Hide your crazy - Oct. 1

My walk-in closet... This is my “place of sanction”, where I go when I’m deliriously mad and stressed, where I go to think and write, where I go to get as much peace as possible in my house of stampeding elephants and fighting hyenas, and yes, where I eat stuff I don’t want to share with all of my offspring. Before you judge me, think about how hard it is to split a chocolate bar or a package of Now-n-Laters, 67 ways. My closet doesn’t judge me. It’s seen a lot of tears, turned a deaf ear to a lot of angry words, heard a lot of prayers and witnessed a whole lot of me laughing at my own stories…Because let’s face it. I’m hilarious. Wink, wink!

  The first thing I do when I enter my closet, before I write my story each week, is pray that God guide me. Whether it’s with relatable honesty or mistakes of mine, it is all meant to quiet mommas’ aching hearts, remind you of your own great memories, give encouragement or to help someone in one way or another. However, this particular story is one I have prayed extra hard about. The people in this story will remain anonymous.

  A good friend of mine’s mom... Let’s call my friend “G” and call her mom “Z”... Had an experience this summer that really shook her up. It shook up the whole family. G had awoken to a phone call from her brother, concerned that Mrs. Z was having a heart attack. Although it was against her mother’s wishes, G immediately picked up her mom and rushed her to the hospital. She was experiencing atrial fibrillation, which is a lot like a heart attack. Mrs. Z’s heart was pulsing so fast, the only way to save her was to actually kill her.

  Sounds crazy, right? But this is actually a doctor-induced procedure that is done frequently in the case of an emergency, by using certain drugs. I want to say that I am no doctor. I am only relating my understanding of the medical side of this story with reference from G and a medical professional I know. These certain drugs (ie: Adenosine) are meant to stop the heart for around six seconds, then start it again. Sometimes it doesn’t work and they have to give another dose, other times the heart doesn’t restart, resulting in needing to be shocked and/or needing to be injected with drugs like Epinephrine and Amiodarone.

 So in order to save her life, Mrs. Z was given the medicine that stopped her heart. The first dose did not work. They had to give her two. She also had to be shocked with defibrillators to be brought back. The length of time she stayed “flat-lined” is unclear. This is the very vivid, real and shocking story of her few moments of death.

  “I felt a peace... As if I were floating...” Mrs. Z mentioned that it was a calming feeling without anxiety. Suddenly a “bright, white light” engulfed her. In this light, she saw her six kids (including G) and her three grandkids, G’s children. It was like they were with her in this blindingly beautiful, white light.

  Then all of a sudden, a thick darkness consumed her and she saw nothing. Just blackness. But felt something very strong. The feeling of peace was gone and she said the feeling that came with the consuming darkness was not a good one.

 “Then I suddenly took a deep breath and came back (to my body) and opened my eyes to see my daughter, G standing by me.” It’s speculated that this was when she was “brought back,” because she opened her eyes there on the table. The strange thing is that G was not standing by her when this happened. She wasn’t allowed into the room.

  “Once again I floated up and into a peaceful, white light… Then saw a tunnel before me and again, everything went dark...” She describes it as being pulled into this dark tunnel against her will. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Only consuming darkness. Nobody and nothing. Nothing except that feeling again. She also describes the feeling as one of despair and sadness, a feeling that she would never see her children and grandchildren again.

  “Again, I came to (my body) and saw G standing beside me, amongst the doctors… I didn’t want to go back to that darkness anymore.”

  G, again, was not in the room by her mother’s side, but was told that her mother instantly reached out for her, calling her name as if she literally saw her standing there.

  It took her a while to mention this, but finally she described the darkness as evil saying, “I know it was the devil. He is trying to take me.” She stopped her story there.

  You see, G has accepted Jesus into her heart. She has brought her family up in church, very much unlike how she was brought up. Although they are still pretty young, her children expressed a hunger for the Lord and accepted Him into their hearts. Mrs. Z, G’s mom, has practiced a certain religion but G says her mom has not accepted Jesus as her savior.

  Mrs. Z is still very bothered by the experience and finds it hard to talk about. The peaceful, white light had her “saved” loved ones in it, while the evil darkness ripped her from them and drug her so far, she couldn’t see even the tiniest speck that peaceful light holding them. Could the image of G, which she desperately reached for when her heart was defibrillated back to life, be an angel that took her back and forth on this shocking journey?

  Whether you believe this story to be an actual step into hell, or a vivid dream, is up to you. I believe with all my heart that God is real, as is heaven and even hell. I believe Mrs.Z was given a very rare and important testimony. Please keep Mrs. Z in your prayers, as well as my friend, G, and her family.

  Death is inevitable. If anyone reading this has any doubt, questions or even curiosity about what will happen once that moment comes, I pray that you seek knowledge on this subject. A recurring question, that is only human to wonder, often plagues peoples’ minds. “What if it’s all just a fairytale? What if there is no God or devil?”  Okay… but what if you’re wrong?

  Kyle Smith of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Pittsburg and Ruben Villanueva of South Jefferson Baptist Church in Mt. Pleasant, extend a welcome for anyone to come talk to them in private about this kind of stuff.

 Woohoo! We got serious this week, didn’t we? God Bless!