Penny Wittbrodt's NDE via Zoom, June 10, 2020

oh good we're recording so welcome to the DFW friends of ions meeting we meet the first I'm assuming the second Wednesday of the month every month except for August at 7 p.m. Central time and we go for a couple of hours and since we have been using zoom as our platform it allows us to call on live speakers who could be anywhere in the world so our meetings generally will either have a live speaker will watch a video and we'll follow up with Q&A and general discussion I haven't ever been to a meeting where all we do is kind of circle up and tell stories you know or talk about our own experiences but I understand that that's happened as well the only caveat that that we have at ions is that we don't like to see a lot of preaching and proselytizing and that kind of stuff and we've never really had much trouble with that but I do mention it and I would like to introduce our speaker for this evening it's penny what is it what broke yes yes and I met penny on Facebook and serendipitously and then I just thought well let's just see if she'd like to tell her story to our group so and she was very graciously said that she would do so so much more to add to that if if there's nothing else to add I'll just let penny begin telling her story and we can go from there that sounds good I did want to say that I so I spent time in Texas so I feel like I kind of am attached to you guys I grew I went to high school in Granbury Texas and graduated from high school there which is somewhere around Fort Worth I'm not sure and and then I went to college in isn't that terrible it's been that long I'll be fifty this years where is it Stephenville Stephenville yes they had hitching posts outside the Piggly Wiggly when I lived there for the Amish people I've never seen anything like it but yeah I went to college there for a semester before I moved back to Michigan and roundabouts got to Kentucky but anyway I just I really like Texas growing up anyway bro and I'm a nurse I got my nursing license in 2002 and I did mostly critical care my entire nursing career I did a little bit of home health and some community volunteer nursing for people that didn't have insurance and what else did I do get a little bit of nursing home stuff not a whole lot but mostly just critical care or critical care step-down so where people are in the ICU and they've kind of exceeded their number of Medicare days so they'll put him in a step-down unit and and that's what I was doing until I don't know about 6 years ago I guess and I had had I had been attacked by a patient so we were putting a line in a patient on IV line in his neck and he was lucid and everything he's an eye doctor and he just was mean and we had him in one of those reclining chairs and our director knew that he was violent because he had knocked her down on the day of admission but she didn't tell any of us that and we had these daily safety meetings and she just forgot to mention it I guess and so he had one of those beds I don't know if you've seen and we can take patients beds and put him really close to the floor and any would get out of bed I mean that falls so we had his bed really low and so I'm in between that bed and the reclining chair and the doctor is on the other side whatever so the patient just I was kind of walking him through what we were doing you know you're gonna feel something cold on your neck and then a sting and and he just kind of bolted up in that chair and he said I don't give consent for this and he punched me in the side of the head and I fell between the bed and the chair and he hit the doctor and knocked the tray off and the doctor was trying to the chair to pull him off me but couldn't figure out how to get it unlocked and so he he just kind of came over the chair and just kept punching me on the side of the head and so I fight finally attack here's the whole mess and comes over and unlocks the chair and gets him off me and and I finished my shift because I'm a nurse and that's what you do the next day I woke up and I was having trouble if I would turn my head to the side my vision would get weird and I thought man something's not right and my wrist was hurting in my elbow or my wrist was hurting in my shoulder was hurting and so I called in and said that I needed to see the doctor so they sent me over and I had broken my wrist and torn my rotator cuff and they didn't diagnose anything with my neck at the time well that was in August and in November I it was getting worse if I turned my head to the left at all I would completely lose my vision and so the the arm guy that I had said we're gonna send you for an MRI and see what's going on and so he sent me and he said this guy is really conservative it'll be no matter what's wrong with you it's gonna be a year before he does surgeries just like that and so I went on a Tuesday and he showed me my MRI and he said this is bad we have to do surgery this week and so he'd scheduled it for Thursday and I had to in the meantime go for this work comp evaluation and that was just disastrous and so I go and this doctor who like can't even be can't even get malpractice insurance anymore I go in with my husband and he's like oh she's got full range of motion on her neck and her arm and all these different things and looked at my MRI and said it was fine and I can remember when I went back to the doctor the day before my surgery he actually wrote and you won't see doctors do this much he wrote in the chart he said this person either doesn't know how to never read an MRI or he's a liar because there was no way you could look at that MRI and think it was okay and so they scheduled me for surgery the next day I had to get the declination of coverage service from work comp so my insurance would cover it and they told my husband they said you were and a half two hours tops well six hours because those disks in the between four or five the fourth and fifth cervical vertebra and the fifth and six had like exploded and there was just little pieces of disc everywhere so they they used hardware to screw my neck back together and got all of that disc out and they used I can't remember whether it was some kind of bone glue or cadaver bone because they talked about both but they used one of those so I had the surgery I went home I was in that stiff neck brace 24 hours a day for fehb you almost to March and by then I was kind of getting in the soft brace and then by August I still wasn't back to work because I couldn't do any lifting or anything I had some nerve damage that went down into my hand and I was just having a normal day it was in the kitchen with my daughter we're drinkin smoothies and I suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe and I'm like what is this you know at first it was kind of I don't know if y'all I've ever had that where you you feel like you just have to keep taking really deep sighing kind of breaths and it felt like that at first and then it felt like I couldn't swallow my spit and I'm like okay something's this is getting bad well I had a history of anaphylactic reactions to shellfish but I hadn't had any shellfish so but I knew what it felt like and so I was just getting worse and worse my lips were gluing up and and so I had epi pens there epinephrine and so I gave myself a shot and my son took me to the emergency room and so I get there and this is a small-town hospital and I had worked there for a little while because they were expanding their ICU so I had taken a job there to help with that and I went into the ER and when I saw the nurse I thought oh no I'm gonna die because I'm newer and she said you've already taken your epinephrine why would you come to the emergency room and I thought yes and definitely going to die today I said because people were supposed to come to the emergency room if they have to take up a nephron and she just thought the whole thing was foolishness and I was all broke out in hives I was looking up like this talking because it felt like if I put my head down I couldn't breathe and I was wheezing just very loud like I just looked awful and she put me in a wheelchair and she took me back and she said we don't have a room for you right now the rooms clean but we don't have a bed I said I don't care just put me in there and she said no we're not allowed to do that without a bed so she puts me in the hallway by myself and just leaves me there and so I'm getting worse and worse and I had my second EpiPen because they come in two packs and I thought I'm I'm gonna have to use this and so I give myself another ejection of epinephrine set in the hall for probably another half hour and then I developed Strider which is this kind of really high pitched breathing sound you get is your Airways closing and so a doctor heard it she came around the corner and she looked down the hall to see what was going on and she's like oh my god and they get me up in the bed and they can't get an IV because my veins are all flattened out from the anaphylaxis and they just throw everything and they're like come on let's get her across the hall and then I knew for sure I was going to die because we were going to the trauma room and so we we go across the hall we'd get into the trauma room and I've got nurses on either side injecting me with benadryl and more epinephrine and finally somebody gets a really janky IV and they start steroids and I was better for a little while like I'd do better for 15 or 20 minutes and then I it just would start all over again and so I kept having this refractory anaphylaxis and my husband gets there and he walks in and he sees me and he tells the doctor he says you need to intubate her you're you're gonna lose her airway and he says no no we've got plenty of time before that happens and he walks out of the room in five minutes later I quit breathing and fall over and