by Fiona McGovern, Isle of Arran, Scotland.

Two days ago I was in hospital for a surgical procedure. The porter took me in a wheelchair and a student nurse accompanied us. We all took the lift up to the surgery ward. As it went up it stopped at a floor, the doors opened and a man in his red dressing gown stood looking in. He had no intention of getting in the lift. At the time I was laughing. He looked at me sternly: “You are far too happy”, he said. “You can’t be ill.” The doors closed and we continued upwards, slightly bemused by his words and tone of voice.

I commented that this kind of remark was often said to me. Another person had said “It is bizarre that you can laugh with all you are going through” and another said “You must have bad moments”, by which they meant days.

I pondered on all these comments and wondered why it is assumed by many that illness means misery.

Are we looking at illness in a false light?

I remarked to a friend that I would rather have had the cancer than be how I was before the illness.

That’s why I smile and laugh and don’t have those bad days people assume I must have.

How can this be?

Before the cancer I was to the outside world a positive bouncy person who looked after her health and seemed to have a fulfilling career and marriage.

The truth is that image was very superficial. Underneath I was a mess. I felt driven to achieve, to attend to everyone’s needs, to remove their pain, to make the world alright. My confidence was shallow and unsteady. I felt there was something I was missing as a woman. I worked so hard for others I had no quality time with my husband… the list could go on.

Yes it would have been lovely to have learnt all that I have learnt without the cancer, but those beliefs and ideals were so entrenched I feel I had to be made to completely stop in order to begin to feel what I had been doing to myself.

I have never blamed God for this or felt anger towards him because how I now feel is so very beautiful and so real. I awake feeling love in my body and joy at another day. Things no-one can ever take away from me.

My searching for God is over because he was with me all along, holding me, waiting for me to return. My quest to find me is over because I have discovered I was with me all along and my longing to feel like a true woman is over because yes I was born a woman, so being a woman was with me as well.

All I needed to do was see the false light I had allowed myself to be in and reconnect to the amazing light I naturally am.  

Everything I longed for is reconnected to and there is now the beauty of discovering more.

Can you feel why I smile and giggle? Life this way is simple. I have dropped the complexity which once governed me.

Yes I have worked very hard and full-time at this and at times it hasn’t been easy. However, the ongoing support of Serge Benhayon and all he presents and of the Universal Medicine team has confirmed to me this is a job worth doing and continuing with!

If I drop, it is for a moment, not like the days I once had and others refer to. I smile and open myself to being more of me.

For you it may not be cancer. It may be a cold or a spot which makes you stop and look at the rhythm you are in day to day. Does it confirm and support you to be all of you or is it one dictated by the outside?

I feel whether it is cancer or a cold it’s all the same, just a different intensity. It’s an opportunity to stop and feel.

At first I was ashamed of the illness. I wanted to deny it, keep it secret. I knew it would spoil everyone’s image of me as the healthy one, the one with the answers. I had allowed myself to be in an ill rhythm dictated and driven by others’ needs, ideals and beliefs.

I am no longer ashamed it has happened and I now know the answers lie within.

Illness is not a failure; it is a clearing of what we have allowed in that is toxic to the body. This clearing is part of the process that endeavours to return us to the love we are.

This love put me into a cycle of healing. In doing so, I felt to change the choices of my daily life to ones which support me to be all I am and allow me to express that in the world. This is an ongoing refinement and there is more of me to enjoy, but I know that I will keep smiling and being playful no matter how bewildering others may find it to be.

Could it be that if we have been looking at illness and disease in a false light, considering it to be due to bad luck, a virus, an accident, genetics, a punishment, an inconvenience etc instead of seeing it as the loving stop we needed to get back into a rhythm that supports us to be all that we are?

Could it be that we are also looking at healing under a false light too?

Maybe healing isn’t always a cure, living to a ripe old age, getting rid of symptoms, managing an illness or disease, but a way back to our divineness? a beautiful cycle of evolution?

It certainly feels like that to me. So I will continue to smile and baffle those around me and perhaps one day they too will see illness/ disease and healing in a different light.