Laugh anyway

I’ve been thinking a lot about ribs this week.

(And before you ask, no, not the baby-back kind. Who even eats at Chili’s anymore?)

I’m talking human ribs. The ones that encircle your precious organs and keep your torso from looking like a bag of mush. Those ribs.

The reason my thoughts have been so occupied is because I have been sick.

(And before you ask, no. It’s not coronavirus. Are you a high schooler?)

It’s just an upper respiratory infection, which basically means I’ve been coughing a lot. And you know what happens when you cough with the mighty force of a thousand Viking warriors, like I have been? Apparently, what happens is: you break a rib.

Or, in my case, you strain a rib muscle–or is it sprain? I don’t know the difference. Either way, it feels a bit like getting impaled through the sternum whenever you breathe. Or cough. And since I’m a living person with an upper respiratory infection, I’ve been doing both of those things quite a bit.

Now you’re probably thinking, why should I care? And that’s a fair question. Truthfully, I think you probably don’t care too much about my problems (though you probably would at least pretend to care if I did have coronavirus, since it’s such a big meme and all). But I’m here to talk about me, whether you care or not–and, more importantly, I think the whole thing is pretty funny. Which is ironic, because laughing with a splained (?) rib hurts.

That didn’t stop me from laughing, though. All week I’ve been laughing.

Laughing at how ridiculous it looks when I bend over to cough, like that will somehow contain my organs better. Laughing at the the concern of my excellent office-mate Claire when she sees me stretching out on the floor just to try and get one good breath in.

Laughing at the 17-year-old goons sitting in the back of my ACT class, playing with a piece of a balloon and a stainless steel straw, because somehow even that is more interesting than the ACT.

Laughing with my coworkers over a hasty lunchtime game of pictionelephone. Laughing at my husband when I threw something to him in the middle of Walmart and he didn’t catch it in time.

Laughing when my sister tried to convince me the word “paws” was a palindrome because it spelled “swap” backwards (and when she realized I was right).

Earlier this week, when I first hurt myself, I was thinking it would be hard to have any fun while being in pain–but the interesting thing is, I think the fact that it hurt to laugh made me want to do it more. Not in a weird, I-like-pain way. Just like a, “hey, you don’t get to make my life miserable, so take that, splained ribs!” kind of way. The simple presence of laughter made a kind of shield around me; in the face of laughter, the pain I felt lost its sting. Lost its power.

From a humanistic perspective, there’s something in that, some profound thought about defiance and resilience–but cutting through all the other things I could say, right to the core of why I wrote this, I just think I’m feeling blessed today. Pulled ribs and all.

There’s joy in my life that can’t be shaken by suffering–and that’s the kind of joy God offers to you and me, every day. Surprising, contradictory, all-redeeming joy. Joy that makes you laugh when you shouldn’t, and love life regardless.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” -Romans 15:13