I went into today with only one mission in mind and that was to be kind to myself. I laid in bed for a long time deciding what I really wanted to do to achieve this morning. This then brought me back to my inventory of "I wants", which is basically everything that I have been without for so long. These "things" are not real things that I could just run to the store and buy, but simpler things because I wanted to start out small. So, I decided that I wanted to laugh. Simple...yeah right. I am a horrible joke teller so that was of no help. Nothing too funny happened to me lately, still no help. Then in that moment a light bulb went off in my head.

A little background information first...

As part of making myself a better person I began a workout program with one of my close friends here in NE. The goal was to be healthier, but this has given me more than just better physical health I have realized and it now included better mental health as well. And this is why...

I remembered back to a class that we took on Wednesday of this week which was a Body Pump class. This class is a high intensity weight lifting/cardio workout which includes using variations of movements and weights throughout the workout to build muscle. This class is taught by a very small oriental woman that really gets into the workouts. On this night she went into great detail to explain what muscles we were working on and where they were located and such. So, we get to the arms portion of the workout and she flexes her arm to demonstrate what this muscle was and how the proper exercised one should look like. Kathy and I, very confident that we had it, too, both flexed like she did only to find out we were broken because ours definitely didn't look like hers. We quickly quit trying to find this lost muscle and picked up our weights without saying anything more, even to each other. I pretended not to see her looking for hers though.

Still in bed, I called up Kathy and started talking about that class and admitted to her that I couldn't find that muscle the instructor was talking about. She confessed that she couldn't find hers either. Finally, something funny to laugh about! This continued on for quite sometime as we inventoried ALL of the muscles that had disappeared over time on our bodies and couldn't see anymore. Still laughing.

So, in being kind to myself, I learned to laugh at myself. As simple as it was it was powerful. This set the tone for my whole day and I continued finding the humor in everything that I faced. A conversation that I had with my youngest son about my makeover, my grandson's silly little faces he was making, my throbbing toe, and most importantly... ME. I laughed the whole day and I felt good knowing I had the confidence to do it out loud. I felt surrounded in a warmth that I haven't felt before. Maybe it was HIM shining his ever powerful light upon me to let me know he could hear me, maybe it was simply the sun, maybe it was just all the hot air I was letting out in my laughter. It felt wonderful whatever it was and am thankful today for that lesson to myself.