night of laughter

Snuggled up with my Bible, pen and notebook . . . . my pen was flying with my thoughts. Everyone else was in bed. Or so I thought.


I heard the creaking of the stairs and tried to adjust my eyes away from my light to make out the figure in the kitchen. It was my eldest son, Zeke. "What's wrong bud?" I whispered out. He came moaning to my place in the family room. "I had a bad dream mom and I woke up cold and then Simon started crying." After a brief moment imploring to the nature of this dream the terrible tale came spilling out. The mail man had run over the scissors! A chuckled escaped before I could catch it but I didn't want my cold and half asleep son to think that I was mocking him so I asked simply, "Were you the scissors?" At this, he had to chuckle and admit the whole horror to be a tad bit silly. We prayed for good rest for him and that I would be able to get the baby brother in his room back to sleep peacefully, then we began walking the steps to his room.


A few sparks, coughs and sputters happened as we were mid-stairway and the power went out. "Ewe!" I exclaimed to Zeke. "The power is out bud. Good thing God gave us the moon." We used our natural night light to make our way to his bedroom. Once in his bed he shivered some more. "I'm just scared mom" he continued. "Ah Zeke. Look out at that vast sky," I said, motioning out his window. "God made that moon and sky and all of those trees. His hand is not too short to reach you. There is nothing that our God can't do." He was completely satisfied, so I covered up the sleepy baby in the crib and walked out to hearing Zeke call out, "Love you."


I climbed into bed, shivering, telling Luke to cuddle on down because the power was out. We enjoyed a few chuckles, watching our neighbor with his spot light and then I heard the cries. It sounded like it was coming from the girls' room. Once I reached them I heard the complaints of the lacking night lights. I opened their window curtains. "There, God gave us the moon for light in the night." They all sighed in relief and snuggled back down. "I like you, mommy" Eden said.


And so with everyone happy upstairs, I again went down to cozy in for the night.


For about five seconds.


The smoke alarm at the highest point in our home was unhappy about the power outage and letting its voice heard! I jumped up, planning to push the button to silence the thing with a broom handle, until I remembered that the broom handle had snapped in two last week. My husband came to my rescue with a tall bar stool and reaching up, took the thing down and commanded that it be thrown away! :) I took the battery out, placed it on the counter and went back to bed.


For a few seconds.


Then came the annoying, but much less loud, beep of the smoke detector who didn't like being down from his home with his battery out. "How does this thing even beep without power or it's battery??" I exclaimed. "There's a small back up battery" Luke explained. "Try putting it in the fridge where we won't hear it." I opened the fridge, which was of course pitch black, and tried to find a spot. That really shouldn't be hard, except we just got over the stomach flu so all the food had been accumulating from lack of appetites and was full to the brim."


Back in bed the wild spasms of laughter began. The addition of it all was too much for my delirious body. The mail man running over the scissors, the girls and their sweetness, my husband standing on a bar stool at mid night taking down smoke detectors, and now the thing being in the fridge. Luke knows better than to ask me what is funny when this happens. It doesn't happen too often. But sometimes my whole body is just shaking in laughter.


It reminds me a bit of my childhood. Or should I say my teen years. That's when I remember it the best. Things that should have annoyed my mom sometimes just made her die laughing. We did a lot of laughing. And it was sweet.