DAVE LETS ME LAUGH

I'm in the process of loading up the books and other stuff, because we're leaving tomorrow for our trip to the North Shore.  We LOVE Lake Superior and it's rivers and falls and streams and rocks and people.  

Been going there nearly every year since our wedding 28 years ago.  One of my favorite places in the world... except for the Pacific ocean on the Oregon coast and seeing the Cascade mountains.  But "loverly".

As I was loading the cartoon books that we've had for years ... Calvin & Hobbes and Far Side and others ... that just make me laugh.  Dave had a really funny cartoon book when we were dating.  He was the youth leader at the church God had put me at and my daughter joined the youth group immediately.  We started dating in May...and engaged in a very short time, because we knew the Lord had put us together.  

A few weeks later the kids were at the home of one of the parents, and they had a swimming pool in their back yard.  The parents were with the kids, and Dave was tired, so he just laid on the couch in the living room.  I was sitting with him on the couch, and he just put his head in my lap.  

Well, he was falling asleep.  I felt so sorry for him.  He never had a chance to have a real break and have a good rest between his job at the Base and working at church, both as youth leader and organist/pianist, and then stuck with me and my kids.  

While he seemed to be sleeping, I had one of the cartoon books.  Hadn't looked at one for many years.  While I was reading through it...a Neighborhood one by Jerry Van Amerongen... I felt like laughing, roaring.  BUT how could I laugh and risk waking Dave up?  So, I swallowed the laughter, and I'm sure my body was quivering a bit.  And then Dave said, even with his eyes closed,  "Go ahead and laugh, Joanne.  I LOVE to hear you laugh."

I was overwhelmed with his blessed words.  For in my whole life, since childhood and then turning 40, my parents, teachers, and former husband had said, when I laughed, basically, "SHUT UP!  You are too loud."

Can't say that was the first blessing from Dave.  He WAS a blessing from the very beginning, even before we began to date, because he was such a kind and helpful youth-oriented person.  Immediately, when we were put together, he began to give my kids a little money for their activities, bought groceries for me if he was out and buying his own, gave me money for shoes, picked me up nearly every morning to go to my job which saved me gas and bus money.  [I was POOR!  Hardly able to do more than just pay for basic basics.]

So, while packing today, thinking again of those fun books we'll take on the trip, I was grinning about this wonderful event that occurred 28-1/4 years ago.

And I will be laughing and laughing and laughing some more ... and don't have to worry about whether I'll be hollered at.  That's a good thing.

YIPPEE!!!