Laughter is the Best Medicine

If you’ve ever listened to Producer Sherri on The Brant Hansen Show on the radio or on one of her podcasts, you’ve no doubt noticed she has an uncanny ability to find humor in almost everything. Her infectious laugh is the signature sound of every project she’s a part of. Have you ever wondered where that delightful sense of humor came from? Here’s a little insight from an interview Sherri did with Rebie from WayNation.

“I grew up basically goofing off and being a part of a family that’s all ministry. I always say that preaching is the family business. That’s what everybody does whether a worship pastor, preacher, or youth pastor. So, I grew up feeling called, but also feeling silly. Some people made me feel like those things are polar opposites, or that laughter is the antithesis of spirituality and so the people I grew up thinking of as ‘spiritual’ were…well, I used to say they looked like they were in the middle of dying and someone pressed ‘pause.’ Like their faces were just almost corpse-like. That’s what serious was. That’s what spiritual was and that’s not who I am- never have been.”

“A happy heart is good medicine and a joyful mind causes healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.”

Proverbs 17.22 AMP

Maybe She’s Born With It

“My mom will tell stories about me being a baby and hearing me laugh in my crib and thinking there was an adult in the room. One time my babysitter sneezed and for some reason it made me laugh when I was in the crib, and she was like, ‘who was that laughing?’ And the babysitter said, ‘It was Sherri.’ And she was like, ‘there’s no way a baby laughed that hard and that loud.’ So she told the babysitter to act like she was sneezing again, and when she did I was laughing like a grown person. When people say, ‘I hate that laugh’ I’m like, ‘well, try dealing with it for all these years!’ I’ve had the exact same laugh and my head has been the exact same size my whole life, but it’s even bigger when you’re a little kid. When you don’t have any teeth, and real deep dimples, you look like a jack-o-lantern. My nickname was ‘pumpkin.’”

God is in Control

Finding humor in everyday life and even in the heartbreaking situation of our life can help keep us sane. When Sherri talks about her cousin, who fought and beat lymphoma twice, she remembers going through some of the hardest days and saying, “we’re only going to make it through it if we laugh.” 

“Laughter is one of the most faith-filled things we can do, because you’re looking at a situation, like the Red Sea, and thinking, ‘I can’t split that.’ So what do you do? I laugh, because God is the One who can do it. So He’s either going to split it, or we’re all going to drown. Either way, I can’t control it. I laugh, because He’s in control.”