What does it mean to be healed?
Every morning when I take my life saving chemotherapy medicine, I say a prayer that I wrote about my own healing journey with cancer. The final line of this prayer states "and I fully accept my complete and total healing with the absolute knowledge that I am totally healed." Long ago, upon hearing this my wife said, but how can you be totally healed if you still have cancer?
Over the past two years the answer has gradually come to me — I do feel healed even though my cancer is still very much a part of me. My life is actually fuller and more "healed" since my cancer diagnosis than it was before. The jewish prayer for healing (the misheberach) that is often read in synagogues points me in the right direction. "May the source of strength. .. Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing... and the renewal of body, the renewal of spirit." Ever since my stage four lung cancer diagnosis our friends, work communities and families have gathered around us and supported us in ways that defy description. We have been brought food, been added to prayer circles around the world, had friends take me to the hospital and sit with me (pre-pandemic) and comfort us on zoom calls over the past year. I’ve healed relationships that were strained or challenged, while making new friendships as well. I've had friends sit in my backyard and cry with me, laugh with me, enjoy the moment. Friends have reached out to our adult children and held them too and let them know they are not alone.
Also, former employees, coachees, mentees and others I've worked with over the years have reached out and let me know the way I impacted their lives. While I knew my work had some impact it was often hard for me to let in compliments or stories of impact about my own work. Something about the cancer lowered these defenses, opened my ears and heart, and let in these wonderful stories. I now knew deeply that my life is and was and always has been a blessing, and that the work I did that touched people will long outlast me. This is a blessing that brings me tears even as I write these words.
More recently, though, this sense of being healed was given new language and meaning in a brief drash (talk) by Rabbi David Ingber of Romemu who spoke at a healing service my wife and I attended online. He reflected that the word "Illness" begins with an "l" and the word wellness starts with "we." A lightbulb went off upon hearing this. While I would never wish for my illness and of course pray for my physical recovery, what I now realize is that our community HAS created a new-found connection and healing that exists independent of whether my body ever fully heals. Because a result of the love, the sharing, the giving, is a new "we"llness has formed that is stronger than anything we could have ever imagined. Those pots of soup, those loving emails, the prayers said on my behalf — all of these things and more have reaffirmed that every moment of love and caring in life is its own healing, a healing of mind and healing of spirit that is every bit as fundamental to our life as the healing of "body."
And so now when I recite my morning prayer as I take my miracle chemotherapy pill, I simply smile as I say "and with knowledge that I am fully healed." Thanks to our broader community and the 'we' of healing, this is now more true than ever.
Jonathan Levy
stagefourwisdom.com
jonathanlevy2009@gmail.com
June, 2021