and attitude. If we seek a way to have good, healthful fun each day, we spend time doing something positive and, thus, have much less time for the negative. What’s fun about pain?  Even staring out the window and watching the play of clouds or animals can take us out of our pain and put us squarely in a world that God created for us to enjoy.

We don’t have to be carefree youngsters, throwing our bodies into vigorously athletic games to have fun. We can be in our most homebound, pained state and still find things to laugh, smile, and play about. Time spent discovering these is not only well-spent, it is grace-filled!

Peace,

Maureen