almost as soon as my head hit that pillow I popped out of my body and so I was up above myself looking down and I didn't realize that was me and so I was looking down at this person in the bed and I thought man she looks rough she's probably not gonna live I hope she's okay and then I heard the code call go off and all these people run into the room and they and I knew who they were even though I was unconscious and they pushed down out into the hallway and he's standing in the hallway and I'm watching him and they get a little tongue blade open and they're going to intubate me and I didn't see that part so they they had the IV in and they were pulling drugs out into syringes and they gave those in the IV and then I was just out and so when I woke up like not in my body I was in the backseat of my sister's car who was driving from Wisconsin and I couldn't figure out how I'd gotten into the backseat of this car and it didn't feel right like I couldn't feel the the seat against my legs and I couldn't feel the back of the seat against my back and I didn't feel as thick as I normally do and it's like I didn't weigh the same or something that was really weird and so I so I had this idea I knew she didn't know I was in the backseat and I didn't know like if I leaned forward if I would scare her or it just as a strange situation and so it was pouring down rain and I thought what on earth why is she driving in this weather it's awful and I thought maybe something had happened to the kids or her husband and I leaned forward and she had the most awful outfit on and she's a redhead and she had clothes on that were completely mismatched and wrinkled and I thought did she dress in the dark and her hurt why is she dressed like was where is she going and she pulls over underneath the canopy at a gas station and she fishes out her phone and she gets that she opens her Facebook app and she types in hang on kiddo I'm coming and it was so weird to see that later because I'd seen her do it and then I was out again and so I come back to consciousness and I'm in this really dark like the darkest room you've ever been in and I didn't know how big it was like was I in a closet or was I in you know just a super dark Walmart I had no idea I didn't figure out how big it was but I still had this like image of me floating in this darkness like I knew what I look like even though there wasn't enough light and I felt this crazy pressure on me just my whole body like I thought maybe I was wrapped in something and so I took my hand and I ran it down my arm and there was nothing there and that really freaked me out and I'm crazy claustrophobic and I tried to move and I couldn't move and then I'm really freaking out because I'm so claustrophobic and I'm just trying to take breaths and there's so much weight on my chest I can't breathe and then I just go out again and so I wake back up and I'm still in the dark place and this goes on for a very long time if I had to put it in human years or earth years I guess it would have been ten years that's exactly what it felt like and I couldn't figure out why I was there how I'd gotten there I started wondering if the life that I was remembering had ever really happened I thought maybe I just made that up because I've been here for so long and I needed something to think about and you know maybe if it did exist maybe I did something wrong or something happened and I just got plucked out of it and nobody remembers me and I'm just lost somewhere and it was just crazy scary because I didn't didn't know how to get out of it and I would I started where I was just praying for the deep sleep that it would just come get me and swallow me up because I didn't want to wake up in that place anymore and so that would happen intermittently for a long long time and then one time I woke up and I something told me to lean forward and so I leaned forward and when I did I started to move forward a little bit I was like holy cow that's it you know if I mean forward I can move and so I leaned forward and then I started thinking forward you know and so I'm kind of like in this tilted position going this direction and the more I thought forward forward forward the faster I could go and so I see a light up ahead and I'm like I'm gonna I'm gonna aim for that there's something going on over there so I get to this light and it's coming out of what seems like a room and so there's this barrier and it looks like it's hard to describe it's like a thick membrane like I couldn't push through it and it looked distorted to look through it was clear but you know how they used to make this really thick these glass squares that they would use in bathrooms and it kind of looked like that or looking through broken ice or something like that and so I looked there and I couldn't tell what was on the other side but that's where the light was coming from and so I leaned forward a little bit closer and looked and the longer I looked the clearer it got on the other side and I could see a hospital bed and I'm like oh my gosh I'm alive that's me I'm alive this is amazing to get better I can get back in my body this would be incredible and it was just the first little bit of bright news that I'd have the whole time I was there and so I was watching me in the room and I could see the monitor that was over the bed that had all my vital signs on it and I looked at that and kind of assessed the vital signs and I thought that's where to kind of understand what all that means and then I looked at the IV pumps and they had different drugs hanging and I looked at the drip rates on the drugs and and I remember thinking to myself oh yes that's correct how do I know that and then I remembered I had been a nurse I had completely forgotten that and I thought okay and so I kind of summed me up I looked at the ventilator in the ventilator settings and I thought okay you're critical but stable so there's something to be worked with and I was restrained I had wrist restraints on tied to the bed and I noticed when I looked at the ventilator that my daughter was standing in front of it and so the bed was kind of like this she's over here to my right and the vents behind her and I can hear it doing its little churning bang and and I looked at her and she had this red shirt on it looks like kind of like a flannel shirt which I thought was weird because it was summer and she had it tied at the waist and I remember thinking how soft it looked I could see the fabric of it just really clearly and I was watching her and she kind of looked down at me laying on the bed and I felt her feelings like not empathy like I felt exactly what she was feeling the way she was feeling it with the intensity that she felt it and she was scared and she was worried and I could tell she was really scared I was going to die and so it just broke my heart that she was scared about that because I didn't want her to worry and I put my hands forward just kind of intuitively to grab her and pull her to me and my hands hit the wall and I lost it I was pounding on the wall and screaming and yelling I was so mad that I couldn't get through that wall and so I when I freaked out and started trying to beat up the wall I got sucked back into the dark place again and so when I woke up but but I knew how to move now so I woke up and I'm like okay let's see if it still works and I bent forward and I started to move and so I went back to where the membrane was but this time it was thinner and so I pushed my hands against it and when I pushed pushed hard my hands went through and they were on the other side and that was the coolest thing ever because I'm just like oh my gosh part of me is on that side that's where I am you know and and so I pushed a little harder and my arms went through and then I popped through and I just thought this was great and I wondered like if maybe I would get soaked back into me like a sponge I wasn't sure exactly how this sort of thing was handled you know I figured the spirit world had some sort of plan for it I just didn't know what it was and so I was floating above me and I was alone in the room where my body was alone and so I looked down I refer to me as her because it looks seem like a different person so I'm looking down at her and I thought if I could get her to open her eyes then everybody would know that she's in there and then maybe I could if she wakes up them or maybe I'll just get sucked back in and so I'm floating over and I'm just staring at her eyes and willing her to open them and she won't do it and I keep trying and I keep trying and I'm just getting so frustrated because she's just laying there obstinately not doing anything I'm trying to get her to do and maybe I should start smaller and so I focused on her pinky finger and I was just staring at it and I remember seeing the wrist restraints tied to the bed and I didn't like that and I kept looking at her finger and looking at her finger and I could not for the life of me get her to move it I had no impact on this person I was just completely disconnected from her and so I get mad and I get sucked back on to the other side and now I'm just on the other side of the wall and I started wondering you know there's this doesn't make sense there's got to be a reason I'm here and why would I see the other side if I can't get back that's just torture and so I was really upset and I was like you know what look either kill me or save me because I can't do this anymore I don't want to go back into the deep sleep and I don't want to be in the dark place and I don't want my body just to lay there you know motionless like that forever so either kill me or send me back and and it didn't work I was pretty frustrated but it work and I started thinking more on it I thought you know what could this place be what if I'd done something why am I here and it just it just suddenly