The Power of Story When We Remember to Laugh

Rediscovering the "best medicine"

Oct 01, 2025

They say you are only five people away from meeting anyone in the world. I don’t know if that is really true or not, but there are times when God seems to intersect paths in a way that makes our big world feel just a little bit smaller. Meeting TV and film writer, Bob Smiley, has been one of those connections for me. A California native myself, it is funny how now that I live 2,500 miles away, and no longer work in the performing arts industry, I would connect with a screenwriter from Los Angeles.

While I was drawn to Bob because of his fascinating work as a comedic writer and his experiences as a believer in an often-challenging industry, it was the untold story of his own journey that touched and encouraged me in a way I had not expected. Yet, it is SO very needed when any of us encounters challenges. To be completely honest, if there was ever a time when our society needed a healthy dose of “the best medicine” (laughter), it is now.

We do have a choice when we face hardships. And perhaps the best choice all of us can make, no matter what we are encountering, is to remember to laugh.

*** Sidenote: It was SUPER fun to tell my daughter I was featuring the writer from Puppy Dog Pals here on Just One More Chapter (one of her favorite shows when she was younger)! Thanks again, Bob for all the sweet little girl giggles and fun memories!

THE POWER OF STORY WHEN WE REMEMBER TO LAUGH - BOB SMILEY

My wife Hillary was five weeks into hospital bedrest. The best OBs at UCLA were doing everything they could to keep our third child from being born dangerously early. It was clear that something was abnormal about this pregnancy, but after various tests, experts were no closer to knowing for sure what that was.

Then, at 3am, the door to our dark room swung open, and a doctor we’d never seen flipped on all the lights, waking us with a jolt. “All righty,” he said, “How’s the catheter feeling?”

“I… don’t have one,” my wife answered.

“Oh. Great! And how’s the breastfeeding coming?”

Hillary looked to me as a sanity check. “Breastfeeding?”

The doctor scanned the room, a little more confused now. “Have they not brought the baby back yet?”

Without a word, my wife pulled back her bedsheet to reveal her inflated, 34-week belly.

The doctor looked down at his chart and then, with a growing degree of horror, “Mrs. Davenport?”

“No,” Hillary said.

He flipped out the lights and was gone. And then we laughed until we cried.

The absurd interruption was exactly what we needed to cut through our fear and anxiety. And a little more laughter may be exactly what you need too.

You would think that I of all people would never need to be reminded about the enduring power of laughter. For the last twenty years, I have been a professional comedy writer in Hollywood. I have written on kids shows (Puppy Dog Pals, The Haunted Hathaways) and I have written on grown-up shows (Atypical). I have even written books (Don’t Mess with Travis, Follow the Roar). Recently I started writing short stories right here on Substack. The throughline to my work, to quote from the timeless 1952 musical Singin’ In the Rain, “make ’em laugh.”

Unfortunately, in life there will be suffering. And I haven’t avoided it any better than anyone else. In June of 2009, my son Luke was born at thirty-five weeks with a unique form of a rare syndrome, missing the part of his brain that connects his right and left hemispheres. In October of 2012, one of my former bosses and mentors took his own life. In March of 2020, just as the world was shutting down, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma cancer. That doesn’t even count the financial ups and downs in a career where the next job is never promised.

Who’s laughing now?

Despite lots of tears, I still am. And you should be too.

Why?

For one, your body chemistry craves laughter. Under clinical studies, it has been shown to release endorphins which reduces pain, dopamine which increases pleasure, serotonin which eliminates anxiety, and oxytocin which bonds you to those around you. I don’t see a negative side effect in the bunch.

And if this is true, it’s not a big mental leap to conclude that God must have a sense of humor too. This can be a hard pill to swallow for some Christians. I distinctly remember being shown The Jesus Film when I was in college and asking big questions about my faith. In between the familiar stories I recognized from my youth--Jesus calming the storm, Jesus healing the sick--there was a scene where Jesus is walking with his disciples and one of them says something we can’t hear… and Jesus laughs.

Hold up, I thought. Jesus laughed?

Of course he did. He was fully human, wasn’t he?

Sadly, many of us grew up in a strict Christian culture that put the strictest of boundaries on what could be deemed “funny.” Certain topics and settings were simply off limits. To illustrate the point, a few weeks into my first job in a network TV sitcom room, my bosses noticed a “W.W.J.D.” bracelet on my wrist and panicked, sure they had made countless inappropriate jokes that had deeply offended my pure sensibilities. Would I have made all the same jokes they had made? No. Was I offended? Not at all. The truth is that when we allow ourselves to see humor in all aspects of this broken, ridiculous world, we are more easily able to navigate around it.

But seriousness isn’t just a Christian problem. Lately, the “everything is horrible” mentality perfected by judgy Christians has spread to our secular culture. Many friends who used to be lighthearted have wrapped themselves in a suffocating blanket of narcissistic misery. And in exchange, every societal metric shows never-before-seen levels of loneliness, depression, and suicide. That is not a trade-off I am willing to accept.

All of which means that remembering how to laugh--and encouraging others to do the same--is more than just a beneficial idea. It is a holy pursuit.

Best of all, you can start right now by asking God two simple questions:

“What am I taking too seriously that I need to laugh about?”
“Who can I bring some joy to today?”

Then, most importantly, BE QUIET AND LISTEN. If you sense God is impressing something on you, WRITE IT DOWN.

Remember, no matter how dire your situation may seem from your perspective, God is not worried about it. My son with special needs is now 16. Luke has various challenges but we wouldn’t trade him for a typical kid. In fact, he has been a blessing in ways we never could have orchestrated.

That probably explains why my wife’s favorite Bible verse is 2 Corinthians 12:9. “My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness.” Let me translate what God is promising in a way that may hit you harder:

“Hey, kid. I’ve got you.”

Will horrible things still happen? Yes. But everything is not horrible.

We have hope. We have eternity. And He’s got you. So go out there and do the most radical thing possible: laugh.

And if you don’t know where to start, maybe give one of my new stories a read. I pray it will put a smile on your face.

When was the last time you laughed? Have you somehow replaced lightheartedness with seriousness? If so, how can you “turn that frown upside down” today? Or even better, make someone laugh?

OTHER UPDATES FROM MEGAN

François The Dashing Croaker remains available for purchase on Amazon. Stay tuned as the second book in the series, The Frogfather will be releasing this fall!