What Do the Simple Folk Do?

Remember the musical Camelot? In one melancholy scene, King Arthur and Queen Guenevere are fighting a case of the blues, and they ask each other (in song of course!):

What do the simple folk do?

To help them escape when they're blue?

The shepherd who is ailing, the milkmaid who is glum,

The cobbler who is wailing from nailing his thumb?

When they're beset and besieged

The folk not nobly obliged

However do they manage to shed their weary lot?

Oh, what do simple folk do, we do not?

Arthur and Gwen try "simple folk" remedies, such as singing, and dancing, and whistling.

David and I have been wrestling with a bit of the blues, so we, too, looked for ways to "shed our weary lot." Shed it, we have!

Here are a few remedies that worked for us. Feel free to try them, should you be a "shepherd who is ailing" or a "milkmaid who is glum."

1. Take the kids out to lunch at a sit-down restaurant. Let them order fancy drinks. Try something you've never had before. Eat with chopsticks. And leave a big tip.


2. Watch a family movie. Quote the funniest lines over dinner. Quote the lines in the car. Quote the lines at family prayer. Laugh every time.


3. Learn a new game and play it.


4. Make video recordings of your cat.


5. Buy new hair conditioner...the GOOD stuff...and use it lavishly.


6. Go to church and worship. Go home and worship. Sing in the car. Pray in the shower. Memorize scripture, and say it aloud. Say it again. And again.


7. Take a walk at sunrise through amber waves of grain. Breathe deeply.


8. Lie on a blanket in your yard and read a book. Read two, if you want.


9. Tell your favorite family stories--the ones everyone knows, but loves to hear over and over again. We love to tell our boys all about their births. And for some reason, they love hearing these stories. They join in the telling as if they remember the event themselves.


10. Dance to Nat King Cole with the love of your life, even if you don't feel romantic at the time. Cry if you must, laugh if you can, love, no matter what.
    

Yes, we are better. We are smiling and hopeful and excited to see how God will move next. We sense that God is smiling, too.

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