My interest in Reiki kept growing. At every fair a friend would ask if I had booked to do the course and of course I had not. I was on a tight budget. One day when I was walking around our local shopping centre I got a phone call from him. He was so excited … he was going to teach and because he knew how much I wanted to learn he had called me first. My head was spinning … my first thought was cost … how was I going to pay for this? … I also had to discuss it with my husband who had no idea how much I wanted to do this … he said to think about it and to speak to him that Sunday at the Mind, Body & Soul fair. When I spoke to him he held his hand up and said “give me 5 reasons why not” … so I started …
- Payment : he answered … “I know how much you want this … you can pay in full, in part or not at all but you HAVE to do it, it is time”
- Transport: he answered … “my Mom is going to do it too and you can travel together … call her and discuss it”
- … I couldn’t think of any more ‘excuses’ and so my planning started.
I decided that I needed to do this for myself as it was something I had been drawn to and longed to do for some time. I arranged a loan and paid in full … I had thought long and hard about it and decided that this was an investment in ME and it was something I could do no matter where I was or how old I got!!
Next step was to tell hubby … well, he wasn’t so sure. Questions like what is it all about; how will it affect our marriage – I believed it would only make it stronger.
Then I called Philip to tell him I was going ahead. He was so excited. He would be teaching under the umbrella of The Energy Centre owned and run by Tracy White. They were busy printing notes when I called him.
And so it began … in November 2004. There were 4 of us in the class. In January 2005 we ‘graduated’ or to use the correct term “attuned”.
I began practicing as much as possible with friends and family. Philip’s Mom would have a group of us around once a month for a Reiki share evening after which we would chat and enjoy a light meal. I started seeing paying client’s after hours and over weekends as I was, and still am, working full time.
Still I wanted more. I wanted to ‘complete’ what I had started. By this time Philip had moved on and was no longer teaching. I signed up with Tracy to do my Masters and completed that in November 2008.
I loved working with the energy. My thirst for spiritual knowledge kept growing. I knew there was so much more and I wanted to know as much as I could. I read and read and read.
In 2009 my marriage started to fall apart. I tried not to show it. I dug deep into my spiritual beliefs. I hoped that it was just a rough patch but it wasn’t to be. I tried to hide this from family and friends and also tried to keep our home life as normal as possible while I tried to keep things together especially for our 2 sons.
In February 2011 something happened that rocked my world. I had worked for a very special man, a surgeon, for 11 years. We had celebrated his 50th birthday on the Saturday evening. On the Monday morning he was unusually late for work … then I got a phone call. He had ended his life. I could not believe what I was hearing … someone else was listening to the family member on the other end of the phone … I felt as if I was in a tunnel. I had to tell theatre he was not coming in and they had to make arrangements regarding the patients waiting for surgery. I went to the rooms next door to tell the doctor there. His secretary, who is also a friend of mine, locked up her office and gently guided me back to mine where she took over my desk and dealt with calls etc. I remember doctors and nurses coming in to see me. I was there physically but my mind was trying to take in what had happened. Eventually I went home, climbed on my bed and sobbed.
The weeks that followed saw my colleague and I winding up the office and dealing with patients. That was hard … each call that came in for months after was a call of disbelief and having to repeat the same thing to each patient. The questions … some wanted to know HOW!! I found that very rude and hurtful. As if his death was not painful enough.
In March 2011 whilst my colleague and I were busy in the office I received a call to say my husband had had a heart attack and needed to go to hospital. Pat rushed me to the medical centre where my husband was waiting for the ambulance. By this time the staff had arranged for him to go to a government hospital as we did not have medical aid … I travelled in the ambulance with him.
Working in a private hospital was very different to what confronted me when we arrived at the trauma department. My eldest son and a very close friend of ours arrived shortly after.
