Inspirational humorist, Patricia Lorenz is a writer and speaker who entertains an audience and packs a wallop with her take-away messages. Readers of her thirteen original books and many contributions to the Chicken Soup series enjoy her unique perspective on life, love, and laughter.
She writes in a book of quotes “I always tell my writing students, ‘In order to be a good writer, you must unzip your soul and expose your foibles.”
I realize that the moments I have been most touched by others – whether in a sermon or a testimony or a book – have been those moments when I have been given a glimpse into the souls of people by their willingness to reveal the innermost parts of who they are. It is there, in that innermost place, that we are most connected to God and to one another. The superficial, false self is stripped away and we see one another at our most real. It is often cloaked in humor, a gentle way of veiling the nakedness of our real selves because of how vulnerable it is to be so exposed. We generally recognize, too, that the humor in a situation arises because of how universally recognized and understood such vulnerable postures are.
Eight years ago this week a lot of people were commenting on Chonda Pierce’s loss of her husband to a hemorrhagic cerebral stroke. Chonda is one of those sweet humorists who has given us glimpses of her soul…one that was wounded and broken….but which Christ made beautiful and appealing. Thoughts and prayers were poured out to her and her family in their grief… I expressed confidence at the time that she would give us glimpses into even this part of her life through her ability to connect with what is real in all of us.
She did, in fact, eventually write about her experience of that season in her life, giving us her unique gift of seeing the laughter in the absurd pains of life once again …. unzipping her soul and connecting with a deep place many find hard to face and even harder to share.
It’s been said that it is the universal recognition of fundamental life truths at work in the midst of difficult circumstances that make humor so broadly appealing snd lasting. Chords hits the mark on the truth.