Me: “Sing? Did you say sing? How could you say that at a time like this? How completely insensitive to my feelings can you be?” 

Mom: “Oh, honey, you know the devil hates a song. Sing a hymn with me! How about your favorite hymn? Let’s sing that.”

Me (to myself): “So she wants a song, does she? I’ll give her a song. Let’s see how she likes that old drinking song . . .”—and I started to sing one. 

But something I should have remembered about my mom was that she had a wonderful sense of humor. At this point, Mom started to laugh. As a matter of fact, she had to pull over and stop the car until she could see again, because she was laughing so hard! Her laughter looked so completely ridiculous that it finally got to me, and I started laughing, too. This continued until a sense of peace filled with happiness settled over both of us. 

Then from Mom came the “I told you so,” which started another bout of raucous laughter. “OK, OK,” I said, “I get it!” So we sang a hymn from the Christian Science Hymnal that begins, “In heavenly Love abiding” (Anna L. Waring, No. 148). What’s more, I did get it—as a senior in high school—more than I could have imagined.   

I was lifted out of a very intense sense of hopelessness and could see a clear path out of recurring depression. 

That experience was like a prayer. It so completely altered my thoughts and perspectives about my situation that I felt the presence of harmony. That day, I was lifted out of a very intense sense of hopelessness and could see a clear path out of recurring depression. Humor had broken the spell of gloom, and singing a hymn had raised me up to a more prayerful state of thought, where I was ready to entertain the presence of divine Love. I recognized the ever-presence of spiritual harmony right where despair had threatened. 

So it was true what Mom had been telling me about the unquenchable joy that God is always providing. God was imparting it, and from then on I knew that I could consent to it—and express it.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, put it this way: “This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man—governed by God, his perfect Principle—is sinless and eternal” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 304).

I love the thought that sorrow is not the master of joy! I wondered how real those dark thoughts could have been if they could vanish into thin air like that. I was struck by their vanishing act, and found in their place a profound sense of peace—which I’ve learned is always there. Going forward, I would not be so easily fooled by defeatism. I will not say that I have had no bouts with negativity since that time. However, the knowledge of how easily the spell of that dark thinking had been broken has kept me from slipping into and being overcome by apathy, indifference, gloominess, cynicism, despair, world-weariness, and pessimism. And at that time, and going forward, I did not give in to depressing thoughts as I had been doing.

Joy and its attendant humor can play a vital role in healing, no matter how fierce the darkness may seem. A ready sense of levity can break through mental darkness and light up the atmosphere of thought so that we can see and feel the good already present.

Once when she was a toddler, one of my children burned her hand. I immediately lifted my heart in prayer as she ran off crying. I ran after her to comfort her and make sure she was OK, while endeavoring to see her as spiritual, and therefore invulnerable to hurt or suffering of any kind. 

However, I was concerned and was finding it hard to pray. I tried to give all of my thought to God and let His harmony, not mine, reign in us. I reached out to her in her room to reassure her that God was a very present help and would not allow her to suffer. She turned to me with a quick look of disapproval and said emphatically, “I know that!” She wasn’t rejecting what I had said but merely being firm with me. 

Joy and its attendant humor can play a vital role in healing, no matter how fierce the darkness may seem. 

She had experienced healing before and had felt God’s love mightily in her tiny life! She had recently been healed of painful warts covering the soles of her feet, and had had a quick healing of a fever by trusting in God’s love for her. In those cases, she had begun to grasp more clearly Jesus’ Beatitudes, which she had studied in Sunday School. In this case, I felt that she was demanding that I show my trust in God, too. She meant what she had said, and I could see that as a spiritual idea of God, of course she knew divine Love—she was the expression of it!

With her comment, her face looked so stern for a three-year-old. Well, that did it. I couldn’t help myself and started to laugh about the intensity of her facial communication. She soon snuggled up close to me, joined in laughter, and before long gave me a peaceful look and fell asleep. I felt assured that she was no longer in pain. 

I marveled at how that humorous moment quickly changed my outlook and put a stop to what felt like a mesmerizing worry for her. It allowed me to feel deeply the comfort of Christ’s message “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). And it enabled me to prayerfully explore and affirm how fully God’s love surrounds us, how perfectly He made us in His own image, and how flawlessly spiritual we are in His eyes. I continued to pray with her in my arms until I felt completely at peace. The next morning she bounded down to breakfast with clear hands—no pain or blisters that had been there on one of her hands the night before, not even tenderness. 

Joy is an attribute of God and a natural, permanent part of His creation. It is not manufactured by us somewhere in our bodies or in our genes. It has been here at all times for everyone to enjoy—and is here now. We merely need to allow it to find expression in us. In this way, it can play a vital role in healing, even in trying times. Joy brings with it qualities that comfort and guide, such as patience, meekness, compassion, and goodwill. It can help to bring a deep and certain sense that we belong to God and have nothing to fear but everything to live for and rejoice in. It comes from our reflected understanding of divine Life and its bounty.

I loved how the joy that humor represented was such a noteworthy part of that transformative prayer in my young experience. My mother could have easily given way to frustration and disappointment with my attitude. After all, she had worked so hard to show me a better way. But gladly, her love of humor was a cultivated quality of God that she expressed by reflection, not merely a personality trait. She faithfully tended and watered it every day. It was born out of love for God and was ever a source of joy and healing perspectives in our home, and it continues to play a vital role in my life.