Die Laughing: It’s a Lent Thing

It’s all heavy sometimes. Life. Ministry. Lent. Winter. An election year. All of it. Some days it is all just heavy.

My heart is especially heavy as Lent begins this year, with sadness for a family that suffered a terrible loss last week. I let that heaviness settle into Ash Wednesday. I let it preach the sermon on Sunday. I am learning to sit with it in prayer; I am holding space for it, indefinitely.

I am an Enneagram Seven (the cheerleader! the sales rep! Joy, from the InsideOut movie!) which means it is against my nature to let sadness into my life in this way. The impulse is to ignore it, or bury it in busy-ness and cool stuff. But I know better than to lean into that impulse. I know that is the way of death. I’m learning, instead, to be present to the life that is–which, at the moment, is heavy. And sad.

But– heaviness needs the occasional moment of levity. To that end, I’m going to share something that made me laugh. Hard. Maybe I have a weird sense of humor, but this just tickled me to death. (Pun=intended). I mean, laughing with big, mascara-running tears.

My friend/church member Annette teaches the 1st grade at a Title 1 school, which means she is 8 kinds of super hero. So one day, super Mrs. B asks her kids to draw pictures of what they will be doing when they are 101 years old. (I’m thinking it was the 101st day of school or something?)  I dig this activity so much more than having kids dress up as tiny 101-year-olds. I have always found that practice pretty strange, and also, one more thing for which we slacker moms have to produce accessories. SO, anyway, she asks these sweet kids to draw their super-old selves, and here’s what she got:

Ok, what’s the verdict? Do I have a twisted sense of humor, or are these the MOST HILARIOUS thing you  have seen today??  Like,”geez, Mrs. B, I don’t know about you, but I WILL BE DEAD BY THEN. What the heck kind of smoothies are you drinking?”

Anyway. Annette figures perhaps she should set this activity up differently in the future. Maybe a bit more narrative example in the instructions. But dang, that will not be nearly as funny. Still wiping tears and patching up my mascara over here.

Maybe it really is that funny. Or maybe I just really needed a laugh. Don’t we all?

Death is heavy. And whether or not it comes close to home, this is a season for reckoning with the limitations of our physical lives; 40 days to sit in the wilderness with the knowledge that you will one day be a part of that dry and dusty earth. But you know what? That is ok. And these kids, these first graders–they totally get that.

There is no fear in these pictures. No sadness. No dread or deep philosophical fretting over mortality. The images are bright and colorful; the faces are mostly happy; the exclamation points make it all so cheerful. Sure, the sun and the flower are shedding some tears there for a minute (because when you’re in first grade, the sun with a face is ALWAYS part of your narrative)… But on the whole, these are pragmatic glimpses of a certain future: at some point, we will die. These kids seem to think that’s ok.

So maybe it is.

When you are 7, it is not hard to say, sure, I’ll probably die sometime in the next century. And I’m ok with that. So at what point does death get heavy? At what point do we begin to look towards that certain future with dread and sadness?

Maybe it is the day we realize there is not as much space between us and 100 as we’d always thought; or that the time moves more quickly than we were led to believe as children.

Maybe that fear creeps in when we realize that, statistically speaking, we might not exactly have 100 years; unless we are very, very lucky and eat our vegetables always.

Or maybe death changes tone for us the first time it takes someone we love. Or someone impossibly young. Or both.

If that is the case, then it really isn’t our own death we fear, is it? It is what death can take from us… or rather, whom.

And yes, that is heavy. I am back to the heavy-ness.

But this is why we do these weeks in wilderness. We walk close enough to death to learn that –for all its certainty– it has no power over us. Because we also have joy; we also have the promise of life that does not end with the body. We have laughter. We have good music to listen to and books to read and snacks. We have work to do, and people to love. So that’s what we will get on doing. Even as we hold space for sadness. Even if we move with heavy hearts.

Lent is heavy work. It is the season when we learn to look death square in the eye and say “You are not the boss of me.” You tell death that it will not change your living. That the fear of its shadow will not steal a moment of your joy or breath or love. And then you laugh. All the way to Sunday.