Bring Back the Laughter!

The last several months have been hard for us in many ways. I had major surgery. Our son moved out to go to college. My husband's business has not been doing well, so money is tighter than it has been since we first got married.
I'm the type that tends to shut down when things are hard. I withdraw into myself. I spend more time being quiet. I hone in more sharply to my relationship with God.
But this time, one thing has been different. I've forgotten to laugh with my best friend - my husband Jeff.
We've spent too many days now in quiet - trying not to say all the things that are troubling our hearts. Therefore, we've not talked as much in this season as we usually do. And I've missed that talking.
If I'm going to tell anyone anything, it's going to be Jeff. He usually hears way more than he'd probably like to! But lately I haven't wanted to put my worries and fears on him, because I know he has enough of his own. So I've kept it all tightly bottled inside.
Last night was different. All of our children were gone. Matthew is home from college, but was out with his guy friends for guys' night. The girls were at dance class. We sat down to eat dinner - a vegetable beef soup made entirely from Sunday's left-overs. And it was really good too!
Just before dinner, Jeff and I were talking about an article I'd started reading in Reader's Digest. It was about a family who decided that for one month they would spend nothing. Yes, they paid the house payment, bought only the bare necessities in groceries - things like that. What they did not spend on was sometimes quite hilarious; sometimes quite practical.
For example, wouldn't you know that their tub blurbled up with this black goo just as they'd vowed not to spend money that month. So what did they do? They looked up home remedies on the internet of what to do in such a case and fixed the goo themselves - pirating the neighbor's internet signal!
The man got up early and read his neighbor's newspaper, returning it before he ever awoke.
Their poor 4 year old son was getting bored - used to outings with Dad to get ice-cream, play games, etc. So the dad excitedly asked if the son wanted to go ride in a silver chariot and eat food and look at neat stuff. The son excitedly yelled - yea! Where did he take him? To the local Costco to ride around in a shopping cart, look at the neat stuff, and eat free samples!
We were totally cracking up at this point! THERE was the laughter I had so missed. It filled me like nothing else can.
Then we pondered - as we've been doing the last few weeks - while this is funny and this family probably makes a nice income and can afford to "play" at this, we have had a need recently to cut back on as much as we can. What could we take away from this article in a practical sense - beyond our laughter :)
Well, you know what? I can "pirate" my parents internet - they're just next door. And I tried it too! It was really slow... I'm so spoiled.
I can borrow their newspapers when they're done with them - and this I know they won't mind at all as my dad puts them in the recycle when he's read them.
I took stock of our cleaners this morning. We're pretty good there, but if it comes time to buy new cleaners and money is still tight, I know I can pirate my parents internet to look up homemade cleaner recipes - HA!
More than any other thing though. I'm so thankful to the Lord for restoring my joy. Today I am excited, joyful, have new and creative ideas for survival in tough economic times. And I have my best friend back - most important of all!