The Beauty of Facebook Memories
I don’t like scrapbooking. I’ve tried several times to get into it. But all I have now are stacks of scrapbooks with only the first page completed—not to mention all those Comic Sans alphabet stickers.
For that reason, one of the greatest gifts the internet has given us is Facebook Memories. It’s that daily reminder of what I was doing one, three, seven, even 10 years ago. It’s a digital scrapbook that I don’t have to make to remember.
Recently, this post popped up in my Facebook feed. And it made me literally laugh out loud.
My husband, Reece, posted this one morning after a long night with our then one-month-old twins. We were trying to get the boys on a feeding and sleeping schedule and it was all hands on deck. As you can see, that night was one we were particularly proud of.
Why I Love This Facebook Post
I love this post for many reasons.
First of all, I love it because I think I’ve blocked out most of that first year of raising twins. So it’s fun to remember what it was like.
But I also like this post because it speaks to the way our relationship has (almost) always been. That season of life where we were parenting a five year old, a three year old, and one-month-old twins was absolutely crazy!
It felt like there was never any down time. Someone was always crying—sometimes it was the twins, sometimes it was us. It was exhausting. But what we lacked in sleep, margin, and showers, we made up for with diapers, laundry, and a sense of humor!
Finding the Humor
When I think back to that time, I don’t know how we could have survived if we hadn’t been able to find the humor in our situation.
There was the time I rubbed diaper rash cream into my eye, which led to the gross realization that I hadn’t washed my hands after that last diaper change. Or the time I thought the skin on my son’s forehead was flaking off, only to realize that his twin had spit up in his face during the night and it had dried there. Those are the times you’ve got to laugh to keep from crying.
And, of course I couldn’t forget our 10th wedding anniversary? I’d hoped we might be on a romantic getaway, but found myself nursing twin babies in a Bojangles parking lot instead. Even though I wanted to cry, we found laughing to be way more fun!
Laughter Leads to Common Ground
We’ve been through some tough times in our marriage, as I’m sure you have too. And I’ve been amazed at how the ability to laugh together has made things easier and better. Obviously, laughter can’t solve the issues themselves. But in our efforts to find the humor in our circumstances, we found common ground, as well.
As a teenager, I thought a lot about the kind of person I would marry. What I didn’t think about was having a sense of humor in marriage—it just wasn’t on my radar. Now after 17 years of marriage, I can’t imagine how different things might look if we didn’t laugh together and often.
In the book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath talk about the power of laughter. They say that laughter is more about the relationships than the humor. We laugh to tie the group together. Our laughter says, I’m with you.
In marriage, it’s not a question of if we’ll go through difficult seasons, as much as when. And when we walk through hard times together, our ability and willingness to laugh together reminds us we’re on the same team.
