1-24-21
It was asked of me what I was thinking in that final moment in August 2021 laying in the hospital choosing whether or not I had the energy for one more breath, or if the last breath I had already taken had been the final one. This question has perplexed me daily for the last 6 months. What was I feeling? My initial response was that I had some degree of anxiety about whether I had lived my life in a way that would make God happy. That’s what I was feeling when the question was asked of me, but not in the actual moment when I thought my last breath had come and gone.
Instead, in that final moment when I thought I just could not take another breath I felt nothing. It was not anxiety, it wasn’t fear, it wasn’t happiness or unhappiness, it was just nothing. If anything, it was peace, a willingness to just be done. It wasn’t giving up; it was giving over. I wasn’t thinking of the twins I lost in 96 and being rejoined with them. I wasn’t thinking of grandparents who had passed before or friends I knew from my life who had passed before me. I wasn’t thinking about what I was leaving behind. I wasn’t thinking of unfinished work in my life or relationships that needed to be nurtured or mended. I wasn’t thinking of anything. Just nothingness. I was fully spent. I was exhausted and ready to be done.
Whatever the feeling of nothingness is that’s what I was experiencing I didn’t need to hold on, I didn’t need to let go. I didn’t even need to know what the next minute would bring I was just done, I was tired, I was finished.
It is never as simple as signing off with God because only God knows the number of our days and the hour of our completion. If it’s not your day, you can feel as much like death as you want to, but if it’s not your day, it’s not your day. That’s just what happened in that last nano second of what I thought the span of my life was when God intervened and brought what some people have told me was an angel. Her quiet whispers coaching me to breathe brought new life to me. Her encouraging words were firm and true: “Some people come in here not even as sick as you, and they don’t make it, but today is not your day, you are not dying here today. Breathe, she whispered, breathe”. Her words were indeed angelic and lifesaving. Whether she was sent straight from heaven, or whether she was simply a nurse being used by God for this purpose, it is her voice I hear reminding me to breathe, even now, when I feel discouraged or challenged by life, I hear her tell me: Just breathe.
My other near death experience in 1989 didn’t afford me the luxury of defining my feelings about my close call at the pearly gates; it just happened too fast. My other experience involved my brand new car and a few flips and rolls, a rocket type propulsion of my body through the windshield and a large fiery transformer falling from an electrical pole onto the roof of my flimsy car. As I laid there in the warm grass with the sun beating down and my blood running out, I was void of consciousness but looking back I’m sure there was a presence there waiting with me in the warm grass while sirens announced that help was on the way. Later, in the ER, the paramedic asked me who I was talking to when they found me in the grass. I couldn’t answer him because I had no memory of the accident. He insisted that I had been talking to someone as they gathered me up for the helicopter ride. If there was an angelic presence at work that day, I did not see her, I didn’t have the experience of speaking with her but looking back, it would be hard to deny Gods compassionate grace in my life and His continued and consistent care for me in supernatural ways.
In 2010 When the doctor took my hand in his as he delivered the bad news about my spinal cord collapsing, I didn’t burst into tears. I did not freak out or panic or spin out of control. I just sat there in his office, silent, not even processing what he had just told me. There were no questions I wanted to ask, there was no recall about how this could have happened. He explained about the possibility of being paralyzed from the neck down, the likelihood of death and other likely complications and I still just sat there. He kept asking me if I understood and I did, but I just could not form words to respond. It wasn’t fear as much as I just knew I didn’t have it in me to fight it. I was resolved that whatever would be, would be. I just knew that whatever would transpire would happen with or without me overthinking it or fighting against it. I can only explain it as being the peace the passes understanding. It was the kind of peace that only comes from God. No apparition appeared to soothe me, no angelic voice from the heavens wafted in the air above me. I did not hear the voice of God booming in the room but I knew God was there. I felt peace surround me like cool water on a hot day at the lake. As they wheeled me into the operating room and told me to count backwards from 100 the light in the room shone a bit brighter just before I got to 92. You can say it was nothing, just a power surge or a fluke of electricity but I will always believe it was my God watching over me in all His glory and magnificence. He cares for even the littlest birds of the field, and He cares what happens to me too.
Again and again over the course of my life I have visited the place of parting from this life to the next, each experience gave me a new reassurance that God is in control, and I can trust him with the matters of my life, AND the matters IN my life. For as long as there is still work to do on earth for God’s kingdom, I will live to take one more breath.
