The near death experience of Penny Wittbrodt

foreign [Music] I grew up in Michigan and we were catholic growing up I believed in God and I believed in heaven but I believed in a really punitive God that was just waiting to you know like whack you on the head as soon as you made a bad mistake and I remember growing up under the impression that or worrying that if something happened and I died before I could get to confession or get to church then that was it so I always kind of grew up just fearing God and being worried that I was somehow

messing up and even when you unlearn that that's kind of still in your head you carry it with you and I moved to Kentucky after I got divorced from my kids dads I have three kids so I got a full-time job went to nursing school put myself through nursing school raised the kids and in 2002 I graduated from nursing school and I went right to work in the Open Heart Unit and most of my work has been critical care and then I retired in 2014. I'm just in the kitchen with my daughter and we're making

smoothies and and I'm drinking the strawberry smoothie and all of a sudden it starts feeling like I'm not able to swallow as easily like I'm having to use a lot of extra effort then I noticed like I I'm like oh my gosh I'm drooling what did what is going on and and my tongue felt weird and I was itching all around my mouth and I thought oh my gosh I'm I'm having a serious allergic reaction because it was just so rapid onset and I'd had a history of allergy to shellfish so I had epipens the

little allergy shots you give yourself if if you're having a serious reaction but I'd never used them in all the years I'd had them and and so I kept waiting thinking no no this this can't be it and it was it was just progressing really fast and so I gave myself the shot and my son took me to the emergency room and there was a nurse there that I knew because I had helped out in their ICU and as soon as I saw her I was like oh no and I walk up to the counter

and I'm looking up because I can't breathe if I'm looking straight ahead and I'm wheezing like the breathe is very loud sounding and she's like okay what are you here for and I said I'm an anaphylaxis and she said well you took your EpiPen why did you come here and I thought oh no like that's the procedure and I was a little nervous that an emergency room nurse who'd been a nurse as long as she had didn't know that and so she says okay well I've got a clean room but I don't have a bed

so I'm just going to put you in a wheelchair until we can get a bed in that room and and I'm like no no no I don't need a bed just wheel the wheelchair in there and she's like no no we need a bed in there so she Wheels me down this Hall that's kind of like right next to the nurse's station and there's a the doctor's sleeping quarters is back there so it's kind of off away from everything and quiet and you can't hear what's going on back there and she pushes me way down

that Hall almost to the sleeping quarters and so I'm sitting there waiting and and things are getting worse and worse and I'm having what's called Strider it's this when your throat starts swelling shut your breathing starts making this high pitch almost like a whistling noise so that kicked in and I thought oh geez and epipens thankfully come in two packs and you're not supposed to do this like every emergency room person would freak out if they saw you giving your own medicine but I'm like what am I gonna do you know I don't want to

die so I take out the second shot give myself the second shot and it settles down a little bit for maybe I don't know 15 20 minutes and then it all starts back up again it's just kind of this refractory anaphylaxis that won't stop and finally this lady looks down the hall and she's like oh my gosh she comes running down the hall and she grabs the chair and she runs it to this room and I'm familiar with that whole hospital and so now they can't get an IV in because I'm in full throws of

anaphylaxis and all my veins have gone flat and I'm a bad stick anyway and I'm thinking oh man they're not going to be able to get an IV in me you know what are we going to do and finally she says um we need to get her across the hall to trauma and I thought oh no this is bad and I'm in there and I'm just getting worse and worse and they finally get this really sketchy barely in IV and they start giving me Benadryl through that I think by the time I got to the

other Hospital I'd had 600 milligrams of Benadryl normal dose is 25 so but it just it wasn't stopping anything and so my husband gets there and I'm sitting straight up in the bed looking up and you know this horrible breathing noise and and he says to the doctor he's like you need to do something she's going to quit breathing and the doctor says oh no no we've we've got plenty of time before that happens and in my mind it was really quick but I think it was a few minutes and everything just kind of started

getting tunnelly and my hearing everything seemed very far away and then I just collapsed and quit breathing and as soon as I did I popped out of my body and it was really strange because I was confused about what was going on and I could see all the people coming in I knew who ran the code on me I knew who intubated me and as they were pushing in they were kind of pushing my husband out of the room and I remember hearing the code call going off overhead and thinking oh my goodness somebody's really

sick and I was looking down at the me in the bed and I didn't know it was me and I thought wow I hope she's okay she's she looks like she's in really bad shape and that was it everything kind of went black and the next time I kind of was aware again I was in the back seat of my sister's car and my sister lived in Wisconsin at the time it's pouring rain it's late at night and I know something's wrong because I can't feel like I don't have the normal density I normally feel

with my body I can't feel myself against the back of the seat or the bottom of the seed and I'm thinking okay something's weird the weather's really bad it's dark she's driving I don't want to freak her out you know because I don't want her to have a wreck or anything and so I'm just kind of trying to figure out what's going on and I peek over the seat and she's wearing this outfit and it's awful it's wrinkled and I'm thinking what did she do get dressed in the dark like out of the laundry basket

where is she going and then it occurred to me there must be some emergency why else would she be out at night in this weather and and she pulls over at this gas station she pulls out her phone and she opens the Facebook look at and types hang on kiddo I'm coming and that was it meantime like in this side of the existence they had flown Me by helicopter to a bigger Hospital in Lexington they had used what looks kind of like a Dremel tool to drill a needle into my shin bone so they could

put fluids in me that way and medications and because they couldn't get any veins and and I was in an induced coma in ICU and so when I'm aware again I'm in this dark place and it's really dark you can't see your hand in front of your face but it's weird because I had this I still have this visual image of me in that space but I couldn't see what was around me I knew I wasn't standing on anything I wasn't lying down I wasn't sitting something was kind of suspending me I felt all this

pressure against my chest and and I remember thinking it was a lot of work to breathe like I was having to work really hard and I didn't know where I was I didn't know how big the place was because it was so dark and or how I had gotten there and and so then eventually I just kind of went back into what I call the deep sleep and then I would kind of wake up again in that place and and be so upset because I was still there I'm like what the heck I I thought

