Made Beautiful by Scars

That day, only four days out from our wedding, I was going to get the results from my specialist from further testing. When I found that the final X-rays hadn’t come back yet, I didn't hesitate to drive up the road to the lab and collect them myself. Appearances indicate metastatic disease to the mid and lower lumbar spine. Reading the results in the radiology car park stopped time for me. The madness stopped. The results said that I had secondary cancer in the spine. I knew what that meant and these words played in my head. Breast cancer gone wild. Spread through the body. Only a few months to live… Two hours later, I was lying inside an MRI scanner, feeling embarrassed and upset. My specialist was desperate to see if there was anything else they could do for me and had pulled some strings to get me this urgent scan. I had run out of the house that hot summer’s morning with just a tight sundress on and no underwear. I was now feeling the cold steel of the scanner beneath my butt in a backless hospital gown; I was freezing and uncomfortable with needles in both arms. Suddenly, I felt the most indescribable rage pour through my heart, hot all over with it. I was angry. Angry at God. I had let go of religion by that time of my life. As I had entered my late teens the disconnection between human imperfection, guilt and religion was too much for me to make sense of, so I had sent spirituality into the too hard basket and saw all those who had faith as utterly naive. Now, though, in that coffin-like space, I yelled out to the great Universal force. It was all I had left to do. If Anyone is there, I am so Pissed at You, WHAT THE HELL??!! I have a little 6-year old girl who is going to be left alone. I'm getting married in a few days. What have I done that is so bad that I deserve this? It felt good to say it and then I got an answer. A big one. Suddenly I felt deliciously warm all over. I felt a blanket of light, of warmth above me in the scanner and I heard these words, said playfully with a sense of humor. Isn't this what you wanted? A dramatic ending? The Katherine Mansfield ending, pale and interesting, with all your family around you saying goodbye? I knew this to be true. At University I loved reading about Katherine Mansfield, a writer who left New Zealand in the 1920s and lived a richly bohemian life where she had enjoyed male and female lovers. She married a very controlling man and lived in France with him but felt suffocated by his energy and died young, the same age I was now, of tuberculosis. I knew in every part of my being that I was choosing my death. Something in me wanted it. To fly away finally from this body I had so much discomfort being in. To find another way to be that was more real, more free. I lay there for a few moments soaking that in. Feeling the warmth of the huge Light energy wrapping around me, a sense of its patient love, sense of humor and deep non-judgment of my predicament. I felt a question rise in me and I called out to the warmth wrapping me in the cold belly of the scanner. So... I choose. And if I get to choose, what if I choose something else? Immediately a plethora of images, a Technicolor movie began to play in front of my eyes. I saw my hand in my daughter’s, her hand all grown up, wearing a beautiful gown, walking her down the aisle. I saw myself laying in a hospital bed with bandages on my chest, but knowing deep in my heart that after that I would be healthy, that I would not need any further medical care. I saw an image of my hands, with golden light pouring out of them, and then image after image of sitting with others, hearing them, a hand on them as they calmed, watching people ignite into health, away from fear, sadness or despair. I saw my belly round with a child, holding babies and on stage teaching, guiding others to be peaceful and heal their bodies. I saw a pile of books to be created; I saw much laughter, passion, swimming naked, extraordinary living. This amount of full-on living scared me. I had never experienced life like this. I had lived much more carefully and critically. I could see that if I took this option I had been shown I would be leaving behind a normal life. I would be different and life would be way outside the picket fence I had valued so highly. In that moment I knew that I had been so unhappy trying to fit into a normal life. The ache within me could not be filled with a perfect wedding, perfect marriage, job, party or shopping; none of those things could ever fill me. That life was not a life that held me anymore. A life was to be who you really were. So, I lay there with the seesaw of choice in front of me. Death felt like an easier option, no risk of humiliation in that. Or, I could live a big, strange but powerfully free and authentic-to-me life helping others. I wavered for a moment then felt a deep call within, a desire to live and live another way. Go on then. Let's do this. I'll stay. I choose to stay. At that moment, the power surged in the scanner; I felt my body undulate with electricity head to toe. Only recently I was reading some new scientific research into the way cancer cells work, faulty electrical signaling between cells and the spaces between cells can grow cancer. I was being given a Universal reboot of sorts – an electrical one, a thrum, a sound that I could feel deep into my genetic coding. I watched as the scared small me, the fearful one, sat up and walked out of my body and out of the scanner into ether. I felt a great warmth and a lighter energy, an improved version of me, land inside my skin making my whole body feel long, heavy and powerful. The speaker in the MRI crackled as the radiographer told me that they needed to reboot the scanner and to keep very still. They were going to redo my scans. 45 minutes later a different woman left the hospital than the one who had gone in. A few hours later, I met with the oncologist. He had assessed my MRI scans and had talked them through with several colleages in New Zealand and overseas. Although he could not explain why the earlier x-rays and scans had shown the cancer had spread into my spine, he smiled and said