| Benji's Legacy | |
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When I began healing about five years ago it was an all-time first for anyone in my family or for any of my friends to be actively involved in anything of a spiritual nature.
I had read about the nearby spiritualist church in my local paper and a few months after my mother's death I felt a need to go there. I knew my husband would not be at all interested and engineered an argument with him and flounced out of the house (the only time I have done this in 29 years of marriage!) and sped off to the church.
The people were very warm and welcoming and five years on I still attend regularly and only now my long-suffering husband occasionally accompanies me!
After a few meetings I was told by a medium I should be healing and this was confirmed many times. I watched the healers at the church and heard about the NFSH (National Federation of Spiritual Healers) which I subsequently joined.
Although very enthusiastic among fellow healers, most of whom I met at the Stanmore NFSH probationer centre, amongst my family and friends I still did not broach the subject.
I felt that most of them would be quite 'anti', having been present during heated discussions about fake clairvoyants and the impossibility of communicating with the unseen. I didn't feel that I should be championing healing against such negative feelings and so I felt that saying nothing at all was the safest option.
For three or four years, only my husband and daughters knew of my interest in healing and although my husband found it to be of benefit after suffering from cramp, my daughters did not approve nor believe in spiritual healing at all.
It was only when my older daughter's friend told her how her beloved dog was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and only had two weeks to live that my daughter said "my mother fancies herself as a healer". Her friend duly reported this to her mum who rang and begged me to see the dog, Benji, a beautiful golden Labrador. It seemed her sister-in-law had just died suddenly from a heart attack and the family could not take another bereavement so soon.
I was warned, however, that Benji didn't like strangers and although my daughter had been to her friend's house many times over the last ten years, Benji couldn't be trusted to be in the room with her or anyone else who wasn't immediate family. He had to be held while visitors sidled past.
To everyone's amazement when I arrived Benji just laid down in the middle of the floor and lifted his head so I could touch his throat, so badly extended from the cancer it was almost as big as his head.
I stayed with him until he decided it was long enough and he got up and just walked away. I continued visiting Benji for another three or four sessions and then his owners took him back to the vet.
He couldn't understand how not only was Benji still alive but the lump was a little smaller. The vet had taken him off all medicine except pain killers as he had considered the end was inevitable and he said that the only thing he could put Benji's slight improvement down to was the healing.
I carried on seeing Benji, always following the same pattern of Benji proffering his neck and then walking away when he had enough. Little by little his bark came back and his family reported him as having more energy and appetite.
After about six months the tumour started to enlarge again and this time, with healing, the passing came quickly. But as the family told me, Benji had another few months of life and the family had time to accept the sister-in-law's death and were now slightly stronger to deal with Benji's passing.
My daughter started mentioning this to other people and from this my friends and family started to hear of my interest in healing. My elderly aunt, who I thought would tell me I was a fool to believe in such things, amazed me by saying that fifty odd years ago she had regularly visited a healer and please would I give her healing for her leg.
Several of my friends now regularly ask me for healing and it has opened a new dimension in my life and also, I hope, to those who come to me for healing.
About Judy Karbritz: A member of the National Federation of Spiritual Healers and a Reiki practitioner, is a poet and writer. She is a bereavement councillor and supports adult survivors of childhood abuse.