that was a dream and here here I still am and so this just kept going on and on and I was getting more and more anxious and I was starting to doubt that I had ever actually existed because if I had existed like why weren't people looking for me and then I started doubting my whole life like maybe because I've been in this dark place for so long I'd made all of that up just for something to think about and maybe none of those people existed or maybe maybe I had done something terrible that I

couldn't remember and just been banished to this place and everyone had forgotten me both thoughts were just horrible and so I would keep going in and out and at one point I was awake again in the dark place and I decided to lean forward and it was interesting because it wasn't like leaning forward at the waist it was kind of like I leaned forward and my legs came up behind me so you know I'm kind of planking almost and I was like oh my gosh that's how you do it that's how you move in this

place and so I was kind of like levitating in that position and so I leaned forward a little bit more and I started going the direction of where I was leaning I'm like oh gosh this is great I can move I was so excited and the further forward that I leaned I would just go faster and faster and faster that's kind of how you accelerated and I'm doing this in complete darkness and I'm thinking man I hope this is an open space because if I run into something it's going to be bad and off to

the distance I can see light but not like a tunnel or anything like that just kind of light like you would see from the street if a room off of the main Windows had a light on so just this faint light I see it and I think okay that I'll go that way and so I go that way and I come up to this kind of like a partition like they used to make these um heavy glass blocks and they would put them in bathrooms like around showers and stuff it distorts what you can see

beyond it and that's what it looked like and I put my hand against it and it was hard and I'm like okay I don't what is this you know and as I got close enough that my nose touched I was able to see what was on the other side and it was my physical body in the hospital bed in ICU my wrists were restrained to the bed I was on the ventilator obviously unconscious and I kind of looked at all my Vital Signs and saw that they weren't great and I looked at all the drugs

that were hanging on the IV and was able to determine that I was in an induced Como just based on the drugs that were hanging and then I remembered I was a nurse and I'm like oh right I know that because I'm a nurse and I had forgotten that well I see my daughter and she's standing to my right just behind my shoulder but in front of the ventilator and she's wearing this flannel shirt and this was in August and I remember thinking why is she wearing that hot shirt but I could see every fiber

in the shirt and just looking at it I was able to know I could feel it like physically feel it and my daughter's this really stoic just really even killed kind of person but you never know what's going on in her head you know those Waters Run Deep and and I always wondered her whole life I've always wondered you know what is she thinking is she okay you know how is this affecting her and when I thought about that for a second I was feeling her feelings and I could feel how scared she was and

I had never really known what her personal feelings were on most things because she was just very private and and when I felt that from her that Terror from her that I was going to die it just broke my heart and I instantly put my hands out to grab her to pull her to me and my hands hit the wall and I would just flew into this rage and I was yelling and carrying on I was so mad and and I was yelling at God I'm like you know what is this what is this place

like why would you show me this and let me go back or make me all the way dead or something I I don't want to do this anymore and as the matter I got the further back I got pulled into the darkness into the place that I had been before and so I go back to that place I go back to sleep but when I wake up I'm like okay I know how to move and and so I immediately go back to that wall and when I get to the wall it's like a bubble you

can almost see it kind of breathing and I thought oh the Wall's different today so I put my hand against the wall and I pushed a little bit and it went through and I could see my hand on the other side and I was like oh hot damn I can get over there you know and so I put my hand all the way through and then I put my other hand through and I was kind of scared to put my body through because like was it like Back to the Future like if I see myself

what's gonna happen I just didn't know and so I pushed through and and I'm on the other side and I'm like oh my God I did it I did it I'm on the other side I guess now I just have to figure out how to get back in my body and so I'm looking down at me and I'm getting really nervous because my physical self's hands are restrained and I'm super claustrophobic so that totally freaked me out and I'm like okay calm down you know kind of talking myself down and I'm thinking okay maybe I

just need to like lower myself and kind of lay on top of the me that's in the bed and then maybe I'll just get soaked back up like a sponge and that didn't work and so I thought okay maybe I don't go into it maybe I have to wake up that physical body and then I'll get sucked in and so I'm trying to wake me up and I'm staring at me you know and I'm very crossly you know giving myself the what for and I'm like okay open your eyes open your eyes come on open

your eyes and I'm getting more and more frustrated because the me in the bed is not cooperating and I finally I'm like oh dang it it's not gonna work you know I need to try something else and I thought okay maybe you're going too big try something smaller and so I was looking at me in the bed and I thought oh my finger if I could just move that finger and so I'm focusing all my energy on the finger and I'm trying to get the finger to move and me and the bed is absolutely not

cooperating and I just I get mad again and I get sucked back onto the other side of the wall but not all the way back I'm crying and I'm mad and scared and okay there's got to be something I'm supposed to figure out here that I'm not getting it I'm not getting something why am I in this place there's got to be a reason and I was looking around and it just came to me and I thought because you made this place it still gets me and as soon as I realized it I grew up

on the lakes in Michigan and they freeze over and in the spring dad would take us out there and you could hear them thawing and cracking and it makes this really haunting noise as the crack gets further and further away and that was the sound just much louder and as the cracking started happening light started pouring through and I'm like oh my gosh there's another place there's light this I'm gonna get out of here oh I've got goosebumps so the light starts coming through the darkness starts breaking and I can see the shards of it

it's like a physical thing and the spirit comes toward me and it's huge like huge in a way that something is Grand and takes your breath away and I'm seeing the spirit and she's coming closer and closer to me and I'm so happy to see her I'm like oh thank God there's somebody here and she opens her arms and as she opens her arms I'm just pulled into her arms by her will she didn't have to touch me she put one arm around me and her energy was just circling around us and all these shards

of the broken Darkness kept trying to get at me and they would hit her energy and they'd go flying off and they were gone and I knew they weren't just like gone out of sight they were gone forever that piece of the darkness was gone forever because she had fixed it and I just started crying like ugly crying hysterical but with her mind she says calm yourself dear one and I always tell people if you've ever had surgery or a procedure where you've had to be sedated and they're pushing that drug in and you can

