Magical Laughter

I was in the shower yesterday when I heard peals of laughter coming from both of my boys in the next room. It is a magical sound that I hear often in our house, but every time I stop and just listen. This sound makes my heart swell to the point that I think it must have stopped beating, and just might explode.

Max's laughter is a sound worth living for... It is a joyous, uninhibited laughter that comes straight from his soul and spreads light into the world. A child's laughter is pure joy. They do not yet have the knocks of life to weigh on them and creep into their happiness. Children have the pleasure of a limited understanding of time; they don't think to worry about the past or the future. Their joy is magic because all they know is to enjoy this moment, now, as it is. It's a lesson we, as adults, need to relearn.

But Clint's uninhibited, head-thrown-back laughter is what really tugs on my heart. It was not very long ago that I was unsure I would ever again hear the raucous laugh that I fell in love with many years ago, as I heard it echo across the grounds of summer camp (when we were, ourselves, children). More than most people, Clint is weighed down by the burdens of life. He has been through depressions so deep that it is a struggle just to make it through this day and into the next-let alone to notice or see the beauty or joy in life. I have been through those times with him-and we have made it through, barely. To be in a place right now, despite everything of the past 2 years, where he can laugh, is nothing short of a miracle to me. Max's laughter is the magic that makes life worth living-and laughing.