I laughed today

  

Our writing group starts again this week and I am going to harass, beg , plead and encourage the attendees to keep a daily journal. I can't tell you the comfort that has come from finding my John and my Lord in those pages. Answered prayers jump off the page. And please keep those letters.

 I read one today dated 1-20-00 that John sent from Honduras. He was describing the adventure of cooking in a third world country and his humor lifted me again as it always did.

"..every drawer I opened had moving things in it. I had carefully selected the chicken I was going to serve when Juan and I shopped in Tegucigalpa on Monday. I bought whole chickens figuring that I would cut them up and grill them outside. Using my much improved Spanglish, I asked the cook at the compound if she knew how to cut up a chicken. "Of course," she said. Well, let me tell you there was not one identifiable part to the four chickens that she bludgeoned. I don't know where they get the beef, I have never seen anything that looked like what I was about to cook."  

 I had read those letters in the beginning of this sad pilgrimage and of course missed the humor, unable to see through the tears. It is a grace that I saw it today.

Another grace has come to me. There is a young man at our church, he is the head altar server, a job he takes seriously and does well. I noticed him one day asking a friend how her arm was before Mass as he saw the sling. I put this thoughtfulness in the kindness column that day in my journal. He also approached me to offer sympathy. Now, as I wait in the foyer for the first Mass to end, he stands by me. I sent him a note thanking him. Sunday, he told me how much he missed an older man who passed recently. He said: "He made me laugh and was my friend. Then he paused and said, "like you are my friend." And Yes, I am and am blessed by it.

Somewhere in my many grief books, I read that laughing heals. Today, I thank my love once again for helping me. I know two things: We are never alone and God provides. Amen.