feel it going through you can feel it um sedating you you can actually feel it as it's happening that's what it was like it was like her words broke apart and had their exact intended effect on me I couldn't have resisted it so I finally I'm calming down and everything and I'm trying to figure out who she is I know I know her and I look up and I'm I look at her face and I look at those blue green eyes and on the top of her head she's got this red hair red orange hair

that's that looks like fire on her head and I immediately knew it was my grandmother and I'm like oh my gosh it's it's my grandmother my mom's mom her name was La Vida Patriots and she worked in the steel stamping plants in Michigan and it was a horrible job and she lived with us when I was really little every day I would sit on the porch and wait for her to come home and she would come home just red-faced and soaked in sweat I mean it was hard physical labor and I just loved her she

was just an incredible person she was a force my husband always says you know you have an overdeveloped sense of justice well I get it from her she died when I was nine and I remember there weren't enough seats for the people to attend her funeral I mean she was just beloved so there she was to greet me and I remember looking at her and I said with my mind because you don't have to speak there I said oh my gosh I thought you were dead and she said oh no there's no death you know

this and I'm like no she says yes you know this you learn this in school and I'm thinking when did they teach us there was no death and I don't know what she's talking about and she said energy isn't created or destroyed it just changes form that's God's rule Borrowed by man the energy of who you are can't die it just has to change forms because you can't stop energy I was like that is the best explanation I've actually ever heard everything else sounds good but it didn't make sense scientifically and so I was real

happy to hear that and I thought boy she's smart you know so we were just kind of glad to be there and be in her arms I can't even remember all the things that we went over and and I remember asking her if I was dead and she said oh no no no you're not dead she said you're kind of in between you've got the view that's you know sick in the hospital and then the spirit side of you that's here and there's a cord that's attaching you to your body but if you decide to

stay the cord will be broken and you'll stay and if you decide to go back the court will pull you back and I thought okay well that's that's good so I know how that works now and I just was kind of in her arms and I started crying again and she did the you know calm yourself dear one and I almost fell asleep I was in this really super relaxed state but aware but I looked around after a while and I realized she was gone and I'm like okay where did you know she's gone but

I was still in the light so I was okay and I started hearing this rumbling like if you've ever gone and seen those air shows where like the Blue Angels go or what I went to one when I was pregnant with my daughter it was so intense that it threw me into labor and that's what it was like it was just like this rumbling that went all the way to your bones I almost ached I could see the effect of whatever that was and it was shaking everything that had ever existed but it was doing

it in a way that you wouldn't be able to see it on this side but I could see it so everything that had ever existed everything that existed everything that would ever exist existed and it was all shaking and I was like oh no it's God and I think I think people are like yeah I get to see God and immediately I was like oh shoot if she could read your mind he probably can too you need to think of something good you've done and nothing came to mind and I'm not like a serial killer

I should be able to think of one thing and I couldn't I couldn't think of anything and I'm like oh no you know what there's got to be something and I could feel this shaking getting closer and finally he's there and it's this light and I say he but I didn't see a person but the whole interaction to me seemed like a masculine figure and uh he got there then my brain was just quiet and I don't think I've ever had that where there's not any thought going through your mind is just open and you're

experiencing everything around you but you're not thinking about it and uh I was like oh my gosh God is here he's gonna like go through my life and stuff this is going to be really bad and so immediately he's like you know calm yourself and I calm down and it almost felt like we materialized in this scene in my life and so the first thing he showed me was good and he showed me myself in this grocery store this little grocery store in this town we used to live in and there was a lady ahead

of me in line and she didn't have enough money to pay she was trying to figure out what to put back and I was a single mom you know and three kids and tried and I've been there and she was so embarrassed she's apologizing to the people in line and and I stood closed her and I said hey here and I took the money out of my purse and I gave it to her and she's like no no no no that's okay you don't have to do that that's I'll just put this back and she

was going to put back the things that were for her none of the things that I could see were for her family and I just was like oh my gosh I know I've been in that spot and I said it's okay take it take the money it's like change you know so she took it and I'm like wow of all the good things I've done that's the that's it that's the one you know it seems so minor and then the scene expands and it's years down the road and I can see her in this like

a food closet a food pantry sort of thing for people who don't have enough food and this lady comes in and the lady that I had helped in the grocery stores working behind the counter and a woman comes in and she's like I'm just so embarrassed we just don't have enough food and and the lady's like it's okay gets me every time it's okay I've been there myself you know let me help you don't feel bad and I was amazed at the ripple effect I thought I handed 70 some cents to a woman and it's

still changing the world this many years later you know maybe not in a huge way but a lot of little changes add up I was just amazed that it some little kindness that I didn't I had forgotten registered that high and so I'm like okay you know what's the what's the bad thing and and you know I'm thinking of all the things that that I don't want to watch myself relive with God standing next to me and and he pulls up this this scene and it's this I worked with this nurse and she was very

hard to work where she had a very difficult personality I found myself like picking up a lot of the slack and kind of resenting her for that and I never said anything negative to her but I thought a whole lot of negative things and I was thinking very judgy thoughts about her and God showed me her life and I was just blown away and he showed me all the things that her dad had done to her and all the abuse that she'd endured and still she decides to go into a helping profession so while she

was not what I would consider an ideal nurse she had so overcome her past and despite all of the horrible things she'd been subjected to she chose to go into a profession where she could help people and God told me he said you know you have to be careful thoughts have energy and words have more energy and actions have more energy and words and actions come from thoughts and you have to learn to control your thoughts because all those negative things that you think about her it doesn't matter if you spoke them or not that

energy travels and it gets on her and it makes her more that way and you make it harder for her to break out of that mold that's why you know you're supposed to pray for people who hurt you because by hating them quietly or by despising them quietly you're hindering their being able to move on and be a better person and it just blew my mind because I was always that person who hated people who gossiped women would be standing around and it's just so common in the nursing profession and they'd all be standing there

