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Challenge, Healing, Just for fun, Marriage, Men, Parents, Postmarital, Premarital, Women

Bringing Laughter into Your Marriage

My wife and I love to laugh. We’ll catch Funniest Home Videos whenever we can. I take the time to show her funny YouTube videos or share memes that cause a chuckle. Why? 

A cheerful heart is good medicine,
    but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Proverbs 17:22)

Laughter brings joy to a marriage. It breaks down tension and relaxes the atmosphere. Laughter is medicinal to the soul, the spirit and the body. Laughter is physically, emotionally, and spiritually good for your marriage. 

Have you ever asked your spouse these questions? “What made you laugh today?” Or how about, “What’s the funniest memory you have in our marriage?” Bringing laughter into your marriage can help move us from a stale place, an angry place or a disappointed place to a place of smiles and positive emotions. 

Mary and I recently recalled one of the funniest times in our marriage. It was years ago when our kids were teenagers and we had just dropped off our daughter for a church activity. We noticed that all the lights were on at the brand-new Burger King in our town. There was traffic and people were inside eating. We decided on a hamburger dinner. It was strange though…

As we entered, the new manager offered us champaign. We made our way to the line to order and the kids behind the counter offered anything we wanted, any menu item for FREE. I said, “Free, are you sure?” “Yes” said the attendant. She then countered, “Order all you want, even dessert; it’s all free!” I immediately leaned over and whispered in my wife’s ear, “We need to call our boys; they’ll show them how to do free.”

Mary went for our drinks while I grabbed a table. Within minutes she came running to find me. Looking straight at me with this horrid face of doom and speaking rapidly, but very quietly, said, “Steve, every person here is a parent of a kid who’s going to work here. It’s free because they are giving them opportunity to serve in real time to their families.” And then she added, “We have got to get out of here before someone asks us which of our kids will be working here!”

We gobbled our food down and hightailed it out of there. We found ourselves laughing for the next thirty minutes. We even woke up our sleeping daughter that night as we lay in our bed laughing out loud.

Laughing together will bring you closer; you’ll touch more and talk more. A conversation full of laughter is more intimate and will bring down your guard, creating an atmosphere of more openness.

Laughter– it’ll do your marriage good!

Our mouths were filled with laughter,
    our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
    “The Lord has done great things for them.” (Psalm 126:2)

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Emotions: Good, Bad or Indifferent?

Let’s face it; we all have feelings. For some, feelings control their actions more than others. 

Have you ever really thought about the process of how you and I arrive at our feelings? There actually is an underlying and explainable process. 

Feelings or emotions are a result of our thoughts. If I tell you a joke and you think it’s funny, your response will be to laugh. If you don’t think it’s funny, you will not laugh. While that’s simply stated, it is the reality. Feelings are more accurately defined as responses or reactions to our thoughts. 

When you have a feeling that you don’t understand try this exercise: stop and listen to your thoughts. Practice listening to yourself and you will identify what is instigating your feelings. If you’re feeling angry or agitated, what were you just thinking about? If you can capture that thought, you will have identified the source of your anger. 

For example, when people say, “You make me so angry!” That’s not really accurate. The truth is what the other person is doing or saying is interpreted by you and is creating certain thoughts. From those thoughts you choose the response of anger. That’s why there can be dozens of cars stuck in a traffic jam with multiple reactions. Some persons are out of their car trying to discover what’s wrong, others are beeping their horn or becoming agitated due to the holdup and yet others are taking the unwanted interruption to read a book. All different reactions to the very same problem because each of us generate different thoughts about how we’re interpreting our environment. 

Are feelings good? Generally speaking, yes. God created us with the capacity to feel. However, when feelings become more important than truth we can get ourselves into trouble. What do I mean?

If our thinking is not truth filled, we are then reacting to a lie or a near truth. Consequently, our feelings are not based on truth. When our feelings or reactions are not based on truth, our responses can be skewed. 

Is there a connection between positive and negative thoughts to our emotions? Yes, there is. No one is a positive thinker 100% of the time. But positive thoughts generate more positive feelings and that’s very real. That said, we can also lie to ourselves and manipulate those feelings. Having constant negative thoughts about ourself or others does create more negative responses. 

Thankfully, not every thought is processed through our feelings. For example, when approaching a stop sign my automated response is to stop because I see the sign, my brain knows the law and I begin the braking process. I do not ask myself if I feel like stopping. Stopping at a stop sign is not an emotion-generating process. However, if someone runs a red light and endangers my family, I will have an emotional response.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Feelings are reactions to our thoughts. Solomon wrote, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he who rules his spirit than he who captures a city.” (Proverbs 16:32)

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