Laughter really is the best medicine...

or as God puts it, "A cheerful disposition is good for your health; gloom and doom leave you bone tired". Proverbs 17: 22 (message)

Awesome language... sounds like my Dad (who's a Shakespere fan and talks a version of English that belongs in an antique shop and I tease him about it no end, but actually I love it.)

So anyway...last night none of us slept well. Tiara kept having weird dreams, Sheeba (our doggie) kept bothering Ed and I had a tummy ache. Normally when any of us in the Johnson household loses out on sleep, we have a bad day the next. In me, the feline comes out, claws and all and no it's not nice and Jesus and me always have to have a heart to heart after and even though He's always so nice about it, I feel kinda small after.

Last night however, I made up my mind, I was not going to have a bad day today. I began praying right then, like I did about a year ago when I felt a flu coming on. I remember that night so clearly, I prayed in faith, decided I did not want to succumb to the nasty flu, declared that by my Jesus' stripes I was healed, went back to sleep and I woke up flu-less. I felt that same faith stir up in me again last night and so I decided that sleep or not, today I'd be on the look out for Satan who loves it when I am vulnerable, and I'd take whatever he tried to throw at me and chuck it back in his face. Yeah! show the devil my feline self for a change.

So did I wake up smiling when the alarm went off? No. Did I crawl back into bed and sleep some more? No. Tired or not I was determined to win this battle.

I had a chat with Jesus and we decided to give the Father's advice a shot and put on a cheerful disposition. I decided to make my day as easy as I could, meaning not do anything I did not really have to. Instead of normal Home School for Tiara and her friend (which is now technically summer school) where it is mostly academics, I decided to do something light and easy. Tiara was tired too but she perked up as soon as she saw we were going to make leanrning time even funner. And you know what? ... it happened, we ended up laughing so much... I had such a rush of energy afterwards I finished half the pile of ironing I had left undone for the last week : ). Glory Halleluyah! Father God, whether it's little everyday stuff or big ministry work, your advice totally rocks and I just can't get over it sometimes.

So the higlight this morning was when we 'mad libbed'. A very neat education game we found online. We took a passage and changed all the nouns, verbs and adjectives to make it sound really funny. How it works is that you are given a bunch of choices and you choose one per blank and in the end you can see the finished version of the whole passage.

So here's the funniest one we created.

Our Cafeteria

Our school cafeteria has really sleepy food. Just thinking about it makes my stomach sneeze. The spaghetti is invisible and tastes like goats. One day, I swear one of my meat balls started to shiver! The turkey tacos are totally delicious and look kind of like old monkeys. My friend Dana actually likes the meatloaf, even though it's invisible and scaly. I call it "mystery meatloaf" and think it's really made out of socks. My dad said he'd make my lunches, but the first day, he made me a sandwich out of feathers and peanut butter! I think I'd rather take my chances with the cafeteria!

Try doing this with a bunch of giggly 8 year old girls - the de-stress effect is 100%.