and they'd start talking trash about a fellow co-worker and I would just turn around and walk away so they always thought I was weird because I would just walk away in the middle of conversations and I just thought you're talking about her that way I'm sure when I'm not here you're talking about me that way and I don't trust you for that and I thought that I was better because I didn't say the things out loud and so it really was an interesting perspective on something that I hadn't considered anything I needed to work on

and so there kind of came this moment where I had to decide was I going to go any further or was I just going to turn around and go back at this point but all of a sudden all this resentment and anger boiled up in me at God it came spilling out I couldn't have stopped it and I remember like thinking could I sucked that thought back in and and I just couldn't just all of this hurt came out and I said look you're supposed to be this great God and you you're supposed to love

us and and you're supposed to want our good but when my husband left you didn't do anything to heal that you know I prayed and prayed to heal that marriage and and that he would be faithful and all these things and you didn't do that and it hurt me but that's not even the point the point is it hurt my children these are little kids you can't even intervene for little kids I mean what kind of love is that of a father I would remember you know my ex-husband saying he was going to send something

in the mail and he'd say that to my kids and you know my youngest would walk out to the mailbox every day thinking something was going to be there and nothing was going to be there and I knew it and I'm like how could you do that how how could you not intervene and change his heart or something not have those kids have to go through that and he's like oh my goodness you've completely misunderstood me let me show you and so this scene unfolds and it's me in the future so when this whole thing

happened I only had one grandchild and he was two and in the scene he's five and I'm sitting in these bleachers next to my son my grandson is on the field he's playing soccer and he's running up and down the field and he's tan and you can see the light on his hair and he's smiling and he just just has all this energy so alive you know and I'm looking at him and it's just amazing that i'm like wow there's so much that goes into that creation you know and um my son looks at me

and it gets me every time he looks at me and he says Mom I'm gonna be the dad to him that I deserved and I thought okay if that's what this was for if that's what the suffering was for to break this cycle of fathers who aren't doing what they're supposed to do in this family then okay I'm willing to take one for the team if we can fix it for everybody after us and what was funny is that situation actually played out when my grandson was five years old and it was this confirmation to

me that I hadn't imagined all of this and that near-death experience had really happened it's funny because you you kind of go back and forth it's such a huge thing to believe and so in that moment I was like I had to decide whether I was going to go on this next leg of the journey with God or not and be okay with it that was the big part be okay with it and I remember standing there thinking okay let's do it as soon as I said that this light from him kind of a piece

of the light swirled off and it came around my feet and it came into me through my toes and I could feel it tingling and vibrating and it came up through my legs and it got to my middle and and I felt it like wrapping around it was like a cloak made of light and I could feel it going around my internal organs like you know how when something bad happens you have that awful feeling in your gut that kind of visceral reaction it was healing those visceral reactions I had had over a lifetime that

were making me sick and it started to move up I felt it go into my chest and I felt it go around into my heart and this thing's kind of swirling around and it comes up I can feel it in my neck and my neck was really warm and it came out of my mouth and as it came out of my mouth I started singing and my tongue was glowing and I'm a terrible singer and I was singing like super good like you know go to an award show and ask Penny to sing kind of

good and I was like oh my gosh I hope if I go back I can keep that because my husband will love that because he's a musician and so then the light starts going up and I can feel it behind my eyes but I closed my eyes I didn't want to let it out and so I squeezed my eyes shut and it shot out through my eyelashes and it hit the light that was around me and it bounced back in and then like surged into my brain and I could feel it going through every little

curve and fold in my brain and as it would go through is the light would touch every little neuron in my brain I would know things I would know everything about the world every question I'd ever had every question anybody had ever had and I remember in that moment thinking oh my gosh this is amazing there's no way he's going to let me have this and so it you know it goes through my brain and then it it stops and all of that knowledge is gone and or a good amount of it and um we're

going to now travel through my DNA and so he takes my hand and it's like we're flying together and we're going through these Loops this twirling of my DNA it was so fast like I'd never flown that fast before and all of a sudden we get to this point in the DNA and we just come to a dead stop like hitting a wall and I looked at him and I knew I had to decide you know are you going to stay are you going to go and I was like oh no I'm staying he says

that they're like oh yeah you know I wanted to stay and it was my decision but as soon as I said it I knew it was wrong I knew I knew like I had made this decision a long time ago and that I needed to go back and I started thinking about how I'd lived my life I just started stacking up these bricks you know so here was the brick that was my husband cheating on me and here was the brick that was our marriage failing and and I just kept stacking up all these hurts

you know throughout a lifetime and I had eventually built myself a jail because I didn't want to get hurt again and so in my life I'd go to work and I was pleasant people liked working with me and I loved working and but I didn't develop any friendships I didn't talk to anybody outside of work I would go home and get my stuff caught up and take care of my family but I was getting more and more socially phobic I was having trouble even answering phone calls and I was just becoming more and more isolated

and nobody knew it but me you've built a jail and you're your own Jailer and you didn't even know it and I didn't want to come out you know I wanted to stay back in there I didn't want to be hurt anymore and that was the dark place that was the void I made that I had walled myself off from all these people and created this spiritually dark place and spent what felt like 10 years in our time in that dark place but I always tell people I'm like I don't think this is what's going

to happen when you die for real a near-death experience isn't that I don't know that this is what happens when you actually physically die and don't come back this is what happened to me and I do think God personalizes these experiences because he knows you're going back so you know I was thinking okay I need to go back because I I haven't lived yet and so I decide to go back and as soon as I make the decision the light starts pulling back and I start pulling away and I immediately become frantic like shaking and

crying and and God's like you know it's okay and I said wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait and so he stops and I said just let me remember it because I'm worried if I go back and I can't remember it I'll lose all hope and I wake up and I'm in this hospital room and this nurse is standing there and I was astonished I like I hadn't expected it was like this sudden throw into back into your body right and and it just it was crazy I like all of a sudden I had

