Looking for Laughter in the Lightning

The title for this post is inspired by the word for lightning that I learned recently (Message me/ leave a comment with your e-mail address if you want to know more specifics on my language learning experience :)) Literally, it means "laughing rain". I thought that was pretty awesome. But I was also a bit perplexed: lightning is bright, scary, dangerous, unexpected, destructive--everything that laughter is not. How can lightning be a good thing??

For those of you who don't know, my family and I had to fly to the states suddenly because of my dad's worrisome health. I'm sure you can imagine the chaos, the stress, the fear, the uncertainty, the obstacles, the plan failures involved in this event. It is lightning, scary, dangerous, unexpected, possibly destructive. I could talk about God-given peace because there has been an abundance of that dumped on so many people concerned with this, but I'm going to focus on the gifts, the laughter in the lightning.

God loves giving gifts to his children, but if he's anything like my dad, he'll give the gift with a lesson, or test, in such a way that it doesn't always feel like a gift anymore. It feels like, well, an "educational gift." Last week, he gave me gifts, but He asked me to let go of stress and worry to see them for the gifts that they were. There were multiple gifts because He is just that good, but the silk pajamas stand out.

First you need a little backstory: I am an Audrey Hepburn fan. The Bucket-list that is on my bucket-list to make, has "Watch every movie that Audrey Hepburn was ever in" on it. In Roman Holiday, she plays a character who dreams of wearing pajamas, like cute pants with a button-up shirt pajamas. You can decide for yourself if I was influenced by that movie...or maybe it's just a vintage thing and I love vintage...

Anyway, I arrived in the U.S tired and without any clothes except the ones I was wearing. Luggage was coming later. But God chose this storm to send me the laughter that I wished for. Why couldn't he have waited until I wasn't dealing with so much? Why couldn't he wait until wearing vintage pajamas was my icing on the cake? Why did he send me laughter in a time when I could have so easily lost it in the wind and lightning?

I don't know.

Maybe he wanted to reach out to me in that moment. Maybe it was a test. Will you trust me enough to smile? But either way, gifts come at odd times. God doesn't compete with Amazon to give you what you want. I used to interpret that to mean: God'll give what he wants me to have. He isn't going to bother with all of the childish, ridiculous dreams that come into my head. I'll just have to expect practical "kingdom" gifts. And then God surprised me by giving me things that I hadn't even dared to ask him for; things that mean nothing. God gave me classy pajamas. He gave me laughter in lightning.

-Kae-