became clear like when I finally asked the question the right question the answer came and I looked around and I could see the darkness of this place which is such a weird thing to say because if a room is completely dark you can't see anything but I could see and I looked around and I thought I built this that's why I'm here I built this when I was in that body I isolated myself so badly that I built this I put these bricks around me and I just kept stacking them every time I got hurt I'd stack a brick and stack of breaking stack of brick and I was keeping people away but what I didn't realize was I had built my own prison and I was my jailer and it was this moment I don't know I don't think I've ever had clarity like that and I heard this cracking noise um I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan when the lakes start to thaw you hear these really loud cracks and then they so they start out loud and then they get quieter and quieter as they go further out of the lake and it's a crate and we'd been on the lake when it had happened you know and so you kind of raced back because you don't want to fall in and I heard that sort of cracking noise but it was thunderous and Boyd split kind of like an egg at the top and this spirits just kind of came down to where I was and I was like oh my gosh there's things up there they're there I'm not by myself and so here she comes and she was big like grand you know not I mean she was big in size but it was more than that and she was just kind of standing there in front of me and I felt like a newer and I kept looking at her and looking at her and thinking that I knew her from somewhere and she just like willed me into her arms and so now I'm in her arms and she's holding me close and I'm crying and her spirit is just going like this around us like this tornado but it was really peaceful in her arms and so she held me closer to her chest and I was just I mean I was just overcome and she puts one arm around me like this and then she punches out her other fist and when she did it the void exploded and so all of it there were just these black shards flying around in this bright light and it was they all the little pieces were trying to get in to where I was and I was really scared that they were going to get me and somehow take me back and and so the shards would hit kind of that tornado of energy that was around us and they would blow up into little tiny pieces and they were just gone so every time one hit if it was it would blow up and the light would be brighter and so I'm in her arms and I'm crying just crazy crying and I look up and she's got these just brilliant emerald green eyes I'm thinking man I know her who is this person and I'm looking at her eyes I'm looking at her eyes and I'm crying and she says calm yourself dear Lord and it was like I don't know if y'all have ever had surgery but you know how they give you that drug and you couldn't keep your eyes open if you tried you're just that relaxed you can feel like kind of go through you that's what it was like it was like being given sedation and I just was super relaxed and I could feel like the she didn't say it but I heard it in her voice and I recognized her voice but nothing came out of her mouth it just went from her mind in my mind in her voice and the words kind of got all broken down and then they just were coursing through me and I was calm and I was trying to remember how I knew her and I looked up and she had this red hair on her head that was so bright it looked like it was on fire and it was like alive it was moving like firewood and I knew who she was in that moment I knew who she was and I said that's my grandmother so it was my mom's mom Veda and she had died when I was 9 I think the summer I turned 10 and it was sudden and she had gotten diagnosed with cancer in June before we were out of school and she was dead before the fourth of July and and she was young and so I guess I I mean I always had believed in heaven and that we went on and things like that but it was weird to see it be true you know what I mean like in life I had hoped it would be true and I was I was really sweating that you know because I thought what if I die and it's not true and it is nothing like everybody says and I was so overjoyed that she was there and she was more she was like more her than I had ever remembered her being and it was just amazing and in life she was just a force to be reckoned with she worked at a steel stamping plant in Michigan and I can remember she would come home just wringing wet she was a bigger lady like I I don't even know how tall she was um but quite a bit taller than me I'm 5-1 and I think she was probably at least five six and she was kind of built bigger on the top she had no but these skinny little legs and those red hair and she was just amazing and she lived in our upstairs there was a apartment over our house and she lived there and she worked in these steel stamping plants and our metal stamping and I remember her coming home because they were trying to start a union one of her friends had gotten and this would have been in like 70 early 70s um one of her friends was working and she got her hand caught in one of the presses and it pulled her arm in and caused a horrible injury and then she just lost her job if there wasn't work comp or anything to protect her and she was a friend of my grandmother's and it just went all over my grandmother and so she was trying to start a union and women did not do that in those days men even faced quite a bit of trouble if they did that sort of thing and so she was twerking with people trying to bring the Teamsters end that plant so that they would have some union coverage and I remember one day she didn't come home from work and she didn't come home and I was sitting on the front porch waiting for her and she didn't come home and she didn't come home and I kept asking my mom where she was and mom didn't know and it was almost dark in this black car pulled up in front of our house in the door opened and my grandmother was shoved out into the street and she got up and she came into the house and she was just frantic and my mom asked her what happened and she said they came and they got me and they told me if I didn't quit I was going to end up in the Detroit River and they took her to the river and and she didn't let that stop her because she was crazy and I just always loved that about her that she was just she just had an energy and a spirit about her that you couldn't resist and I remember she would come to New Year's or she would come to a party and it just didn't start until she got there and she was just easy to make laughs and she was joyful and she had a hard hard life but it never robbed her you know she'd never robbed her she she got through and I mean when I say she had a hard life she had a hard life and so there she was you know and she was just bigger than I could have remembered and it was just amazing and so she was holding in her arms me and her arms and and I asked her and it was so funny because I could think something and it would immediately whatever it was like you can thought create there so if you think flowers there they are there's no delay and it's so much more convenient than it is here it's such hard work here and I I was in her arms and I thought I wondered if I was dead and she said oh no no no she said there's no death and I was kind of shocked and and she said no she said your body can't become useless and be cast away but there's no death she said you're either alive in your body or your super alive here on this side and she said you know this you know this do you remember thinking I don't know this I don't know what she's talking about you know and she said remember when you were little in science they taught you this energies not created or destroyed it just changes forms she said that's um that's God's rule car owned by man just like dang you're smart and I had known that my whole life and it was funny because I just didn't occur to me that it was true with everything like people and apparently it is and so it was just this incredible like she would know just how to say things so that I would understand them I didn't have to sort anything out when she would say something I didn't even have to work to remember it like here's somebody will tell me something and I'll try to link it to other details so I can remember that thing but it was just effortless it was just in you because she said it and so there I was in her arms and I started crying again and like weeping it was different it was like grief and she just kind of let me have it you know just have that moment and I just I was so broken over everything I had seen in life you know everything bad that it happened to me and happened to my kids that I couldn't change and every horrible thing that I had seen happen in the world that I felt powerless to change and I started thinking about all the people who really believed and promoted the idea that when you die that's it you just lay in a grave and that's the end of it and there's nothing after that and it broke my heart for them and I thought how must that be to get to the end of your life believing that and thinking every part of all that's good and wonderful and magical about who you are is just over and I just I couldn't imagine a god that would let that be I'm like why would you make something so amazing and because we were just amazing just to watch it rot in the ground that just didn't make sense to me and it broke my heart that people believed it and I I was just broken up and crying and she did it again she pulled back for me a little bit and she looked at me and she said calm yourself dear one and I did I was like whoa I couldn't even really hold myself and I was just kind of thinking about you know her being there and maybe there and I don't