density again that really sucked and and my whole body hurt I mean I'd been in a coma and on a ventilator for like five days or something the nurse is sitting there and immediately I say I was with God and she's like oh that's nice dear you know she Taps my hand and I'm like no I mean just a minute ago I was with God like God the God and she's like oh that's nice to hear let me go get your family and I'm like I'm in a religious Hospital like you would think people would

be like oh my gosh that's so cool what did he look like no no no right so my family comes in and my sister comes in what was so weird is and I can't the time has really jumbled there but there had been a point when I was on the other side that I had seen my sister in the waiting room sitting with my son there were these chairs along the wall the corner chair was empty the chair next to it was empty my son was sitting in the next chair my sister had her purse

between them and she was sitting in this chair and there were these bathrooms off to the right I had never seen this waiting room before but I mean that's the perfect description of it and she reaches into her purse and she's crying and they're talking about how I don't have any of my last wishes ordered up would I want to be kept alive on a ventilator all this kind of thing and she starts crying she pulls this blue Kleenex out of her purse and that was the thing I keyed in on I'm like wow I

wonder where she got blue Kleenex that's amazing And even though they made blue creams and that's like this huge moment but they all come in and and you know I had seen what they had talked about in there and I said I saw what you posted online and there it was you know she had posted that it was a message to my daughter I think you know hang on I'm coming so I'm telling them I'm like I was with God and they're like oh that's that's nice you know Mom we're we're so glad you're back

no you and the nurse is like okay let's you know let's let her rest so that she runs them out and they close the light they close the sliding door in the room and pull the curtain and they turn off the lights and I think it was like the first time the lights had been off in that room and and I'm in there by myself it's really quiet and all of a sudden God Appears in the corner of the room and it scares me because you don't expect him just to pop in and so I

scream and he starts cracking up laughing and I'm like I said oh my God you scared me I said I thought you were gone he's like I'm God I'm never gone and I'm like well I know that but you don't just pop into rooms you know and so we were kind of having this chuckle over it he said I want you to share this message with people and so he gave me this message I'll have to pull it up I always have to read it it was just this most beautiful thing that anybody had ever

written and he's like I want you to share that with the world so I was like wow that's the most beautiful thing anybody's ever said to me and I'm absolutely not sharing that with anybody else I'm keeping that for myself right so I didn't share that for a very long time and I went into these respiratory failures 18 times over two and a half years we could not figure out what was wrong with me I mean we had everything from oh you're just anxious I'm like why would the emergency room intubate me for anxiety that

doesn't make any sense and this doctor just this one doctor in particular was like don't let them intubate you anymore and you know we don't just intubate people because they say they're having trouble breathing we do Labs we see that they're going into respiratory failure but he didn't believe me and he ended up having to come back that day and intubate me himself and I have a friend named Brian Smith who I'd known from a Facebook group on people who'd had near-death experiences and Brian had asked me over and over again would I please come

to Cincinnati and speak to their ions Group International Association for near-death studies and every time I said no I made up an excuse that I couldn't do it because I had such social anxiety and so I kept having these episodes I kept going into respiratory failure I didn't meet God anymore after that until the last time and so on that 18th time we finally had a diagnosis we knew that I had Mast Cell Activation disorder and it was causing just unprovoked anaphylaxis and the doctors had told me generally what happens is it either goes into

remission at around two and a half or three years or you die and we don't we don't have any way to fix it so at the two and a half year point I had an attack I went into respiratory failure I popped out of my body and I was there with God and I'm like I'm done this is ridiculous you know here I had this great experience and I'm still sick it's awful and you never knew when it was going to hit we could be out to dinner we could be sleeping just anything it's terrifying

you know and I remember we would go to the emergency room and they knew me and they'd bring the crash card in and and I'd be looking at my husband crying and he's like it's going to be okay honey just be in a coma for a couple of days and then you know we'll get you off the ventilator you're going to be okay and and I just didn't want to live like that anymore and I I told him I'm like just take me I can't do it anymore I can't put my family through it I

just can't do it I can't live in constant fear that I'm gonna die any minute and he looks at me and he says it's not me it's you I'm just so offended I was like what you're God you can fix this and he's like no this is you he said I keep you said you wanted to go back you said you wanted to live and I'm like yes and he's like but you're not doing it and I said well I'm dying every five minutes I mean over two and a half years 18 times in the

hospital dying it doesn't leave a lot of room for doing other things and he said I keep putting people in your path to love and things in your path to do and you keep saying no you said you wanted to live so if you want to live when those things come into your path you need to say yes and I thought this was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard and I said okay so you're telling me that if I go back I've got this weird rare autoimmune disorder if I go back and somebody asks

me to talk about this and I say yes then I'm gonna be okay and he's like yeah like it was just that simple and I'm like okay this sounds ridiculous but you're God so I'll give you this one so I go back and as soon as I get home from the hospital my friend Brian messages me and he's like hey how are you doing I wanted to check on you I know you've been in the hospital and so would you consider coming up and giving a and I said yes before I could stop myself and

I'm like oh crap you know and I didn't know how to be like back out of it and and I said just hang up now because if you stay on the phone I'm going to come up with a reason I can't do it just to hang up and so I went and I did that talk and that was the first yes I gave and I've given a yes to every talk since and I've never been in the hospital again for that disorder it's just been in remission I mean I didn't think it would work but

here we are and and it's so funny because people are like oh so do you think it was like a psychosomatic thing and I'm like no because I don't think you can make your respiratory system fail just because of stress or anxiety or worry or whatever I think that healing is much more broad than we think it is it's it's not just a pill it's not just finding out what that little problem is there's the mind and the body and the spirit and God but I'll get some pushback on that from people and and it's

funny how people are so closed-minded and and don't they can't accept anything other than what they believe about God and and it frightens them to think outside it so I hear you know I hear I had all of this and I'm thinking I'm going to start telling my story I'm going to start telling people I'm going to start talking at churches you know people need to know this that that God really does love us and that he made us on purpose and and I remember when I was over there with him we were like back

