Laughing at Myself

I've heard that the secret to improv comedy is to agree to things that normally one would not agree to.
Hey, Mark!  Let's go stand in the longest line at the grocery store with just one item.  Great idea, Joe!
As they go bouncing off to do the absurd, we either laugh or wonder if they've been reading too much Sartre.

I have a funny relationship with Predictability.  Usually, we get along just fine.  I like when I can predict that gravity will work again today and that the weatherman may be correct about the threat of a storm. 

However, sometimes I rebel against predictability.  On those days, I decide to drive the winding, unoccupied back roads, make a new recipe, and let my son chew happily on the cardboard box he discovered.

Then, just as I am reveling in doing totally unconventional things, God chooses to surprise me in His own way.  His surprises are usually a rather one-sided joke, and I'm not the one laughing.  I'm the one struggling to understand how my life got flipped upside-down and how my plans were put through the eternal shredding machine.  I temporarily protest, "I like unpredictability on my time in my own way, God.  Your surprises are stressful."  And He smiles knowingly, like a father who won't yet reveal the end of the bedtime story despite his daughter's pleading.

Sooner or later, (usually later, with my Bible on my lap) I remember that I have a Father who loves me infinitely, and that, after all, I certainly don't want to have a boring life.  I want my life to be an adventure, full of unexpected twists and turns.  The one who never dares anything, gains nothing.

In the front of my Bible, I have scribbled:  
Seek to see the extraordinary in the ordinary 
and the supernatural in the natural.
And once I adjust my focus to see beyond the hazy present, I can laugh.

I laugh at myself for failing to trust my Omnipotent Lover. 
I laugh at the world that tells me what is "expected" and "normal". 
And I laugh with the new-found joy in the divine comedy in which I, like an improv actor, must agree to the absurd and, in doing so, find my true calling and journey to heaven.