know just how amazing it was to see her again and I got lost in that and I didn't realize she'd left realize that she's gone and that I'm just floating in this light and um all of a sudden there that's crazy all of a sudden everything started shaking like everything not everything in your room or everything on your street everything that had ever existed or that will ever exist everything that you could see and that you couldn't see things that you knew and you didn't know about all of that was shaked in my presence and it's in front of me and it says I am and I knew immediately I'm like it's God and I had remembered that from you know just Bible studies and stuff when I was a little kid you know the great I am and I wasn't confused when he said it I wasn't there was no doubt of whose presence I was in and that it was God and that I was not him and that and he wasn't him it was just light but you know for lack of better term to refer to this entity that was with me and I was a little shocked that there was an old guy with the beard and you know I mean I had an imagination of what that would be like and it just wasn't like that and everything was shaking and then it just stopped and my brain stopped everything got quiet and he said it again and then I got scared I was like oh yeah and I started thinking about like everything I had ever done in my life that I did not want him to talk about with him you know and I'm not like a horrible person but we've all got stuff we've done you know that just like if God were standing right there you probably would have picked some other thing and I thought no well here we go this is going to be bad and embarrassing and and it wasn't like that it wasn't like that at all he this kind of what I can best describe as a video that feels like you're in it just surrounds us and I can see scenes from my life playing out and there was and I was super worried about what was going to pop up and he said was like calming me down that there you know there wasn't anything to worry about it you know he wasn't upset about anything we were just gonna look through this together and so the scenes start playing out and there is a scene where I'm in a grocery store and I had completely forgotten about it because it was such a small thing but I was behind this woman in line and she didn't have enough money for her groceries and I had been a single mom most of my kids lives and I remembered what that was like to stand at the checkout and be embarrassed because she didn't have enough money to pay and try to figure out what you needed to put back so that she could get out of the grocery store with some of your groceries and she was apologizing and she was embarrassed and I could feel all those feelings she was having that shame of not you know of being 72 cents short and so I dug through my wallet and I gave her the change and she was so grateful and I'm like it's okay it's okay I've been there and God showed me her life going forward sorry and I was just I was dumbstruck by how one little thing you know and it wasn't the thing I would have showed him of all the things I was proud of having done in my life that wouldn't have even made the list but I saw her going forward and how it changed her life and all the ripple effects out from that and I saw her working at a food pantry and packing up groceries for another mom I was like wow I never realized you know that it was that important just the little things and and so then we started kind of going through the stuff that I wasn't so happy about and he pulled up a scene that I had not remembered but was true of my life it was a good sum up and it was this scene of me thinking mean thoughts about this other person who actually deserved them and I was just thinking you know that person is just terrible they're just an awful person and they don't care about anybody but themselves and all those things were true and then God showed me everything that had led up to that in that person's life and then I felt about this big you know I'm like oh my gosh I didn't know that that had happened to her and you know I didn't know that that her dad did all those things to her I had no idea about all that stuff and and but he wasn't like upset with me or anything and he's you know when you think those thoughts there's energy to that and when you speak them there's even more energy to it and God forbid you act on it and he said just having those thoughts about her gets out it gets out in the world and it gets on her and it makes her harder to be better it makes it harder for her to be better because now you've attached more of that to her and so going forward her being terrible is partly your fault because instead of thinking kind things and praying good things on her you know you focused on the bad qualities she has and that makes it harder for her to get out from under it and that was such a good word for me because I was never a person to gossip and I always hated it and I'd always assumed that anybody was gossiping was probably talking about me too and so I just and it's bad in nursing you see a lot of it in nursing and I would just leave people would you stand in there and they'd be talking bad about somebody and I just turn around and walk away in the middle of the conversation because I wasn't going to do it and so I hadn't been a person that had done that a lot but I had shared frustrations you know about something that somebody had done before without giving them any grace discussing it and so that really changed a lot for me about how I saw people and how I interpret their actions and you know he I then I got angry and I was mad at God and I said you know I'm not mad that the kid's dad left when they were little and had basically nothing to do with them afterward I'm not upset that he did it to me I'm upset that he did it to them and I'm and I was mad at God for I don't know just not fixing it I knew he could fix it he could do anything and and he said my goodness you've completely misunderstood me let me show you something and so he shows me this scene and I'm sitting in bleachers and I'm next to my son and so when all of this happened my grandson was too and in the scene my grandson's about 5:00 and I'm sitting next to my son David and Cole my grandson is running on this field and he's playing soccer and I just remember what the air smelled like and what the the heat of the day felt like and what it looks like the Sun looked like shining on his hair as he ran up and down the field and just how full of life he was and and my son is sitting next to me and he you can just see him kind of beaming watching his son play play soccer and he looks at me and he says well I can get through this part he looks at me and he says I'm gonna be the dad to him that I deserve wow you know I you know I felt like we picked this life specifically for what it could teach us you know that we weren't put in it by accident that the lessons were meaningful and they were important and I thought if that's the kind of good that comes from all of the bad okay it sucks and it's terrible and I would have totally picked different but he is the dad to his son that he deserved and it's so funny because I went with him to a soccer game when Cole was 5 and he looked at me he said those exact words and so it was a scene from the future you know and I thought wow what a good god what a good God how kind is that you know to let me see that come full circle in terms of good and I just in that moment there was no question that I was loved you know that that fixing it would be nice but it robs you of things it robs you of things you really need going forward and it it robbed me of just it would have robbed me of that moment of seeing my son overcome in such a big way and so I remember thinking I'm okay with the darkness you know I'm okay that that I had to spend time there to figure out my life and I'm okay with the light I'm okay with all of it and there was this moment where I was there with God and I just felt like I had this opportunity to build a wall with him or just to let it all down it was scary I have to tell you is scary people think it sounds easy but it's it's not that's a very vulnerable position to be in with somebody that powerful and and I just did it I did it I'm like I'm not going to put the wall up and so the light kind of comes and it starts at my toes and I can feel it going into my toes and it was just this crazy weird sensation and there was like a vibration to it the the vibration of it had like its own resonance that was like a song I remember afterwards I have to ask Don what Kia was done I after I came back I heard this key Don played a key on the piano and it took me back there and I'm like what key is that what key is that I can't run where they said it was G or D and I'm like that's the sound of God me and so this light and vibration kind of goes into my toes and then it comes up my legs and it gets in my middle and it was like kind of swirling around in my middle middle fixing all those you know how when something bad or you know scary happens you have this sort of visceral gut reaction well that like stays imprinted in there somehow and going forward in life you know I always described it as that feeling like when you got in trouble at school and you got off the bus or you were walking home and you knew you were gonna get it when you got home because you knew the teacher and called your dad that stuff we see the rest of our lives through those kind of visceral reactions and we can make ourselves sick and God was in there like fixing that and he started like swirling around in my middle and it was like he was putting this cloak or something on my spirit and just this cloak of light and it came up and it got in my chest and I could feel it going through my heart and just just loving me you know just loving me and