in time and I could see the moment when he thought me up and I was like how did I forget that I was with you before I was ever here you know that you made me I existed in your mind first and and it just was such a great thing to know because I'd always felt so separate from God like God was this separate entity and God showed me you know as we were going through my DNA we stopped at that point and he's like do you see me I'm like well of course I see

you you're all around me and he's like no he pointed to this spot in my genetic code he's like do you see me and I looked and I was blown away I was like oh my gosh still gets me oh my gosh and he said penny a person can deny that their father is their father but we can always come back to this and prove that he is their father so they can say what they want but I'm here I'm in you all this time I feel like I've been searching for this distant God when

part of him is in me just like part of your mom and part of your dad or in your DNA that doesn't make you God it doesn't make you your mom or dad but the creator of the universe is embedded in your genetic code part of him is in there it's just amazing and and I just never thought of that and it really made me question everything in life like all of the crap I believed about myself and all the stuff I believed about the world and all the stuff I was willing to put up

with and I just started questioning everything about my faith and I remember my husband came home one day and he was like you know what I'm gonna come home one day and your head's gonna be shaved and you're going to tell me that you've become a Buddhist monk and I looked at him and I said would you love me less if that happened because we were really having a hard time and I was super weird I get it and he thought about it and I said you know I was reading this book and it said

that 70 of people who have a near-death experience end up divorced and we just decided in that moment that no matter how weird it was or what process I was going through to try to sort it all out we were gonna we were gonna stick to it we were gonna do it we weren't going to be the 70 percent but I feel sorry for him because there was a lot we were in Walmart one day and I'm talking to him and I you know how you get that sense like somebody's looking at you I can

feel something somebody looking at me and so I look out the window and there's a rock in the parking lot and I can see the energy coming off of The Rock and I could feel this rock loving me because everything that's here I'll you know I always tell people if God's not real then explain Beauty to me what's the point of it we could be just a black and white Creation with no color no depth no difference if we were just kind of robots automatons put here to just do whatever but beauty beauty is a

gift you go outside and you should be able to see God all around you every tree is him saying look I love you I made you this tree and the tree understands that energy everything has consciousness and so it's funny how it changes you and and it's so weird because you're going through all this craziness with being super sick and you know I think everybody assumes you meet God and you come back and everything's perfect and it's not it was an absolute train wreck and I mean it took me three years to even be able

to put it put words to what had happened to me and I would read them and I would think this is awful this is like just like doing a mud drawing you know this doesn't capture it at all and and it was so frustrating to me that I'm so limited by language and and that I can't tell it to you like it was in that place but you know I'm like you just got to keep telling it you've got to keep telling it it'll come across people will sense it initially when I was telling my

family I think they were like well you know she just came out of a coma and off some pretty crazy drugs so that's probably what it was and and it's funny because I I get those points from people they're like oh it's just a DMT reaction in your brain or whatever it's just hallucinations well I can tell you as a nurse patients who are having drug-induced hallucinations that it is not cohesive it's very confusing it's erratic it's scary and then it's Blissful and it's just all over the place and they're not able to tell the

sequence the same every time it's a complete Hallucination is completely different from this and then people say oh well you know when your body's deprived of oxygen when your brain's deprived of oxygen you put off these chemicals and that's what you saw and I'm like okay but I was on a ventilator and my oxygen levels were controlled and perfectly normal so that doesn't explain it either and it also doesn't explain how I knew about the blue Kleenex or what my sister posted online or what my daughter was wearing that day in the hospital or what

the drip rate was on the drug that I was on and what my blood pressure was I mean there's just no way you could know that so it's interesting to me I think there's always I go through and read the comments on some of the talks that I've done and I'm always so honored that somebody would stop and take the time and listen to my story you know people are busy there's a lot going on there's a lot of noise in the world but people are looking for Hope as bad as things are and as

adversarial as things seem right now ultimately everybody still wants hope so I'll go back and I'll look at the comments on these talks and people will just reveal just the most tragic things in their lives they've had something horrible happen they've lost somebody or whatever and they still they're still reaching out for hope you know and then I'll get the people that are just ugly in the chat you know they're like oh this is a total lie and this person you can tell she's just making this up and it's so funny I almost have a

warmth in my heart for them I don't know who hurt you but the fact is you were charged with being the light on a hill and you continue to shoot your own wounded every day Love Changes people judgment does not judgment makes people cling harder to the things that they want to do and so I would share the story and when I share it with Healthcare professionals I think I get about the same degree of skepticism that I get in the general public and you can kind of feel it you know you know that you

shouldn't give another detail because this person is really prickly about it and how a patient is received when they have that kind of experience like what is the healthcare team's reaction to it and generally it's dismissive or oh that's nice every once in a while you'll get a nurse or somebody that's curious but it's definitely something you're encouraged not to talk about just by the reaction because you don't you know when they write that you're crazy or delusional in your chart it follows you that chart doesn't go away and so I think that's probably why

so many people and I don't know how they do it I don't know how you have something this huge happen to you I mean it's like a fire in your bones and you never to speak of it because you're worried about the reaction you're going to get it's got to be excruciating I don't know how people do it that shockingly I'll say something and somebody will say oh my gosh I had a near-death experience when I was I never told anybody and so I'm like I'll just keep pushing you know I'll just keep talking about

it and I'll just keep making my mark and doing what I can where I'm at and I'm going to trust that the the ripple effect of that's going to be huge and I've actually seen that so that's that's pretty gratifying we're closer for sure we're now studying this there's been some good research on people who are in the hospital for heart attacks and having some Interventional procedure to help with the heart attack whether it's a bypass or they're working on a blockage or whatever I think in that study they monitored the brainwave patterns of these

people and then if the people experienced clinical death they then asked them you know did you see anything that sort of thing I think it was about 50 50 but there's that group they're just not going to go there there's no science and it's kind of that materialist view of the world you know if everything has to be something that can that is material that can be explained and and there can't be anything that exists outside that and and I always ask people and I'm like well how do you explain things like you're in a

