Karen OConnor - Laughing All the Way: Wit, Wisdom, and Willpower for the Golden Years

Karen OConnor has authored many magazine articles and more than 70 books, including Walkin with God Aint for Wimps and Gettin Old Aint for Wimps (more than 300,000 copies sold). Her numerous awards include the Paul A. Witty Award for short story writing and the 2002 Special Recognition Award at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference.

Karen inspires her readers with hope, help, and plenty of humor, encouraging them to:

experience and express more joy and gratitude

achieve greater intimacy with God, self, and others

polish communication and leadership skills

Karen speaks at schools, churches, and community organizations, and she has been a guest on national radio and television programs, including Faith at Work, Coast-to-Coast, Lifestyle Magazine, and The 700 Club.

Karen loves to connect with her readers. Find out more about her at www.karenoconnor.com.

If you enjoyed reading Laughing All the Way, youll also get a kick out of

If youre thirsty for a good chuckle, drink up! Stay forever young with these whimsical, slice-of-senior-life stories from bestselling humorist Karen O Connor. These amusing anecdotes on aging celebrate the hilarious highs and laugh-out-loud lows that can only come from decades of experience. Maybe youll see a little bit of yourself as you encounter

medication mix-ups

code cracking chaos

diet dos-and-donts

vexing vocabulary

wardrobe worries

Along with all the fun comes a fresh dose of inspiration from Scripture and a short prayer to help you reflect on the things that truly matterfaith, family, and friendship.

Kick back, relax, and enjoy this heartfelt collection of golden years glimpses that are sure to bring a smile to your face.

With humor and wisdom, speaker and author Karen OConnor urges fellow baby boomers to celebrate every moment. Personal and gathered stories capture the trials and joys faced when one survives and surpasses middle-age.

OConnors delightful storytelling resounds in these short vignettes based on real life. Youll chuckle as you read these funny, heartwarming experiences and then share them with your friends. Each humorous tale concludes with a biblical principle to encourage you in your spiritual walk and an uplifting prayer.

Whats so humorous about aging? Some older folks might respond, Not much. And then they launch into their list of aches and pains, valid as they might be. On the other hand, there is plenty to chuckle aboutmisplacing our glasses, or hearing aids, or cell phones, for examplebecause when we get right down to it, life can be funny at any age. We just need to be willing to look for the sweet surprises, little jokes, and unexpected oopsies that make us laugh out loud.

Martin Luther, father of the Reformation movement and a theologian, made no bones about the funny side of life. If Im not allowed to laugh in heaven, then I dont want to go there, he said. American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr went so far as to say, Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer. I love that one! A prelude to faith and the beginning of prayer. What a beautiful perspective. With that thought in mind we need never be worried or embarrassed to smile at life and even laugh about it. When the elders of Charles Spurgeons church asked him to tone down his humor in the pulpit, the famous minister was quick to respond: Gentlemen, if you only knew how much I held back!

Im thinking life would be pretty challenging if we didnt stop and let out a good belly laugh once in a whileeven several times a day. Many great preachers and writers knew this and practiced it in their own lives despite the sadness and evil in the world around them.

Oh, Lord! Here Comes Another Senior Moment

When I tumbled into my sixties, all of a sudden there they werethose dreaded senior moments Id noticed in my parents and relatives when they became seniors. Lost keys, unpaid bills, missed medical appointments, and a pair of socks on my husbands workbench instead of in his dresser drawer. I could join in with others and hope theyd laugh with meeven though sometimes I was too embarrassed to admit my mishaps.

I decided to step out instead of hiding outand write about them. So I wrote a book for people like methe over-fifty crowd, hoping they would enjoy a good laugh and a sigh of relief that they were not alone. A few years after Harvest House published my book Gettin Old Aint for Wimps , I received a note from a loyal reader letting me know that my funny stories and Bible quotes were the focus of that years womens Bible study in her church. What a surprise! Did she really want to pass off my book as a serious Scripture study?

The ladies and I read one story a week and have a good laugh over our morning coffee and pastry, she said. Later they read the Bible verse included and talked about how it applies to their lives. Its the best Bible study weve ever done.

What a joy to find out that a book Id intended for entertainment and a brief spiritual moment became a source of spiritual nourishment for a group of senior women like me.

I was happy that others agreed that we all need a dose of laughter and joy on a daily basis. As seniors, we can choose to focus on the hurts and disappointments, or we can turn the lens of perspective and see them as opportunities to trust God, share encouraging words with others, and resolve problems while at the same time looking for the new lessons we can discover. God reminds us in John 10:10: I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Oh, NoNot That!

Guess what? The expression on my husbands face as he stood in the doorway alerted me that something was wrong. I washed my pants with my wallet still in the back pocket, he said, his face wrinkled with shame. He held up his soggy billfold and its contents, drops of water hitting the floor. How could he be so absentminded? But then we burst out laughing. Yep! This man was up to no good. He pleaded guilty to laundering our money!

Hmmm! A perfect anecdote for one of my books, I decided. After that, we agreed that Charles would supply the senior moments, Id do the writing, and wed share the income. Perfection.

Life and Laughter

You dont have to be a stand-up comedian to entertain your friends and yourself and generate good belly laughs. When my sister died last year, I offered to deliver one of the eulogies for our family. I knew it would be a somber occasion, and I didnt want to add to the sadness. I tucked in a few funny experiences about our relationship to bring smiles to those who had come to honor her life and memory.

June and I shared many thingsfriendship, paper dolls, board games and measles, mumps, chicken pox, and scarlet fever. These were small details, but they caught people by surprise, and they roared with laughter. I added a few more humorous episodes and then closed with a beautiful quote from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis, an author my sister and I admired and respected.

One of the things Ive learned as a writer of humor and inspiration is that blending the two makes each a little sweeter and certainly appeals to us because it sounds more human.