it came up through my neck and it got in my mouth and my tongue like lit up and I was just singing this beautiful song and I'm a horrible singer so that was really shocking I was like oh wow that's beautiful we should do that all the time and and then it started kind of going up and I felt it moving up like behind my eyes and I thought oh no it's gonna get out and so I squeezed my eyes shut because I didn't want any of it to leak out but you can't do that you can't because it's you know this love you can't stop it and so I'm squeezing my eyes shut and it shines through the lids and it shoots off the ends of my eyelashes and I open my eyes and it hits God's light on the outside and it goes back in and it was powerful that it reflected off him and came back through and so then it goes up through my brain and I can feel it going through like all the curves in my brain and like parts of my brain that apparently do not work on this side we're we're working really well there and I could see things more vividly and I could hear things really sharp and it was just incredible and so then we start he's like pulling me closer to him and it was weird because he was around me and in me and through me and I it was just such a penetrative experience all the way around and to have him still on the outside was really weird and so he I like pull closer to him and I have this opportunity again to decide to go on this part with him or not and I just kind of surrendered to it and we start going through my DNA together and I can feel the strands of it going over my skin as we're going through like you know like your mom would stroke you or something like that to soothe you and it was just such an amazing feeling and we're going through the DNA and you know I'm just kind of seeing how I was made and he said he said do you see me here and he said look look I'm here I'm in you I'm in you I made you and it was crazy because I always had this idea of God being this external force you know and it wasn't like that it was like he was as intimately involved in my creation as my parents were and I felt him like I could see back to my beginning and like he was putting me together on purpose you know and that's that's important on purpose as important because on purpose means there's a purpose you know and it means that there's something more and something you're supposed to be doing and so we're just going through this and we're going really fast I'd never moved that fast before I mean it was like lightning speed and we just stopped like hitting a wall but not painful kind of stuff and I was surprised and and then I knew that I had to decide you know was I going to go over with him and stay or was I going to go back and my knee-jerk reaction was I'm absolutely staying everybody over there will be fine they'll all be here eventually and I've never been this loved or this safe and I want to stay here but it felt like I don't know it felt like it was a decision I had made before or something that this wasn't it and I wasn't done and that I needed to go back and I really didn't want to I mean I suffered with really bad like depression afterwards homesickness of over having to leave and I did not want to go and then God kind of just you know I don't know just gave me this challenge and and I thought to myself could I go back you know could I go back could I do it better you know could I try and I wondered about that you know could I try could I go back and could I bring all of that back with me and just kind of let the love of God shine out you know and leak out of me and onto everybody else I'm like I was supposed to the first time and I thought you know I don't know I don't know if I can do it but I could try and as soon as I thought that the light started backing up and I could feel myself coming away from it and I I got really worried and very cheerful and I was like wait wait wait wait wait wait you know don't go yet and I said you have to let me remember it because if I don't remember and I know I won't have any hope when I go back and I woke up and I was in my body and I was off the ventilator and I remember my first thought was oh my god I'm heavy you know it's so weird to be light and I'm in there in the nurses sitting beside the bed and she said oh you're back and I the first words out of my mouth were I was with God and she's like oh that's good honey and I'm like no no really I with God I just now I was with him she's like oh that's nice let me get your family you know and so she and I'm in a faith-based Hospital and and when I had told the doctor that he sent insight to talk to me because I must be crazy and my family comes in you know and they come in one at a time and they're all glad I'm back and that I didn't die and I in that moment I was glad about it too you know despite the fact that that wasn't what I wanted and it was just weird so here I have this opportunity to do it again and do it right and or at least try to and I kind of only half-heartedly committed to it and so we figured out that what I had was a condition called eosinophils asthma with mast cell activation which is a terrible diagnosis to have because there's not a whole lot they can do to stop it and so 17 more times I would go into complete respiratory failure I would have from the time I took that epinephrine shot I would have about 20 minutes before I needed to be intubated all it did was buy me enough time to get on the bed and nothing we were doing was working and so the last time that it happened I decided I was done and that I wasn't going to go back and have a normal life and I mean being on the ventilator 18 times in two and a half years you're in the hospital more than you're out and it was just destroying my whole life I had gained almost 100 pounds on steroids and it was just awful I was just sick all the time I hurt all the time my lungs the last time I was on the doctor said you will never survive it again and they wanted to trach me and I had said no but um so that last time I went back up there and I was with God and it just a very brief encounter and I said please just take me take me or heal me because I can't keep doing this and I don't know what you're trying to prove or not prove or what's going on here but I'm just done and he said it's not me it's you what do you mean it's me and he's like you're not doing anything any different he said I keep putting opportunities in front of you people for you to talk to people for you to love on and every time I put something in front of you you say no and he's like if you want to live if you feel better you need to go back and say yes this is on you and I woke up and it was so funny because my friend Brian who I knew from a near death experience group he had easily asked me five or six times if I would speak to their ions group in Cincinnati and every time I said no and I just I have this you'd never know it to hear me talk but I have this real really bad social anxiety and so I had always said no and he he called me up after I got to the hospital I hadn't been out but a few days and he said would you be willing to speak in before he could even get it out I said yes and I couldn't like suck it back in and I was like oh crap I just agreed to this but I did it and it was the first time that I had spoken to a group publicly like stood in front of them and and talked to them and it went so well and then I spoke to he also has a group for people who've lost children and so I spoke to that group and every time anybody has asked ever since I've always said yes and I've not been back in the hospital once not for that anyway I've had like a surgery and but other than that I've been healthy and so it was just it was quite a thing and so I've been working on kind of taking down the wall and it's not an overnight thing it's a choice you make every day to pull down a brick and I just I feel like it's opened up so much in my life so many opportunities that I would have never had before and so many I've been able to just love on so many people you know and I was telling you guys that I had kovat and I was really sick with it and I didn't go to the hospital because I didn't want to go on the ventilator and and I almost died at home from it but through that and it's just amazing to me what good can come from bad through that I somehow developed this huge Facebook following because every day I would get on just to do an update on my condition so that I didn't have to get a bunch of phone calls because I was having so much trouble breathing and and I had sign to do not intubate order I did not want to go back on the ventilator so if I was going to die from code that I wanted to do it at home and I would get on and I would just do these posts and some days I was better than others and I decided that I'm it's something good to come of it if I was gonna die and it looked like I was for a while and so I started teaching people about it I started teaching them about how the virus works and what could we do to prevent it that would be helpful and and pretty soon I had thousands of people watching this video and you know these daily updates and people's kids standing in their living rooms and singing songs for me and sending them to me and just you know cards and gifts and all these people loving on me that didn't even know me they'd never even met me from around the world and it was just it's so funny because I started to try to be helpful you know I wanted to I wanted to do that I wanted to tell that story because I thought here's a nurse who has Kovan there are people in the country that don't have it there yet and this is a really interesting perspective to me as a nurse it would be anyway and I just got to like speak rationally to people and calm all these you know terrible anxieties that people had just from having the news on all the time and kind of this fear stoked