Grappling with the Spiritual

Before going any further, I’d like to talk a bit about the spiritual aspect of my healing path. I’ll be the first to admit that it is a work in progress. I was raised as a Roman Catholic but stopped actively practicing that faith when I went away to college at 17. I returned briefly to the church when my daughter was born to give her a spiritual foundation. After her First Communion, once again I drifted away from my spiritual upbringing: it felt rote and uninspiring. I lacked a real connection to God. I tried numerous meditation methods over the years without success; I’ve been unable to still my “monkey mind”. I even went so far as to join a promising spiritual group in Florida that ultimately turned out to be an emotionally abusive cult, thus prompting my rapid departure from this group and city. My experience with this cult made me extremely skeptical and cynical of other spiritual groups and religion in general, further alienating me from a true connection with God. Shortly after my second cancer diagnosis, however, I returned to the Catholic Church after reading about the miracles of Padre Pio. Returning to the church of my youth felt comforting to me and the church I joined was very contemporary in its music, sermons and outreach to the parishioners. I started praying regularly every morning to Jesus, saying several healing novenas, as well as reciting the rosary to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I prayed and prayed and prayed, feeling a closeness to the Divine that I had not felt in a long time and feeling sure that this would bring about my healing. As time went on, however, I found the Sunday mass boring and repetitious. Did Jesus really want us to focus on his crucifixion week after week after week? I started to remember why I originally left the church in the first place. Further, the pedophilia scandal in the church made me angry and jaded towards it. Also, other than the church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, there was really no place for women as celebrants of the mass by Catholics. Worst of all, the head priest at the church I attended started giving clearly political directives and admonishments in his sermons, which completely turned me off. After a year, I left the Catholic Church yet again, but continued my morning prayers at home up to the time of my mastectomy. Just prior to that point, a vague feeling of dull repetition started to creep into my prayer time; I felt like I was just going through the motions with my prayers. I looked for ways to make my faith more alive and relevant and ultimately settled on a women’s Bible study group. The leader of this group was really “on fire” for Jesus, but somehow that spark just didn’t land on me. Her enthusiasm for a particular church, her love of Bible radio and various preachers of the Bible was admirable, but ultimately left me cold and unsure. I think that part of this traced back to the other Bible Study Healing Group in which I was judged for not solely having complete and total faith in Jesus to heal me of my massive breast tumor and turning to surgery instead. I know this will sound heretical, but I started to question what I was reading in the Bible, especially the portions regarding the violent and vengeful God of the Old Testament. I wondered if Jesus wanted to be put on a pedestal and worshipped as He is today. Does the Bible truly reflect what Jesus taught? After all, it was written by humans many, many years after Jesus walked the earth, so it could be prone to numerous errors or include teachings meant to instill fear and obedience in a gullible audience.

So for the time being, I am content with knowing that a Supreme Being exists but am in the process of redefining how to relate and interact with Him/Her/It. I have no idea what the final outcome of that will be, but that’s OK for now. It has to be as I have no other answers. I started a Tai Chi Chih class at the end of January 2019 and practice that faithfully every morning. I am gratified and excited to feel the energy in my hands as I go through the movements of this practice. Perhaps that is how God is speaking to me at the moment. If that’s the case, then so be it for now.

I would also like to confess a major regret about my complacency regarding my lack of vigilance in sticking to a healthy anti-cancer regimen after around five years had passed. I naively assumed that cancer wouldn’t/couldn’t touch me again because it surely would have reared it’s ugly head within the first five years after my initial diagnosis, right? I assumed that because I had gotten out of my emotionally draining marriage, that the sole reason for my cancer diagnosis was now in the past and I could resume a “normal” life once more. In hindsight, I now can clearly see that although I appeared to be cancer-free, I was far from the healthiest human being on the planet. I eventually started to indulge in my favorite foods with plenty of ice cream and buttered popcorn. I wasn’t getting a lot (if any!) exercise and my thyroid was obviously underperforming which was clearly evident from the excessive amount of weight I had put on. But the strong human desire to be “normal” once again and do the things that everyone else is doing (no matter how undesirable those things may be) won out and I reverted to some blatantly unhealthy habits. Hopefully, I’m a bit wiser now and won’t make those same mistakes again. As I’ve learned the hard way, cancer is a formidable foe and you can never assume that it has completely gone away, never to strike again.