By: Leslie Phillips, Founder of Lifey.Me, Alternative Practitioner

In 2023, I had a skin cancer scare. At the time, I was working on creating a place of rest for people, on maturing as a woman, while trying to heal my relationship with God.

I had been praying for God to heal my relationship with HIM, to reunite me with the faith I had carried as a child. I had also been praying for maturity and for God to help me forgive myself for straying from HIM.

I was hung up on how worse it felt to have known God and still strayed, then to have never known HIM. Even though He had forgiven me, I couldn’t let go of my transgressions. Funny, that when we pray to God who DOES answer, HE seldom answers in the way we would think.

One day shortly after praying these prayers I noticed three abnormal spots on my face that didn’t seem to be healing. My grandpa had recently been diagnosed with skin cancer so I decided I better get my skin checked out to be safe.

The doctor announced to me that I had pre-skin cancer in three different places. She decided the best way forward was to freeze the skin and set up a second appointment.

Now, skin cancer happens to be one of the most treatable but deadliest cancers, as your skin is one big organ and skin cancer spreads fast- eventually going through the lymph system and into the bones.

I remember driving home after the doctor visit and even though I had quite smoking years prior, I found myself purchasing and smoking an entire black and mild (real smart, I know) but it was the reflection of self-destructive coping mechanisms.

People smoke as a way to manage stress and stress is the number 1 cause of cancer. So a lot of times, the self-destructive coping mechanism feels like the better choice.

I ended up calling my mother from the overcrowded lonely parking lot of the store as many thoughts were emerging, especially thoughts of the future in regard to my daughter.

I was just sure the precancer was because of all the stress of moving, of missing my family, of my heart desiring what always seemed out of my reach despite all my efforts, but the doctor assured me this was the manifestation of at least 7 years ago.

7 years ago. Do you realize how the choices of today can impact 7 years from now?

I didn’t have to think hard. I knew what occurred 7 years ago and the 3 years leading up to it. It was such a dark time that to this day, I don’t like talking about it. What I can say is that during that time, I experienced the spiritual consequences of walking away from God’s word and being disobedient.

I sat at a duck pond around 11 pm in the middle of Orlando, Florida that next night and broke down. I said sorry to my body, for living as if I was entitled to my body and behaving as if it belonged to me- I was no doubt, the worst tenant.

I said sorry to like everything- I swear I’m like Chunk from The Goonies when his hand is being pushed at the blender- because I felt the need to say sorry for every bug I didn’t save, for every animal I didn’t try harder to rescue, for every human I ever disappointed, for all the times I could’ve done more than what I did, for not saving the planet (eye roll), I swear I’m like that sometimes.

I told God I was sorry for taking the long road and chose to thank HIM for loving me. In my bible study later, I read Isaiah 58:8-9

“The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit— a wife who married young, only to be rejected,” says your God.

Then there was Jeremiah 15:19-20, “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them. I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you.”

A week later I enrolled into premed for alternative medicine for the spots had returned. I threw out all the chemicals that could be found in the skin care, in the makeup, in the cleaning supplies, in the fragrances that the World so eagerly sold us and that we so eagerly bought.

I changed my entire diet, eating mostly raw vegetables and fruits, with some occasional meat. I upped my water intake and working out, choosing to make my health as a non-negotiable.

I disconnected from social media, my circle grew down to less than 10 people, and it was hard trying to make an exit without exposing the reasoning for disappearing.

God moved me to the coast where I could focus on homeschooling my daughter, working on my degree, enrolling simultaneously into seminary school, and during that time Lifey.Me was birthed.

I had been spending days in prayer while tending my garden and receiving recipes for skin care that I could use on myself. The precancer was healed by the Grace of God. Though my grandfather went on to meet the Lord almost a year later from skin cancer.

Lifey.Me is dedicated to the Grace and Power of God and every morning is spent in prayer. The ‘becoming’, the journey I undertook answered my prayers because it reunited me with my faith and the joy in being obedient to God.