all the time and it became this intimate relationship with all of these people you know and I've talked I don't know how many of them through the death of a loved one from kovat and trying to advocate for people who are their family members in the hospital and they can't get any information and they can't go and they can't visit they can't get the doctors to do anything and so I've worked with them to try to advocate care for their family and and I've watched a bunch of them die and and it's been hard but and I would have said no before the near-death experience I would have said no I'm not getting and all that there's nothing I can do I can't help it's just gonna be sad but I got to tell you walking through that with people even as hard as it is I don't know how it's okay you know and somebody said you know just thank you thank you so much you didn't have to do this and I know it's been hard for you and I said you know what somehow loving you heals me and it's just true you walk people through you know the scariest darkest moment of their life and I know this is a nurse you know I've been at the bedside of people that have died and their families as we stopped the ventilator or whatever and there is this intimate connection and you build such a rapport with people by just being willing to walk through it with them even if you've got nothing helpful that you can do just walking through it you know and it's just opened me up as a person as hard as it's been to be a part of there's no way I could say that it's not been for my benefit or theirs and I've got lifelong friendships with people that I'll never probably meet but I'm just so invested in them and it's just a much better life to live it really is but I wanted to read you guys something there was so when I woke up that first night on the ventilator and I'll make this quick because I know we're running long when I woke up that first night on the ventilator or off the ventilator behind this God had given me this message and I was supposed to give it to other people but felt really weird to me because I'm not one of those people that's like hey God's got something for you you know because that just feels creepy and weird to me and he does that to me sometimes and it really weirds me out I'll be a church or somewhere out in public and and God will start like nagging me and he's like hey you know go over there and talk to that person and I'm like absolutely not I don't know who they are and I'm not doing that I'm not going to look like an idiot and he just pushes and pushes and pushes and then I start feeling really nervous I always know it's him because if it's me I'll just do it but if it's him I'm like there's like that lady over there probably would be happy to do it and like she talks at church and stuff so you should ask her cuz she would be much better at it and and he just keeps pushing me and my hands will start shaking and then I'll start feeling nauseous the harder I refuse and finally I'm like oh I know I'll go do it you know and so I'll go over and say you know I just feel like you've been going through a hard time or something's been rough for you and and you know I just I just wanted to reach out to you and let you know that somebody cares I know I don't know you I don't know what's going on and then they unload this story that is you know and in that moment they did need somebody to reach out but typically I am resistant of such things because it feels really weird and not preachy but I don't know it feels like something you would see in a weird movie about somebody who thinks that you know that schizophrenic that has some weird god thing going on and they're going around giving messages and I've had patients who've done that you know they get in that thinking when they're really sick and not taking their medicines and and they say things that scare other people you know and it's just part of their illness and I thought this is what people are gonna think they're gonna think that I'm not okay but anyway he came back to me that night so the nurse made everybody leave and because she said I was tiring out she didn't want me to end up back on the ventilator that night and everybody left and for the first time they turned the lights off and that ICU if you're a nurse you work in an ICU turn the lights off at night but like your eyes don't always close all the way when you're on the ventilator and those fluorescent lights burn your retinas like I would see green and red rods four days from my eyes being partway open and seeing that light somebody came back into the room and it scared and I said to God lights like in the room and I can feel his presence is there and I jumped and like yelled a little bit because it startled me and he laughed and it was funny because I kind of had had it in my head that since I wasn't up there in the light with him that he was gone and there he was in the room and it just sort of freaked me out and he laughed because he thought it was funny and it was funny but I was supposed to give this message and I had written this about it I said I didn't give it before but I will now because the world needs a measure of hope and Who am I to deny it and God had also told me for me to keep keeping it to myself was fact and I'm not a person who steals so I couldn't do it so he said to me hmm such folly to think 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 to your spirit I discreetly filled you with knowing knowing flowed into you as effortlessly as taking a breath is it not so the great I am 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'm hidden still I am as my energy charged sending me over every synapse in your brain even those small fibers knew that I am they rose and fell to the rhythm I created to the symphony I composed I conducted I consider it a tragic comedy of arrogance when man denies what the smallest innovation 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 winds 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 encoded in every cell every nanosecond of time falls in step as I will it so I am in you I am in you I am all even when you perceive nothing still there I am even as I tell you this here and now I press my truth into your breasts your very heart pressing it further in it was just such a sweet message and I don't know he's good that way I do like that that he's just has this you know that kind of infatuation that you have with somebody when you first meet them you know you're your partner your spouse or whatever and you just can't get enough of them and everything they say is just delightful and you know what they smell like and you know and I had kovat done and I couldn't be together and so I took one of his shirts they had his Cologne on and I slept in it because it was so hard to be completely isolated for 53 days and you know not even be able to get a hug when you felt so bad and he's like that he's that infatuated with us you know he's it's like a mom you know you pick your kids up and you smell their hair and I can remember picking my kids close up and I could tell he'd wearing the shirt just by the way it smelled you know because they each have their own I don't know their own flower that comes off of them you know and I just as a mother you know it and and he's like that you know he just is absolutely and batch ooh a TEDWomen taramis he's like wow you are awesome I did a good job with that one and he means that about everybody you know every person that he sees look at that I did a good job with that one that one doesn't know it yet it doesn't know how much potential he's got or she's that's good work right there and I just I don't know I just think it's so cool that somebody that none of us you know I've really met or can understand is that wild about us just a beautiful thing and if that's it penny we have a number of people here that was wow you did all that in one hour I know I'm getting better at it you've watched my videos you know I'm terrible on wended actually I was getting worried therefore I thought oh my god she's gonna go three hours but now beautifully done and I I would just like to open it up and let people ask questions I'm sure there might be one or two and if you'd like to ask a question or make a comment and just make sure that you're unmuted and then just you jump in or if you want to raise your hand and be called on Pete and I are happy to to call on you and it's a safe place I won't there's nothing as a nurse there's nothing you could say well sometimes people shock me a little bit but but I'm good at pretending I'm not shocked so I have a question um do you ever think anything mean about anybody anymore yes what I catch myself I that's one of the hardest things I think to learn to get hold of your own self critical thoughts and your critical thoughts of other people and it's an exercise you do it every day and you know with as much turmoil that's going on in the world today it's really hard because I just see things and I'm like oh my gosh what is wrong with people and you know people hurting other people why would you physically hurt another person and it is very hard for me not to be just kind of consumed with anger about that and so I have to kind of limit how much of that stuff I'd let go in my head because ultimately I can do what I can do where I am and as far as it goes with me I do try to do all of those things that I can do when I see there's need or there's a problem or there's somebody that needs help or is fearful I intervene every time that I can and I cannot fix things that are going on all over the world but I can make a huge impact in my own on my own Street in my own town and I think it is important that we are advocates and that we try to understand people's frustrations and motivations and you know make sure everybody as far as we're concerned has this sort of equal access and