Listening to Evelyn cry yesterday was heartbreaking. And yet as I held her hands and bore witness to her pain, I was hopeful – because I knew I had a message for her that would change everything.
We had just finished our first Reiki session at the Cancer Wellness Center. As she sat up on the table, she told me how wonderful Reiki felt, so calming and relaxing. And then as if Reiki had magically melted her emotional wall, she looked at me at began to cry.
“I don’t understand why this is happening to me. Why did I get this cancer? I have always been a good person. I was a good mother. I raised 5 kids. They are good adults. I’ve never done anything bad to anybody. Why is this happening to me? I never drank, I never smoked. I am a good person!”
I could feel her pain, her confusion, her shame. Shame. She felt shame as if she was being punished. As if this cancer diagnosis was somehow showing the world that she deserved illness, that she deserved to be punished, that she deserved it because she was bad, unworthy.
She wanted me to know she wasn’t bad, that she was good. She wanted me to know that in spite of this punishment – liver cancer – she was not a bad person.
I knew the feelings well, having had my share of tragedies and illnesses. And cancer.
You search your heart, with the same questions over and over again. What did I do to earn this suffering? Why am I being punished? What did I do to bring it on?
You feel confusion, because it doesn’t add up. I’m a good person. I treat people well. I am kind and giving. What is so wrong with me that I am forced to suffer? Am I defective? Am I cursed?
You expand your search, looking anywhere for answers. Is this karma from a past life? Was I a Nazi and now I’m being punished in this lifetime? Because I don’t know what I could have possibly done in this life to deserve so much pain.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
My search for answers took me on a journey. A wonderful journey. A spiritual journey. A journey that led me to understanding, to inner peace, to gratitude, to feeling in harmony with the Universe, to self-esteem and to inner happiness.
I learned that life is nothing but a school. And like in high school or college, sometimes we take easy breezy classes and sometimes we take hard challenging classes. We’re willing to take the tough courses because we want the big reward, the reward of growing and learning.
Our biggest challenges give us our biggest rewards. And our souls want big rewards. The rewards of learning major life and spiritual lessons. The rewards that illness and cancer and other tragedies offer us.
My message to Evelyn was this: I understood exactly what she was feeling. I told her I had had cancer 5 years ago and I went through the same fears and feelings. But that in the end I learned a lot of things from having cancer. That when terrible things happen to us they give us the opportunity to experience wonderful things. I told her that one thing I learned from cancer was how to receive love. And that someone else I knew learned how to give love as a result of cancer and another person I knew learned how to ask for help as a result of cancer and that there was something she was supposed to learn from her cancer too.
As she took it in, her eyes began to light up. She told me about all the wonderful things people have been doing for her since she had cancer – her family, her friends, her neighbor, and how people she barely knew were offering to help her and that hundreds of people were praying for her and that she didn’t realize before how many people loved her. She was focused on all of that love and looked so happy.
I went on, “there is nothing wrong with you, you are not bad, you are not broken, you are not being punished. Cancer is giving you the opportunity to experience wonderful things like all of that love you feel from so many people and to learn lessons about yourself and others.”
I don’t know specifically what caused her energy to change and her mood brighten. Maybe it was because her feelings were validated, maybe it was because she knew I didn’t judge her as bad, maybe because she attached new meaning and purpose to her cancer, or maybe because in remembering the love that people felt for her, she felt worthy.
We aren’t being punished with cancer or other tragedies. They aren’t some kind of karmic retribution.
Our souls are on a journey to learn and grow, life is our school, and tragedies are our classes. When we learn the lessons offered, the rewards are great, and we begin to see our tragedies and challenges as gifts.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Because their souls want the big rewards, the toughest challenges and the most spiritual growth.
We aren’t just Journeyers, we are Superstar Journeyers.
And instead of ashamedly asking, “Why me?” We should be proudly saying, “Wow, me!”