Alcohol played a huge part in this which saw a change in personality, “working” a lot and later than normal, being secretive, taking calls in his car or outside in the garden so we couldn’t hear, his phone was constantly on silent and he always seemed to be messaging secretly, sometimes disappearing to the bathroom to message. This was not the norm for us as our phones had always been there for whoever was around to answer if need be. We would even mention things about messages we received … all that changed. My gut told me something else was going on. I did my cards and runes …. confirmation. He told me it was my imagination and tried to convince me of that. As I have been on this path since childhood I just KNEW that he was covering up. I knew I had to see what he was hiding and I did something that I would not normally do … I waited for him to fall asleep or pass out and I looked at his phone. I saw messages between him and another woman and a pattern of daily calls starting from the time he got up to shower to the time he went to sleep … this was not a normal ‘friendship’, this was an emotional affair. I had no reason to believe it was more than that but it was bad enough. I waited and I watched, checking daily to make sure this was an ongoing thing and not just something random although the wording in the messages told me otherwise. She too was married! Eventually I confronted him and of course he denied everything and again told me it was my imagination! I told him how I knew and what I knew. He threw his phone on the floor, shocked that he had been caught out. I told him that by telling him I knew that he would delete everything so there was no record. He didn’t know that I had copied some of those messages to my phone. Things seemed normal for a while but then again I had a feeling I needed to check … and unbeknown to him, whilst he diligently deleted all messages to and from her as well as phone records, there was a record on his phone that kept track only of calls and messages to various numbers on a daily basis … and there was her number … proof of constant daily messages and calls. I called him out on this again and he was furious. I had even seen his cell phone account that he had left in our bedroom bin one morning sometime after he had come out of hospital. I had glanced down and there was a huge chunk that had a pattern to it … I reached down and looked at the number that was repeated and the length of the calls … again it was her number. I was shaking. He came out the shower and knew something was up so I showed him. More excuses about how her father had died in that hospital etc etc … more proof of constant lies and him thinking I was so gullible. More money was being spent trying to keep up with his circle of drinking friends and less on food. He was even behind on our rent but we only found out about this much later. There is so much more to this but I won’t go into it here. He eventually walked out in 2012, not once but twice. He called me at work to tell me that he had moved out. After that I had the locks changed so he could not just come in during the day to remove items when no-one was at home.
My dream of growing old with the man I married and father of our children was shattered. There would be no white picket fence and ‘normal’ family gatherings. Life changed yet again.
A few months later I sought legal advice and decided to pursue a divorce. However, every time I was about to have papers served, my husband was either admitted to hospital or not expected to live. How could I, in good conscience, serve papers on a dying man? I told my attorney to hold off. Life was like a see saw. This was very unsettling for me and my sons who were doing their best to deal with all his admissions. Most of the time they did not tell me he was in hospital as they felt they were protecting me and that I had been through enough. The rest of the family knew though … I was in the dark and heard from friends.
Throughout all of the above I dug deep and drew upon my spiritual beliefs and Reiki training. I put on a brave face for my sons trying to keep their lives normal. I went to work every day and somehow made it through the day. I journalled … I spilled all my thoughts and emotions into my writing. Some days I would be so angry I swore and vented and scratched those pages, I would write in large letters … better that than say out loud what I was feeling. I didn’t want my sons to feel more torn than they already were. Those days were dark. I had read about the dark night of the soul. Sometimes I felt so low that I wondered what would happen if I just walked out into the night and disappeared … but I could not bring myself to do this to my children, my family and friends. I had 2 choices … crumble into a heap or dig even deeper and rise above this sorry state of affairs. I chose the latter. Family and friends rallied and gave support. By now they knew what had been going on and all said that they knew something was happening but had no idea how bad things really were.
In the meantime my colleague found employment with another doctor in the hospital and I stayed on hoping that someone would take over the practice and have a place for me. I really felt I needed to be there and wanted continuity for the patients.
The angels saw to this and at the beginning of April 2011 the funkiest and most caring man took over the practice. Both he and his wife were very kind, compassionate and supportive. I had told them all that was happening in my life. They needed to know. My husband’s death was just a matter of time.
You will have noticed how the Universe has had a hand in guiding my life, just as yours is guided. Trust and believe … we are never left alone and all we have to do is ASK … we are here for a human experience and help is always so close to us. The trick though is to ask and let go so that our angels can help us. If we keep hanging on to our problems then we are in fact taking them back instead of releasing them! Imagine yourself putting your problems into a balloon without a string and releasing it into the sky so you can’t pull it back. Let it flow.
Look for the answers which will be seen in many different ways – they are everywhere … in nature, in a song on the radio, thoughts that come into your head and won’t go away, that feeling in your gut, feathers … we just need to open ourselves up to see and hear and most of all TRUST. We tend to doubt what we are given instead of listening and acting on our gut feelings or the signs we are given.
So my journey continued and continues to do so … more next time …
Namasté
Yours in Love & Light,
Jenny
Jennifer Harris McGarvie
Hands on Healing
jenmcgarvie@gmail.com
Author: Spirit Connection
Spirit Connection is an online platform to facilitate connecting light workers with people seeking their help.
