A local used car dealer put signs on his autos to give potential buyers ways to picture themselves in one of his vehicles. Sporty! Convertible! Family Fun!
Wait – Family Fun?
That sign was propped on the windshield of an 8-passenger Chevy Suburban. My son thought that was the funniest thing – giving a huge SUV the title of Family Fun. Especially since his 17-year-old girlfriend was driving one.
It was easy to imagine a large family driving to a picnic, a sporting event, an amusement park, or a camping trip and having fun. So I guess the name fit.
Our family generated lots of fun from that sign, and we didn’t even need to buy the car. After seeing the sign, every time we drove past a Chevy Suburban, someone in our family would yell out, “Look! It’s Family Fun!” And we’d all laugh.
Fun is where you find it and what you make of it. My birth family was poor and we were cramped into a tiny low-income unit too small for the eight of us. But we knew how to laugh and have fun in spite of our circumstances. My brother used to say that our family put the fun in dysfunctional.
Here are a few ways to have fun:
- Develop an imagination
- Make up stories
Laugh at awkward moments. - Play games
- Remember what it was like to be a kid
- Smile a lot
- Laugh almost as much as you smile
- Learn to laugh, especially at awkward circumstances
God gave us each a family so we’d have people to love and face life with and to learn from. We can learn anger and bitterness or we can learn love and joy and have fun in the process.
And we can teach later generations anger or fun. It’s a choice.
For those of us with few left of our biological family, we can find family elsewhere. My current family consists of two sons, one daughter-in-law, two granddaughters, and my mother-in-law from my first marriage.
My church family has shared themselves and helped me through some tough times. And we’ve had lots of fun together along the way, sometimes planned, other times spontaneous.
My extended family has over a hundred people in it and I have fun with every one of them. And many of them are more than friends.
What does your family look like? Are you all related or have you formed a family with friends? Do you create fun or talk behind each other’s backs?
Remember, fun is a choice.
Choose to have fun. And be fun for someone else.
