| A Word Edgewise
by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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IT'S YOUR CHOICE, SO MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE
by Mary Joe Clendenin
Want to substitute a little joy for the worries in your life?
Take a positive step: turn off the TV. "WHAT! and miss the ball game?" No, just the news, the talk shows, the soap operas, anything that makes you concentrate on the sordid, the unhappy, the greedy and spiteful characteristics of your fellow human beings. I guarantee that things will go on as they have been without your devoted participation of listening. A small dose of tuning in to such, maybe one news report per day, will be enough to keep you from slipping back to the dark ages. An over-dose is bad for your health.
During seven years of imprisonment in North Vietnam, Captain Gerald Coffee maintained his sanity by deliberately focusing on the search for joy. He sang all the songs he had ever known categorizing them and dwelling upon the memories each triggered. He became a naturalist by studying the rats, the cockroaches, the ants, flies and mosquitoes; watching and learning the habits of the little lizards, geckos, that came into his prison to eat the insects. "This is not to say that the loneliness and boredom weren't nearly overwhelming sometimes," Coffee wrote in Beyond Survival, "but I was gradually learning how to deal with them."
I don't expect any of us to have to endure imprisonment, but sometimes we create our own prisons, or isolation cells, by the moods we allow to rule our lives. Truly, we may have forgotten how to make a joyful noise--to laugh.
We need to laugh each day to release the "inner uppers," those endorphins, a chemical that your body creates naturally to elevate your spirits--but the body doesn't create unless you laugh. Are you letting your worries rule your mind and body? Try this.
Write down all of your worries, make a list. Don't leave anything out, big ones, small ones, vain ones, serious ones. Fold up the worry sheet and seal it in an envelope. Put it in a box and hide it in a place known only to you. Leave it there until next Saturday at four O'clock. Do not worry about your worries until then.
At four on Saturday, take your list out and resolve the worries in one of three ways:
1. Take immediate worry-solving action. Do something to correct the situation.
2. Cancel the worry permanently. Nothing changed all week, is there reason to expect it to?
3. Postpone your decision until next Saturday at four o'clock. Go through the same procedure.
Now, you can have a week of worry free days. I'm not trying to belittle your problems, just belittle the benefit of worrying about them. Maybe a few prayers for God to take over will help you through the week.
This is part of a paper Danny Sutton, eight years old, wrote for his Sunday school teacher to explain God.
God's second most important job is listening to prayers. (His first is making people.) An awful lot of this goes on, 'cause some people pray at other times besides bedtimes, and Grandpa and Grandma pray every time they eat, except for snacks. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or watch TV on account of this. 'Cause God hears everything, there must be a terrible lot of noise in His ears unless He has thought of a way to turn it down.
God sees and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting His time asking for things that aren't important, or go over parents' heads and ask for something they said you couldn't have. It doesn't work anyway.
Nothing much can top children's innocent wisdom. Makes us see blessings we missed the first time around. One little girl was very eager to get a part in a school play her class was to perform. Her heart was set on being in it, though she feared she would not be chosen. On the day the parts were announced she came running in to her mother after school, very excited. "Guess what, Mum," she shouted. "I've been chosen to clap and cheer."
You've got nothing to laugh about? Try looking in the mirror--not too early in the morning. Make a face at yourself. Even if you don't feel like laughing, fake it. Sitting across the table from that handsome man or beautiful woman? Strike up a partnership. Make funny faces at each other like we used to do as kids, and laugh. You may begin faking it, but soon the merriment can be genuine. Strike poses: muscle builders, stage beauties, witches, mean teachers, lame-brains. Whatever makes you laugh and you'll feel better all day for the effort.
C. W. Metcalf said in Lighten Up, that when out of town he shops for humorous greeting cards, selects one and sends it to himself back at home with the words, "Glad you were here, hope you're there." These go in his humor file.
I found some of these things in a file where I stash funny cartoons or jokes or ideas. Comes in handy to be a pack-rat sometimes.