Twenty-three years ago I had a near death experience (NDE), and it occurred just months after I lost my only child. It wasn’t the typical experience you read about with a tunnel, light, and seeing heaven or hell, it was far subtler than that, and I woke completely changed. My death was caused by a surgical mistake, and although I had to be revived a couple times on the operating table during a life saving surgery, that wasn’t when I died. My death came several days later when I was still bleeding internally, but no one had discovered it yet. I remember waking and looking over at the blood pressure machine and watched the numbers steadily drop lower and lower. It dawned on me that I was dying as I’d seen the same the night my father died, but I didn’t feel any fear. It was simply a realization of my impending demise that I easily accepted.
I woke sometime after midnight to a beautiful and kind redheaded nurse bathing me, changing my gown and sheets, and being incredibly gentle and sweet to me. This happened on Good Friday and as the sun rose the bleeding was discovered and I had a couple rushed emergency procedures, was given several bags of blood, and finally began to recover. I never saw the nurse again, and I did ask about her, but the woman I described didn’t match anyone on the nursing staff.
Recovery took several bed-ridden months left with open wounds, bags, drains, more surgery, and nurses coming to the house twice a day to change my bandages. Back on my feet again everything was different, even my things looked a little odd and different, and stepping back into my old life was impossible. Something profound had happened to me and I didn’t have the knowledge or language to fully express it. As I didn’t have the typical and popular experience I had no real foundation to build from, all I knew for sure was that I was different and somehow I knew something I wasn’t supposed to know, but didn’t know what it was.
The years afterward were challenging, I was dealing with chronic pain and changes in my body while also trying to accept the loss of my son. It seemed most around me expected me to just snap back in gear and set aside my grief, loss, and spiritual and physical changes and continue on as before my life was altered. Apparently, to them, enough time had passed and there was no excuse for not stepping back into my old life. But I couldn’t return to my old life, the person who lived that life was dead and gone, and I was left vulnerable, exposed, and radically changed.
I figured it was Christ calling me so I committed myself to Him and gave away all my belongings in my desire to follow Him. I began speaking with religious people with hopes of guidance in my strange situation, but found that they looked at me suspiciously, shamefully, and quickly dismissed my experience with one Bible verse. “Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27) The people I spoke with seemed to have only one agenda, bodies in a building, butts in the pews, and money in the tray, but it was more than that. It was as though there was an underlying fear or jealousy or anger, and it seemed so separate from my newfound faith, so small and worldly and dirty in comparison with the profound change inside me.
Unfortunately at the time I didn’t choose to read the Bible cover to cover to understand it for myself, and was soon drawn into many new age and occultish type ideas as I tried to understand what I knew, but couldn’t remember. I began exploring the world, researching and investigating whatever called my attention with the goal to understand what happened to me, and got lost for a while in many dark rabbit holes. Before this change I had always been a little haunted, but afterwards these occurrences increased dramatically due to opening the doors to the occult in my desire to understand. And I experienced depression, alcoholism, UFO sightings and alien-type abduction events, sudden short lived bouts of psychic abilities and visions, ghostly sightings and EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon) in my home, an incubus draining me in my sleep, and suicide attempts from pure hopelessness and exhaustion. Needless to say, it was rough, and I grew no closer to the forgotten knowledge that had been pressed on me, but with the absolute grace of God I survived, again and again.
Worldly events would strike a deep chord in me, and I would be reminded of the change and the unknown knowledge. I would feel both great fear and awe that whatever I had been shown in my NDE was happening, but I had no idea where it was leading. The years passed, the chord inside me rang like a bell with many different events, as though they were simply reminders and road marks along the way, and they left me in tears, but also with a great sense of awe and excitement.
And finally I sat down to read the Bible and found that being woken from death is not at all unbiblical as I had been told, and led to believe. From the Old Testament to the New Testament people have been shaken from the grip of death. So I have to wonder if those religious people who instill shame and quickly dismiss the idea have even read their Bibles at all.
From God answering Elijah’s prayers in 1 Kings 17:17-24 and waking the son of the widow Zarephath from death, to the son of a Shunammite woman being raised by Elisha in 2 Kings 4:32-37, to the unnamed man coming back to life after touching Elisha’s bones in 2 Kings 13:20-21, there are many examples of people being brought back from death. Eutychus falling asleep listening to Paul’s long-winded sermon, falling out a third story window to his death, and Paul reviving him and finishing his sermon (Acts 20:7-12), people have been brought back to life many times in scripture. And let us not forget Lazarus, and the others raised by Jesus, or the tombs opening at Jesus’ resurrection and the saints coming to life again and appearing to people in the Holy City (Mathew 27:50-53). Or in Revelation 20:5 where it states, “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished…”
The Bible doesn’t follow the lives of those who were raised and given a second chance, but I’m sure they had opinions and feelings about it and their experiences were interesting. So clearly being pulled out of death isn’t unbiblical, or an impossibility, or a shameful lie, or a horrible sin, or a trick of the devil. But perhaps it only happens to a few, and perhaps I am one of the few. I regret not immediately sinking down into the Bible and reading it cover to cover, and feel I’ve wasted some time, some energy, and some innocence peeking under the rocks in the abyss seeking something that isn’t hidden in the darkness, but perhaps the journey was important in a way I don’t yet understand.
The Bible mentions many times the importance of wisdom and knowledge, and how they are more valuable than any jewel, and implores us to seek. It also states that those who do seek and gather wisdom may be a little melancholy with the results of the search, but it’s important to do anyway. “For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” Ecclesiastes 1:18 KJV
So as always, keep seeking.
