Sometimes You Need to Be Laughed At

I want to tell you the story of how I found myself racing a six-year-old in the pool.

There were too many people at the YMCA that day. Most of the swimming lanes were two to three people deep with the exception of the swim lane that was filled with six rowdy teenagers. Next to the teenagers, I spied one lane that was being vacated. I slipped into the water. But I had not gone one length before a father and his young daughter joined my lane and ended my bliss. They both had flippers on. “Ugh — they probably aren’t here to do any serious swimming,” I muttered to myself.

I grudgingly pushed off only to have the man in the next lane keep reaching past the buoy lane marker with every stroke and hitting me with his arm. I pushed past him only to be stopped by one of the rowdy wrestling teenagers who had been dumped into my lane by his friends. My anger could have boiled the pool.

For most of the year, swimming is meditative for me. It helps me clear my mind. No one needs anything from me at the pool. No one touches me or asks me questions. The buoy markers draw clean and distinct barriers between me and other people. I can stretch my arms and legs wide in my own lane. And this day, I had come to the pool to hide. When my inner world feels loud, my knee-jerk reaction is to withdraw and hide away. I don’t like admitting it, but left to my own devices I would probably end up like Scrooge, as solitary as an oyster.

But summer swimming isn’t like that. Summer swimming is people-y, and I was grumpy and inconvenienced by their presence.

Halfway through my fourth length, I heard a laugh next to me. I looked up to find the six-year-old girl with flippers on, swimming as hard as she could, laughing to get my attention. She wanted to race. At first, I was impeded by my annoyance with all the people. She persisted in her laughter, and I obliged and raced her to the wall. I mustered a smile and thought that was that.

But then, as I pushed off from the wall, there she was swimming next to me again, flipping her flippers, watching and laughing. For the next twenty lengths, she wouldn’t let me shake her. Each length she was there, trying to beat me and laughing at my trying to keep up to her. I showed her my swimming paddles, and she asked me if I was going to go to the Olympics. I tried to explain that 42 was maybe too old to go to the Olympics. I couldn’t help but giggle to myself at the thought. Slowly, I forgot about my annoyance.

It was her goading me on and laughter that pulled me from my isolationism. Other adults would have commiserated with me. “People are just the worst!” I would have heard them say. What I needed was to be laughed at. It forced me to stop taking myself or my swimming so seriously. It was an unexpected grace when I was certainly undeserving.

I worry about our world — the one where we don’t value children. I have heard people say that having children is bad for the environment or that having more than two children is being irresponsible. Our culture has calculated just how much children will cost us, as if they are commodities, as if economics should be a factor we consider in relationships. We look at children and ask, “What am I getting out of this?” And some days the answer is heartache and exhaustion.

This isn’t going to turn into a rant about how children are perfect little angels without fault. I am a mom to three and spent several decades working with kids in many settings. I have a pretty realistic view about kids. And this isn’t an article to say how many kids you should or shouldn’t have.

I just want to say this — children are a blessing. And that blessing doesn’t look like we expect. Sometimes it looks like being laughed at.

I mistakenly thought that when God said children are a blessing, it would mean that it would be easy or that I would love every single moment of being a parent. After all, isn’t that what blessing means? Isn’t it about comfort?

Having children has broken me in so many ways — physically, mentally, and emotionally. My children have ground away at my selfishness and greed, my independence and my hiding. They have forced my heart to soften and taught me to love purely by their existence in my life. It is brokenness and humility that are blessings in the Kingdom of God. Jesus was the perfect example of a blessed life, and he was crucified. But he also somehow did it “for the joy set before him” (Heb 12:2). Blessings don’t always make us happy. They are rarely about comfort, but they are about joy.

Children are a blessing because they laugh at us. When we are taking things too seriously, when our tendency is to move towards isolationism and withdraw, when all we want to think about is ourselves and our comfort — children force us not to. They do this simply by existing.

When our adult friends are affirming our desire to hate everything around us — children will laugh at us. They see right through our self-importance and force humility upon us.

And even if they didn’t do anything — children are a blessing because they are humans. Not subhumans but creatures created by God with dignity and value. They bear his image just as you and I do. I can’t stress enough the need for Christians to reclaim the fundamental truth that humans are image bearers. Every single one.

I had gone to the pool to get a break from my kids and found myself sharing a lane with a six-year-old. God can be a bit cheeky at times. As I finished up my lengths and left the pool, I felt this prayer rising within me, “God, show me how my children are a blessing to me, because I don’t always see it.” More often than not, I am looking for blessing that isn’t really blessing, and I need God’s help to see the world with his Kingdom eyes. Sometimes blessing doesn’t feel anything like comfort. Most times it feels like being laughed at.