equal rights to basic things like safety and so that's been that's been a struggle in our you know where I've been sick with coping I was sick for so long and I didn't see people it was really easy because there was a whole lot of getting mad at people you could do from your bedroom I mean I was a little mad with our governor but that was it and I do have to rein that in because that can you know really get all over me I'm like people need medicine mmm though I I have really had to work to kind of not let because I'm a passionate person I'm my grandmother's for sure and it's injustice just goes all over me like if I see someone else treating someone unfairly I it's really hard to get hold of my tongue and and I'll I'll write a big thing because I'm not short for words and and now I have a rule that I have to sit on that for 48 hours before I'm allowed to post it anywhere because I really want to let some mean people have it but I'm trying to remember we're all a product of our environment and not everybody knows everything and now everybody's experienced unconditional love so it is harder to behave in a way that shows that yeah but it's work and you know what you're saying reminds me of something that I've gotten the impression of from a lot of other near-death experiencers my own experiences that it's kind of like learning how to meditate you know and you sit there and try to focus on your breath and before you know it your mind is off doing something and you have to bring it back and you have to bring it back thousands of times and gradually we become better at staying in that place of of concentration and I think it's like that having bringing catching myself when I'm less than loving and brief trying to find a way back to love it's absolutely a practice I mean you do have to do it in and I would submit that it is a practice worth your time yeah you know I do have kind of a little visualization that I do when I'm trying to let things go or for me I kind of have to work at staying all the way in my body it's a little easy for me to pull out now since I've pulled out before and I can kind of be completely unaware of my physical like I can go outside and be freezing cold and done so if you need a coat and I don't even feel that it's cold because it's so easy for me to just kind of pull out you always have to remind myself to stay into my toes and I you know several times a day I'm like are you into your toes because you know how we get up in our head and you lose track it's like that but a little worse no and so I have to remind myself you know that being in your head all the time isn't a great place to be and it is good to be able to let those thoughts go so I kind of have this little visualization where if I'm trying to pray or meditate I visualize myself sitting there with like a hundred balloons because that's how many times I'm gonna have to do it and every time the thought pops up I'll let I'll let it go like it's one of the balloons and then I'll start thinking about balloons and ribbon and helium and is it bad for the environment and then your head goes there exercise for sure yeah what about after-effects from your your NDE any other changes that you've noticed in yourself that you you really attribute to the NDE not to the physical stuff that went on but something that really changed in you or change the way you function like personality or physical or both or yeah yeah anything it I would say there's less physical things now I definitely have a lot more sensitivities to things things that wouldn't have bothered me before it's not quite like an allergy but I'm just a lot more likely to not react well to a food or I don't know that's weird and I've heard other people say it I don't know what there is to that and I also have heard yeah I kill I kill electronics without meaning to I it used to be right after the experience like in that first two years we couldn't go out and go past a streetlight you know so we'd go out driving at night and I'd kill at least two streetlights as soon as we passed them and and Dawn was like no no you're just noticing it and I'm like notice when you go out by yourself and he's like I went out by myself and no street lights went out and I'm like it happens to me all the time and my mom had a near-death experience and she cannot wear a watch she kills every watch she wears so I guess that's sort of a common thing and then I don't know I'm way more emotional I would have never cried in front of strangers before and as nurses we get pretty good at kind of compartmentalizing those sorts of feelings and setting on the side so we can be productive but man I'm a hot mess I mean especially since kovat I've gotten on and cried and cried about people who have died that I didn't know and just I feel things so much more deeply it was hard on our marriage you know that first we weren't married right after the we've only been married three years and but we were together then and Dom was really worried his parents were both Methodist ministers and I mean they met at seminary here in Kentucky as mom was from Argentina she was here going to seminary and I remember how hard it was for us after that because I was kind of questioning everything about my faith and religion and you know and I had grown up Catholic but was I would have considered myself a Christian after that and I don't know there was just a bunch of things that I saw where people were being really judgey and mean and I was having a hard time with it and Dawn came home one day and and our relationship was not going well and I had read PMH Atwater z-- book and she was talking about how 70% of people who have a near-death experience end up divorced afterward and so he came into the room and he was really upset and he said you know I just am waiting to walk into the house one day and you to have shaved your head and you dressed like a Buddhist monk and I just looked at him and I said could you not love me if that happened and he it caught him and I said 70% of people end up losing their relationship after a near-death experience is the fact that I was with God going to be something that a Christian man can't get over and it changed everything for us it changed our whole relationship we are so much better because of it because we decided that it was going to be really confusing and there was going to be a lot of things I couldn't understand or process or put words to because how do you do that I mean I there's so much I leave out of this story because it would just go on forever trying to explain it and he finally said to me one day looked at me and he said you know I've never known you to lie you are the most honest person I know and if you say it happened I believe it happened and we just kind of went forward from there I ended up meeting Howard storm because he just lives you know just a stone's throw from us and it was really cool to talk to another experience or in person and not feel like I was crazy and explained all of the things that I still think are really weird that I don't understand and you know for somebody that's so far out from their experience to help me put it in context so those things have been definite pluses yeah and I'm less worried about things like Dom's really worried about you know the fact that most of our kids despite you know having like a faith upbringing are sort of rejecting that idea of God and and it's really troubling to Don because his parents were both ministers and I just kind of have this assurance that it works out and you know people figure out that they're loved and created and and we don't need to spend our whole lives fretting about it just live good lives and love them and that's the example people need to know that they're loved and valued so there's that knowing this isn't real in the sense of you know how like when little kids are playing everything that's going on in their pretend play is very real to them they're very immersed in it you know they take on their rollers cowboy or whatever and it is as real to them as anything else and you know we dare not tell them otherwise because they deserve to have that just it you know all-encompassing fantasy but when I got out of this first of all the time thing is just so crazy because there everything is instantaneous all at once without chaos and seemingly very long but fast if this is so hard to describe the time and here like when I looked back on my life here it felt like I had barely taken a breath and I was gone from it and and there that you know there was thought creation if I had a thought I didn't even have to speak it I would get an answer and so when I got back in my body it was crazy frustrating just the physical and mental effort that there was to get anything accomplished I had a lot of problems so where I had so much deoxygenation of my brain over those episodes but even the first one it took me a while to come back cognitively so I had problems with speech I would do these kind of word blends because I couldn't figure out how to say words so I would want to say remember in memory and I would put it together and call it remember II which is very cute but as an adult you look silly when you say that so yeah I had a bunch of those word mixing things I would my brain got totally messed up and rerouted so we started realizing that if I would look at things and we were talking about them I would miss name them and so I would look at a cow and I would think belt I could think of something that would come from the hide but I couldn't think of what the animal is called or I would look at chocolate and I would think cup and so I had a lot of therapy to help me figure out how to get back around to those words and it was interesting because the picture would be in the middle of the page and I could put a line on the page and start making circles around the picture and start