group of people you're in a room full of people and you feel somebody looking at you I mean there's the energy of everybody in that room I'm like how many times have you felt somebody staring at you and looked the wrong way first never never you always look and you look right at that person who was staring at you and then they're like all uncomfortable and they look away in a room of 50 people you can pin that down so you can't tell me there's there's not something beyond the material and I think that a

lot of people are starting to bring all of that together I participated in a book with Dr Barbara mango and Lynn Miller it's a book about anomalous experiences and there's been some really good research done on the type of people who have out of body experiences and near-death experiences and aerial sightings things like that past life memories I'm hoping we're going to get into a more kind of holistic understanding of who people are and how their spirituality and their emotional status all plays into that we'll get there I just think it's going to take a

while and when you're on the other side you realize that we are connected to everyone and and even if you know if somebody's getting murdered across town here I don't know them but that's injuring me in some way because we're all connected and I think once you've been on the other side and you've realized that connection it's really hard to let it go when you get here and so for a while I kind of felt like I had one foot on the other side and one foot on this side and it was really difficult it

was a very hard path to walk because I would get these visions and things and then they would turn out to be true and and a lot of times it was very negative things like you know a murder or things like that and I would get details that were needed but I found that spiritually it was it was killing me I just couldn't do it anymore because I could feel it so if I would see how someone was murdered I would see it because it was like it was happening to me and so I've got

to block that out I've got to put a division between me and that part of the spirit world that exists you know those people their bodies die but their Spirits are forever and just to keep me safe and well and and not going crazy I'm going to have to put a separation there but every once in a while you know I'll just I'll get something strong on someone like I did with Brian and and I can't keep it to myself but for the most part I kind of separate myself from it because I find as

soon as you say it out loud that people come out of the woodwork they're like my sister died you know are you getting anything from her and I'm like look guys it's not a hat trick I can't you know I can't just look at you and be like I know it you know I it doesn't work like that and so I pretty much block it off because I think there's a lot of work to be done here there's a lot of hurting people and those things tend to sort themselves out one way or the other

without my intervention so I try not to get in the middle of them it's interesting where I had done some end-of-life care with this thing called a terminal wean so somebody's on the ventilator and they or their family decides but particularly when that person decides that they're done they don't want to they don't want to be kept alive on life support and they want to be allowed to just naturally pass and it's just like the most neglected stage of life we celebrate births and weddings and graduations but when it comes to death everybody's like oh

I don't know what to do and they're you know it's all weird for them and and I'm like this is a transition just like any other so those patients would make that decision and there was always some fear that went with it and I would always say to them what are you scared of what what's the thing you're most worried about for tomorrow when we turn off the ventilator and because you know they could die immediately they could it could take hours you know you don't know it's scary and um almost a hundred percent of

the time they were worried for their family I don't want my family to see me suffer I don't want my family to see me gasping for breath or they were worried that there was going to be excruciating pain and I always thought it was important to ask that question because those are both things you can address and so I would say okay you know yes we definitely want your family here and we're going to make sure that you're comfortable you know we don't want you to have an agonizing death there's things we can do to

ease that and make your transition onto the other side easier you know and not traumatic for your family and so I'd always bring coffee in and drinks and and I would tell the family because this was usually planned I would tell the family ahead of time bring pictures we can write down what what she remembers about those pictures or what her maybe if she can't speak what her reaction was when you started talking about the story that went with that picture and you'll have that forever it's just so humbling you know that somebody would accept

you into that Circle because it's just the most intimate thing you can do and you'd see these moments of Lucidity even in people who were slipping away they'd hear something and you could see them light up and and I would have these families come back to me and this was before my near-death experience a family came back to me one time and they said you know I want to thank you for what you did when my mom passed away and and I'm like oh you know no problem you're welcome and that lady looked at me

and she said it was the best awful experience of my life I thought that's beautiful you know everything has such depth there's good and bad in everything and that woman in that moment could acknowledge both and let them exist together but I retired after my near-death experience because I just was so sick and so I didn't go back to work but I still have a lot of interaction I do a lot of patient education and you've got so many people that are scared to die and who are just terrified to die because they think there's

nothing they want to fight death to The Bitter End and I'm like it's coming for all of us you guys and it's not death you're either alive here or you're super alive on the other side and we don't need to fear it it is a big question I people ask me a lot of time they're like how do you know what your purpose is people think it's this mystical thing and and I did I was like what is my purpose what was I put on this Earth for you know I don't feel like I've figured

it out yet and then it just finally dawned on me that I was making it way too hard I'm like your purpose is whatever lands in front of you that day the lady at the grocery store who needed 70 some cents so that she didn't have to put her groceries back and the elderly person who's struggling to get out of their car we we dismiss how important these things are we used to be so much more connected we knew our neighbors now you know if somebody comes to your door and you're like who's at the

door did you did you did somebody say they were coming over I don't know who that is dude is it a Salesman you know we're like this phobic of interaction and I think kind of to find your spiritual path and your purpose and all of that you got to get your hands dirty you got to let some people in you've got to have some crap go sideways you have to help somebody who takes advantage of you it's just you just have to live you know and and not shelter yourself so much from these interactions and

relationships with people especially people you don't agree with or you don't know and so I asked God I'm like just put whoever you need me to talk to in my path and I will do my best to share love with them and it really is that simple you know the most important thing we can do is not isolate and not keep silent I see so many people that are just almost suicidal it's heartbreaking to me you know because we only have our own experiences to interpret everything through so if you believe that you are now

because of an experience or because somebody told you so you're a victim that's who you are that is how you see everything if something goes wrong you assume it's because that person had something against you and and you go through your whole life because that's the filter you're looking through and it's a huge problem and I'm like the thing is is if you come to believe that your identity is a victim you never become a Survivor and you never become an overcomer you're just a victim and I'm like even if it's true even if it's

true that this little kid is going to be discriminated against and he's going to have to work harder for everything and you know he may face this sort of issue over and over and again through his life does it bring any good to tell him that even if it were true I wouldn't say it to me it would be much better to say this life is so crazy and so complex and there's so many different people who are perceiving the exact same things a different way because of who they are and what they've been through

