Laughter

Anyone who's ever spent time with me understands that I'm generally a serious person, or at the very least, I have a pretty serious first impression. I take strong stands on my beliefs and I'm very intense in how I present them. However, those that get close to me, I mean really close to me, they learn something else about me...I love to laugh, and I love to make people laugh. I'm as goofy as they come with both a corny and dry version to my humor. The issue is that ever since my divorce, it seems that humor or joy has been lost. I don't seem to laugh much any more. When I do, its just for a moment then its gone again. What happened to me?

I've missed the funny Derek. I really have, and it, at times, has depressed me a bit. So I started praying and asking God to return to me the joy that I once felt. I need more then just human joy. I need the Joy of the Lord. I need that to breathe in my bones. Everyone needs to laugh after all.

Here's the cool thing of how the Lord's been working with that prayer. First, I made a friend that I've spent a little bit of time with lately. When I talk to her, I can't help but laugh because her humor mixed with my humor just brings out what I'm really good at: having a witty conversation. I've enjoyed this new friendship and I feel very blessed to have this person as someone to keep me honest on having a good laugh, especially at myself. A second thing that's been going on is that I've been one of the people mentoring new contractors at work in the past couple of days. Let me tell you that serving as a mentor and teaching these guys how to do our job has reminded me of some of the very joys that the Lord has placed in my heart of the years: teaching. I went home last night from work laughing and joking like the man I used to be. It was great...

I think its something that we don't understand when it come to God: He uses everything and everyone to accomplish His will. Over the past 18 months, He's proven that by the shear number of people He's used to bless my life. Everyone from Laura to Micah to Konan to Lindsay to Nate to Isaac and the list goes on and on and on have effected my life in such amazing ways. In the end I'm experiencing one thing: laughter.

"Delight yourselves in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."