Sometimes a book sticks with you your whole life. By the time I was a teenager I had read nearly all of Janette Oke’s Christian fiction novels. Over and over again.

And my mom got me into it with one book. Once Upon a Summer.

It’s about a boy named Josh who is incredibly ordinary. But it’s stinkin’ hilarious and very whimsical. Mom used to read to us at the supper table. We’d finish our tuna casserole or chicken and rice and sit talking as a family, and she’d pull out a book and read. In spite of our large family around the table, the only sounds you could hear besides her voice were the ceiling fan humming and a fly or two buzzing at the screen window as we listened to her.

It sticks with me because sometimes Mom would read ahead a paragraph or two as she paused to take a drink and she would start laughing – sometimes so hard she couldn’t read – and we’d all clamor, “What? What? Read it!” She’d finally catch her breath and read on, making us all laugh with her.

Growing up I read like a sponge – everything I could get my hands on, every spare moment of the day. Most of my 8 siblings did. We used to sit on the front porch of our Kansas farmhouse and snap beans together and I’d prop a book like Old-Fashioned Girl up in front of me and read aloud. That one made us laugh a lot, too.

Mom instilled in us a love for fun and for making memories. She always quoted Scriptures, too. One that I remember her often saying is, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” She tackled our long days and grumpy hearts with God’s words, knowing they had power to change us.

So thankful to be able to look back and remember the medicine of laughing together as a family. What joyful memories still make you smile?

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