Pray Health

Every night before I fall asleep I check the lump(s) in my breast. Maybe, just maybe, they have miraculously gone away like the mysterious lumps that appeared on Ahnung's ears earlier this year that there was no explanation for ... but every night now instead of it disappearing they seem to be screaming louder to me. They are getting larger and they feel like they are spreading. Or is it just my imagination, my fear? My appointment with my surgeon is on Wednesday morning. Seems like a long time away.

I am doing my best not to succumb to fear and to terror? I've had unexplainable growths/nodules in my body, like a huge nodule in one of thyroid lobes. Over ten years ago my surgeon removed a massive nodule that was causing my body to feel like it was in constant panic mode, with a resting heart rate that was so high I was put on heart medication to slow it down. They weren't able to perform a needle biopsy on my thyroid in fear that I would go into cardiac arrest so instead I went through surgery to have the entire growth removed. The pathology report came back "benign" but again, there was no explanation for what caused the growth. Today I am fortunate that the other half of my thyroid has kicked in to carry the load of my now missing left thyroid lobe ...

So is this growth in my breast the same thing? I woke up at 3 this morning and had trouble falling back to sleep. Something about these lumps feel different than the two lumps I had removed in 2009. And being analytical in nature, and learning from my previous jobs that "the past is predictive of the future" I find myself thinking ... the first lump removed had 1 site of atypical (pre-cancer) sells; the second lump removed had 2 sites of atypia and was now borderline cancer. And here I am less than a year later with another lump and this one feels like it has doubled in size over the past month and feels like it is spreading with what feels like a secondary growth shooting off the first area. So I worry. And my head spins around and around and around at 3 am in the morning.

I am working to return to some level of calm and peace. In the book "Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer" by Gregg Braden he shares the story of how there was an extreme drought in the high deserts of New Mexico and how his friend invited him to an ancient stone circle to "pray rain." He talks about the difference between praying for rain and praying rain. "He began by describing how the elders of his village had shared the secrets of prayer with him when he was a young boy. The key, he said, is that when we ask for something to happen, we give power to what we do not have. Prayers for healing empower the sickness. Prayers for rain empower the drought. Continuing to ask for these things only gives more power to the things that we would like to change.

So instead of praying for rain, in the case of the story Gregg shares ... his native friend says, "... I begin to have the feeling of what rain feels like. I felt the feeling of rain on my body, and what it feels like to stand with my naked feet in the mud of our village plaza because there has so much rain. I smelled the smells of rain on the earthen walls in our village, and felt what it feels like to walk through fields of corn chest high because there has been so much rain."

So this morning, instead of praying for health, I pray Health. I envision my body and all the miraculous cells in my body being vibrant, healthy and alive.