My yoga instructor has taught me a lot about the healing power of a good belly laugh. When we are anxious or fearful, our abdominal muscles constrict, our lungs feel congested, and our breathing becomes more and more shallow — all of which, of course, raises our anxiety even higher. A belly laugh reverses all this. In a belly laugh, our breath deepens, tense abdominal muscles relax, and congestion gives way to contentment. Breathing deeply connects us to our core, centering and calming our conflicted spirits as we laugh.

Pondering the theme of suffering introduced in this month’s Bible study, I was drawn to a dusty notebook that had been untouched for some 20 years — the journal where I recorded my memories of my mother’s dying years. Feeling my breath grow short and my abdominal muscles tense, I opened the notebook and began to read.

What I discovered surprised me greatly. I expected to re–live suffocating memories of suffering. Instead, I received a gift: a breathtaking witness to the healing power of the belly laugh of faith even in the midst of unrelieved suffering.

Letting go of the pre-set answers
In 1982 my mother, Bette, was diagnosed with third–stage ovarian cancer. The cancer had spread and the surgeons were unable to remove much of it, making her prognosis extremely poor. A woman of steely reserve, my mother listened quietly to visitors who tried to make sense of her suffering by connecting it somehow to God’s gracious will. "Your cancer is part of God’s good plan for you." "Be strong — God is using this to test your faith." "God never gives us more than we can bear — what a testimony to how strong your faith is!" Breathing laboriously through the tube that fed extra oxygen to her, my mother responded by smiling and thanking the visitors for coming.

Her calm exterior, however, belied her growing anger at what she considered pre-set answers that gave the comforters a way to stifle their own long–buried questions and fears by holding their breath against them. It was a technique she herself had mastered in the past. Now, however, she was ready to let out her breath and see where the journey would lead her.

A life-long Bible reader, my mother had been taught that as the inspired word of God, the Bible has answers for every question in life — a sort of "driver’s manual for the soul." Repeatedly warned that challenging even one answer would lead her down the slippery slope to unbelief, she had always stifled the questions she really wanted to ask. Now, driven by the need for spiritual breath sufficient to sustain her in her struggle, she breathed into all those questions by saying them aloud and bringing them to her daily Bible reading.

No longer constricted by preset answers, my mother discovered in a new way the witness of biblical ancestors breathing into their own fearful questions, faithful folk gasping in psalms and laments for breath sufficient to sustain them in their struggles. From them she gained freedom to let God know how she really felt, to join the psalmist in "flooding her bed with tears" (Psalm 6:6). She learned to distance herself from those whose insistence on clear-cut answers stifled any fresh air that opening up the questions might stir. She learned to ask for what she needed from trusted co–travelers on the journey.

Drawn with the saints before her to the cross and Jesus’ dying gasp, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" my mother experienced in a new way the rest of the story, the breath–taking breaking news: "He is not here, he is risen."

Breathing deeply into her questions all the way to the cross and empty tomb centered and calmed her spirit, expanding her spiritual airways to hear and participate in a new way in the joyous belly laugh of faith. Once she stopped holding her breath against the questions she wanted to ask, she was able to laugh in a way she never had been able to before.

Traveling into the questions
After two years of two years of declining health, my mother asked me to come home to accompany her on what we both knew would be her final journey to the hospital. Her abdomen so distended that she could barely breathe, she spent her last hours at home sharing how laughing the belly laugh of faith had expanded her horizons in what for her were breath–taking ways.

Having grown up when Lutherans and Roman Catholics were taught to regard each other’s faith traditions as simply wrong, my mother was delightfully surprised that the two friends most willing to travel with her into her questions were Roman Catholics, Hilda and Helen. Both had lost sons to cancer. Having lived their own questions, they allowed my mother the freedom to breathe into hers. Neither offered answers; both were willing to sit patiently with her and allow her to journey at her own pace. Their company expanded my mother’s horizons, convincing her that many of the differences that are so often used to divide us are in reality gifts intended to be shared with one another.

