In 2009 it was cancer. When I heard the dreaded “C” word, I’ll never forget how my heart took a flip. Me?
Then the mind circles around the possible meaning of everything from burning tissues, a collapsed immune system, chemotherapy to the ultimate grim reaper, none of which are subjects anyone wants to contemplate. The possibility of meeting one’s maker injects waves of fear through and through and overloads the senses with a myriad of other symptoms even when the doctor claims, “We got it early enough.”
Friends don’t know what to say because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing so suddenly there are fewer people to talk to. Doctors smile softly and speak with a reassuring tone along the line of, “Well, we don’t need to go there.” My OB-GYN told me I was “lucky” that if I was going to get cancer, this was the one to get. Then he advised me that I was ‘so’ lucky, I should go right out and buy a lottery ticket, which, by the way, I did.
What he didn’t know was that I used to do data entry for Hospice, and I didn’t believe him about the ‘lucky’ part, and no, I didn’t win the lottery either. Adenocarcinoma was a beast, a very determined one, and no one is lucky when cancer strikes regardless of what it’s called.
My mind still wandered to the deepest reaches of my fear. Pain, surgery, radiation, chemo, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, more pain, sleepless nights, cold sweats, and more pain all rose to the surface at various times.
But the strangest thing happened as well. These bouts of fear became fewer and further apart over several months and I found myself slowly beginning to feel at peace; smiling, laughing easily and really touching on what it was like to live. This was not due to my trip with cancer however, it was due to the very long journey I had been on to find my Spirit and to acquire the kind of Grace offered through Spirit that would carry me this time as if on a cloud through yet the scariest trial of all.
You see, my life was not exactly the kind that one might dream of with rape, stalking, kidnapping, mental, physical and emotional abuse and several con games during my 30 years of darkness. Fear was almost my middle name, and for sure Lady Luck wasn’t.
About ten years prior to this diagnosis, I had met a new friend who was the wisest and eldest of souls. As they say, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” She became my mentor and taught me about my life from the perspective of a kind of sweet naiveté that I had lost many years ago. It is the same kind of naïveté that a new born has: clear eyes, unquestionable faith and an internal light that shines so bright no one could help but notice.
She fully believed we all arrive on earth with a built-in angel that the two of us would later come to call Spirit. The truth I came to learn about Spirit had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with what one might think of an Angel. We would learn about Spirit together, and I would spend nearly five years testing each and every one of my new revelations along the way just to make sure they were real. My journey to Spirit became an intimate and very real encounter with the ethereal.
Over a period of years, we would write about Spirit, and yet it would take another five years to grow into a fuller understanding of what we were experiencing. There were so many buzz words circulating, and many of them came with giant suitcases of baggage; like God, spirituality and Soul. Language was limiting. How could we describe this inner angel? We certainly found out how difficult it was to adequately explain the unexplainable.
We finally came to describe this Angel as the Sacred Spirit. This Spirit, as with Angels, was incapable of evil or wrong-doing. Each Inner Spirit inside every living thing is seen as a gentle guide, a wise entity of much insight, a guardian and helper, a Light of Grace, Life and Wisdom. For both of us Angels and Spirit grew to be one and the same.
Alas, the space after the cancer diagnosis became one of peace as I escalated my work to reconnect with that Spirit after many, many years of life’s distraction. I now had a great reason to give Spirit a true chance in what life I had left. The journey had been long and slow, but I knew that something as valuable as Spirit was never gained without commitment.
Where was I? What did I gain from reconnecting with my Inner Spirit? I found a new Peace, a renewed sense of happiness, the ability to live in the moment, the Gift of Life as if this was the only day after all.
This diagnosis had become a catalyst for time travel, back and forth from one Golden Thread to another, from one familiar fragrance to another, and from one friend, one love, one moment in time to another. This was the journey I had longed for.
…to be continued
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All photos @ 123rf Stock Photos
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