laughter is still the best medicine....

My Mom and I internally jogging!!

Just recently I took a personality test (bad idea).  In all seriousness it is helpful but dang it did a number on me.  Personality is fluid, changing and evolving but our basic default seems to remain the same.  My personality is perfect melancholy mixed with strong Choloric.  Basically perfect melancholy is "perfectionist" and Choloric is "do it my way".  Sounds like a pretty crappy genetic twist of fate....not only do I want to do it perfect but I want everyone else to do it perfect!  Talk about some bad expectations (by the way...sorry for that). In reality there are some great things about that mix but still....

My perfectionist side is creative, sensitive, analytical, organized and well negative and insecure.  WHAT??? 
But I thought I was fun and the life of the party???  How could this be?  I love to laugh and be the clown, so much so that I was in trouble alot in school.  And by alot, I mean alot, just ask my Mother. 
So sense my personality type is easily prone to bouts of depression, I sank slowly into disappointment and depression with this news.  I spent time talking to God and asking Him questions like, "How can my light shine if it's just a big black cloud?" or "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?  How can this be, my husband is funner than me, how is that possible?"  Apparently dramatic is another of my personality traits.  I mean come on, I knew I was all over the map emotionally but this just seemed highly insulting to my sense of self.  I became maddeningly insecure, over-thinking everything.  Oh my God, maybe I'm not even funny at all and people just laugh because it's awkward and they don't know what else to do.  Maybe no one likes to be around me they just have no choice (you can see the dark descent into the rabbit hole here).

And then it hit me.  I am funny, quirky, dark and light, silly, serious and everything in between.  God designed me to be me(all over the map).  No personality test can quantify who I am( though gotta admit it does help to understand why even I can't understand me). After all I am who God designed me to be.  I can understand how people feel because I am lucky enough to often feel it all myself! Happy one moment in the pits the next.  I always knew what my weaknesses were even as a small girl I was wildly insecure.  Always wanting everyone to like me. So I became funny, not faking it but just protecting myself with laughter.  Making people laugh felt good and since I was a little melancholy I liked feeling better!  Laughing, after all releases endorphins that literally make us feel better as do tears but tears mess my makeup up and so therefore I laugh!!  Laughter is internal jogging, which is good because I don't want to do the external kind. 

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

There is enough of me drying up already with the decline of hormones and all, so I think I will stick to internal jogging so that my bones don't dry up too.  So yes, I have weaknesses but thank you Jesus they don't rule my life anymore.   I still have to struggle out of the blues every once in a while when life seems to heavy.  I never have to stay there unless I choose to.  I have learned to put on worship music or fun music and dance around.  To write in my thankful journal and remember all the good things not bad.  I will watch something funny or look at the humor on pinterest.  I try to surround myself with funny people and remember to laugh at every opportunity, even when it is inappropriate (so sorry about that). 

 Laughter is the best medicine and I am who God designed me to be melancholy/choloric or whatever the test shows.   I am still working at being the best version of me I can be.  And so, I laugh at myself because that is a much better choice than tears.  In the book of Luke in the parable of the prodigal son the father says it is good to make "merry" and rejoice because what was once lost is found!  I once was lost and now I am found.  So I am going to make merry and laugh as much as possible.  I hope you do too!!!