Laughing the belly laugh of faith also expanded my mother’s openness to change within her own tradition. Veteran of many battles over how things should be done in the church, she was surprised to discover that breathing into her own questions freed her to let go of the need to say "but we’ve always done it this way. "Sensing that the next generation’s world would be far different from hers, she was persuaded that holding onto old ways after their time has passed constricts the breath rather than deepens it. With her expanded vision, she became convinced that the journey we share is too precious to squander in dividing ourselves simply for the sake of avoiding change. The belly laugh of faith frees us to hold on to what is really necessary and to let go of the rest.

Finding the space to breathe
After reflecting on what she had learned on her journey, it was time for my mother’s final trip to the hospital. Before leaving the house, she stood before her family pictures, smiling and saying good–bye, picture by picture, to her children, her daughter–in–law, and the young grandsons who were the joy of her heart. Then, after a quiet good-bye to the house itself, she got into the car and drove away without looking back.

By this time her body was so congested and constricted that her breathing was dangerously shallow. Her spirit, however, was calm and centered. Breathing into the questions she had feared to ask for so long had opened space for the Spirit’s breath to enliven her in new and surprising ways. Relaxed and confident in her core, she would die a woman at peace.

My final conversations with my mother took place in her hospital room. Her world had narrowed to that room and the oxygen tube that helped her breathe. As she reminisced about all she had experienced in the last few years, she began to chuckle.

"So many funny things have happened," she said. "Write about them someday. Tell about all the funny things." By "funny" she did not mean "entertaining" or "amusing." She was talking about the unexpected eruptions of the belly laugh of faith that had given her courage and confidence on a journey she had never imagined or wanted to take. By witnessing to the breath–taking power of that laugh, she wanted to invite others traveling at different paces to different places in their journeys to breathe deeply into their questions in hope rather than holding their breath in fear. My mother came to believe that the preciousness of the journey we are privileged to share is far more important than the differences that divide us. She wanted to tell how her mind had changed about what life in community with one another is all about.

The belly laugh of faith
We buried my mother next to my father just before Holy Week in 1985. One of her last requests had been that in lieu of a household auction, we would ask her friend Claudia to distribute the furnishings to any of the town’s residents who could use them. Despite the many differences separating them, my mother and Claudia had forged a deep friendship as co–travelers on divergent paths through different kinds of suffering. Asked to meet my sister–in–law at the house on Easter Sunday afternoon, Claudia arrived expecting a cake pan as a memento. She departed with much, much more.

As the women loaded the pickup truck, they told each other "Bette stories" and in the re-telling began laughing together the belly laugh of faith. By evening, the distribution was complete. The packing that had begun in mourning ended in Easter celebration. It was a  fitting conclusion to the years my parents had lived as co–travelers with people both very similar to and different from them in that little town on the prairie.

Life has not gotten any simpler in the 20 years since my mother died. If anything, it seems more precarious than ever. Terrorist threats, rising prices, declining health–care coverage — the fear–factor barometer continues to rise, constricting our breath, threatening to elevate our anxiety to full alert. In times like these, we are tempted to hold our breath against our fears and dismiss those whose breathing pattern challenges ours.

The (breath) blessing of the Spirit
The Bible study we begin this month offers a wonderful opportunity to let go of the breath we’re tempted to hold so tightly and to be open to where the journey will lead. Drawn to the cross and empty tomb by the witness of our biblical ancestors breathing into their questions, we will be invited to breathe into ours. We can trust that the inbreathing Holy Spirit will enliven us in new and surprising ways.

As I close the notebook recording my memories of my mother’s dying years, I visualize the sun setting across the vast prairie expanse on the Easter after her death. In many ways, her little town with its mixture of people and furniture so similar to and so different from one another is an image of the communities in which we live. I imagine the Spirit of God breathing a blessing on her town and on all of the communities through which we travel on our ways.

The blessing of the Spirit provides the oxygen we need to open our spiritual airways, expand our horizons, center and calm our hearts, and connect us to our own core and to one another. Breathe in. Breathe deeply. Be open. You never know when you will relax in an unexpected eruption of the belly laugh of faith!

Gwen Sayler is professor of Hebrew Bible at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. The town of which she writes is Underwood, N.D.