but you can overcome all of that and share stories of people who have overcome all of that and you know in your heart what's right or wrong I always tell people look if you were making a decision and you're having to justify the decision you're going to make it's wrong period you never have to justify the right decision you you just do it because you know that's the right thing you have to talk yourself into it but it depends on the the timing you know sometimes you have to wait sometimes you have to pray sometimes

you have to do and you're not always right that would be a good one for people to embrace you're not always right I feel like there's such a spiritual void in the world but I don't think God's design is for ultimate destruction and Calamity I don't now do I think that people with power can push it to that absolutely and ultimately you're going to be okay so you know don't let that cause you to lose a lot of sleep and and live your life and anxiety I find everything that's going on incredibly fascinating it's like

the most interesting novel I've ever read but don't fall into it we have to kind of separate ourselves from all of that chatter that's going on turn off your TV believe me if something bad enough happens that you need to react to someone's going to tell you and you've got to pull yourself out of that experiment that's going on where they're just trying to have us at each other's throats it's interesting because you can destroy an entire people without ever firing a shot you can just turn them against each other but there's nothing in me

that wants bad for you or bad for anybody else and I will help you and and I will do it out of a pure heart not because I just don't want you to think I'm a bad person and most people are that way and I think we have to start realizing that we're not here by accident I know this all seems chaotic and super scary and like it's it's just all gonna Crash and Burn but we're here right now the timing of your being here right now is not an accident God thought you up in

his head for a while he could have put you in any time frame but he put you in this one you're here for a reason and you need to figure out what that reason is and part of figuring that out is engaging with people and having community and knowing who your neighbors are and knowing what's going on around you and engaging in a kind and productive way in that you know don't be a force for Destruction we keep looking outside of ourselves for answers and that is the problem if you want something done in your

house and you want it done right you don't send your nine-year-old boy to do it generally right you do it yourself because it's an important task and it needs to be done properly and so I feel like we have to get back to that we have to get back to being involved in our community being involved in our local area the decisions that are being made knowing our neighbors knowing what the needs are in your community I mean you've got people living in communities and they have no idea how prolific their homeless population is or

their population of people who are addicted to drugs or your number of elderly shut-ins nobody knows these people just go invisible pretty soon you start losing hope and we've all walked through like this and and now it's a hot mess and and the answer to that is re-engaging and believing that you are the light of the world God is in you and people are looking for that and you know just showing people love every day is plenty it's plenty it's way more than a lot of people are doing God noticed the change I gave a

woman in a grocery store and thought it was impactful enough to show that is the only good thing I'd done in my life he knew there were others but that was to him that was the most important thing just this spontaneous act of kindness [Music] and so this was the message that God had given me and I know I'm kind of like reading off my computer now but I have to be able to see it so he said such Folly to think that anything escapes my knowing as when you were with me all at once

all that I allowed you to know you knew no words were spoken nor were they shouted I whispered them into your spirit I discreetly filled you with knowing knowing flowed into you as effortlessly as taking a breath is it not so no truer words have ever been spoken or written The Great I Am is in your core The Great I Am is the light even when I am Hidden Still I am is my energy charge sending me over each synapse in your brain even though small fibers knew that I am they Rose and they fell

to the Rhythm I created to the symphony I conducted I composed I consider it a tragic comedy of arrogance when man denies what the smallest innervation knows man thinks he acts and moves outside my knowledge how could it be so I say I Proclaim he does not his own fibers clutch themselves laughing at the idea I am the flower the wind the rain the sinew the marrow the rock the author the maker the touch that set in motion all that you see all that you know and all that you do not see or know I

knit you I put breath in you I'm coated in every cell every nanosecond of time falls in Step as I will it sow I am in you I am all even when you perceive nothing still I am there as I tell you this here and now pressing my truth into your breast your very heart presses it further in so he had given me that message and and I didn't share it for a really long time because it felt like the most beautiful love letter anybody had ever written and I wanted it for myself and then

got kind of impressed on me you know I asked you to share that and when you don't share it it's theft and I'm like well shoot and you know I can't steal so I'll share it but I I had a reflection at the end that I had written as I thought about that I was so profoundly Changed by my experience I'm open to being heard and being loved I'm learning that hurt people hurt people I try to use kind words to turn away anger it doesn't always work but a soft word rarely hurts it seems

easier to discern the difference between my own internal chatter and the prompting of the Holy Spirit God continues to do profound things in and through me I've definitely had many difficult times why that's an understatement but I see them differently I can choose to let circumstances break me or take those opportunities to become more I try to engage with people in a more real and meaningful way I'm learning to be more authentic and vulnerable especially when being vulnerable is hard if I feel sad I'm much less likely to hide it if I feel anger I'm

more likely to temper it with love or at least understanding I am flawed and beautifully so love carries us while pain and mistakes build us every awful thing is an opportunity we can shrink from it or rise to it and I choose to rise I used to build walls to protect myself but the thing with wall building is this while walls do keep people out they also keep you in you make yourself a captive and unwittingly become your own Jailer you limit all potential I've been taken down those walls every day still I tear down

a bit more and one brick at a time my prison is looking a lot like Rubble these days it lays all around me and I refuse to put it back up I refuse I'm climbing on top of the remains in the rubble I see freedom on the other side and I'm claiming it I'm taking back all I surrendered I refuse to make myself a slave or a captive not after all God has done for me and not after how he loved me and healed me he saw me all of me the good and the bad

and instead of hiding from him in shame I chose to surrender in his presence in that moment when I laid myself bare before God he took all my shame and vanquished it he took all the good in me and magnified it and he made me more and I refused to squander it God's giving me a do-over he's giving me life and love and people to connect with and that's all in front of me now and rather than hide I choose to say yes I won't shrink from it I hope his light still shines from me

I hope it continues to just pour out because to keep it for only myself would be theft to give it is my game loving others is a choice and that choice heals me every day [Music] foreign [Music]