saying all the words that I thought that picture was and eventually in enough circles I would get back to what the word was and it was like I was winding through my brain trying to narrow down what it was and I just I found life to be so so taxing and frustrating and you know that any little thing that I wanted to do just took a huge amount of effort and it took forever and in explaining things to people and trying to get them to understand without thinking you're crazy and you've not had I mean I've had how long to process this it's just now I mean it took three years to even come up with a lucid explanation for it so yeah it changes a lot of things it is very hard to stay grounded it gets easier the further out I get like at about the three-year mark it got easier but I can totally relate to especially when things get scary or hard here just that one to just kind of pull out and disassociate from it so it is something I have to work on and I totally get that you struggle with it too you know I was an idiot when I was at I didn't know anything I thought I knew everything and that's part of the idiot you know not just that I didn't know that I was sure I knew everything and when you have something so pivotal happen you know I've talked to people who had experiences as children and it seems like if they have it really young like when they're under six years old they process it better but people that I know that I have have had experiences as teenagers I know some people that had experiences related to suicide attempts different things and they've really struggled with it a lot of their life and I think it's because you're at this pivotal point in your development meant that is so difficult anyway just life on Earth when you're 19 is just super confusing and loaded with a bunch of emotions that that calm down with time and then you add the biggest thing that can happen to a person outside their body I think a lot of people get this idea that once you've had a near-death experience things here you know make a lot more sense or a lot easier and in some respects yes but you know I still sat and cried on video in front of a bunch of people because my friend Derek whose dad I don't even know died despite all of our best efforts to try to get him appropriate medical care and it just for a week I was useless I was absolutely useless I just I was working on an NDE documentary and I have finally did a video and I sent it to the person I really respect the person the filmmaker and and I was just i I was telling him why I was having a hard time and that I'd done this video so many times and I couldn't get through it without crying and I'm like ugly crying something you don't want Amazon Prime and and finally I just thought I got to get honest with this guy and not put him off for reasons that aren't real and I have to tell him what's going on with me and so I just kind of sat down and talked to the camera and I said you know finally I got to the point I'm like and died and I just went to pieces you know and I sent it to him and you know so I think it does sometimes surprise people that things still hit us really hard but I think you're softer after that happens you know your heart's more tender and it is easier to get hurt yes okay so a couple of questions I have penny just such a riveting story I have not heard one like explained like this before is one thing I'm really curious to know how the 72 cents for that lady a little bit more of how that really transformed her life and second one is if you have any insight into when the when you send hurtful thoughts or angry thoughts to people who have really really hurt you very badly like how does cuz you know you don't mean to you may want to forgive them that you're hurting and sometimes part of the psychological process if you do happen to figure it out ever in this lifetime is that you visualize you go back to that place and then you bring that person in and you get you unleash it on them so I have that when I suggested to many people they cringe because they think they are actually you know sending really bad thoughts to that person and I you know it's like but how else do you get out of but some of them some people go through entire life just being angry angry angry and really don't even have the agency to figure out how they can ever release it so what are they having to face and their afterlife love you well you know what a smart question I I think to say that you know you you're just not going to have negative thoughts about people as crazy because of course you are people there are some really crappy people out there I've met them yes I've seen them on TV I know about it and I think the fact that people hurt other people and I've been on the receiving end of that it creates natural feelings of you know just you being heard and feeling out of control and not being able to stop that and in somebody just taking this control away from you you know when they hurt you and I think you can acknowledge all of those things and you have to because people are definitely mean and behaved in bad ways and so I think to say that you you know I don't want to come across like oh well you know you just have to forgive them because it that is a process and you do you know so for example when I was in college in Texas a boy that I was friends with I had asked him up to my room and I was going to change clothes so we could go to this football game I came out of the room he attacked me any raped me and then he stalked me for a while and I left College because of it and then he raped two more girls before the college finally made him leave they didn't never report it to the police okay so for years I had this horrible these just I mean I had some pretty rich fantasies about what I wanted to do to him and how I was going to do it and how cruel it was going to be to me that is different that is you working through a process that's different than me you know seeing something in the world and just sitting around hating that person you know so somebody does cut you off in traffic or somebody does you know says something mean to your kid or or you know whatever you know these just infractions that happen in life to just sit around think I kind of have to put a tone to it so like how to say your name is it free to be - me - so if you had done something I don't know what that pissed me off at work right and I'd be like that Ritu she's just terrible you know she didn't even do her job very well I didn't see her bring her stethoscope that's what I'm talking about that kind of judgy you know I'm just being pardon my language a to you that's different than that guy that hurt me that took all of my power away that tortured me that's different than me having working through some murderous thoughts about him that's part of me working through it trying to in my own mind take some of my power back and I don't actually have any negative feelings about him anymore no that's not a long time ago I got a long time to work through it and I probably could actually sit down with him at this moment and just have a conversation about how that shaped my life that's said I don't think I would change it it made me a person that made me who I am and it made me very compassionate to people who have been through that in a way that I couldn't have been had I not been through it myself and so though it was tragic and awful and terrible I do think that there was a higher lesson to be learned and I try not to shun I think we get in this thought process of everything positive is good and everything negative is bad and that is just not true everything that moves you forward is good whether it's positive or negative and so I think probably just allowing yourself to have your real feelings of negativity and hurt is different than me just being judgey and catty about somebody so let me recap I that I feel like I didn't explain that well and I do try I do try to remember like if you had been crappy to me at work I do try to think to myself okay now you know generally she's a really nice person and like when my husband and I get in a fight we still fight and and I think okay yes that was a crappy thing to say and he's definitely wrong I know his overall character and he is a good man and he does love me and and I try to put everything in that light yeah I don't I don't think that's I think I should have said that better as far as the 72 cents that was crazy because I had completely forgotten about that woman but I remember standing next to her in that store like when I you know how your kids will remind you of a story or your family member well and you're like oh yeah I it was weird it was like I was in her when she was doing these things and I don't know if that was a future view or if that was just symbolic because I have no way of verifying any of that but she was standing in this food pantry and there was like a kitchen countertop in front of her and there were these shelves behind her that were stocked like sequentially with different things and there was a woman that came in and she was a Hispanic lady and she had these three little kids and she didn't speak very good English and she this lady that I had helped was putting these groceries in the cart and I could just feel her every time she would put something in the car and I could feel her pain that loved that and it you could just see how just that little kindness changed her life eat and she didn't have more I had no under I had no impression that she was doing any better in life financially but she was more because of it you know she she took that that lack you know basic lack of things that a person should not have to want for this woman wasn't buying ten cases of pop she was buying basic groceries and she took that even though she wasn't doing any better and found a way to give back and I just thought me and she's a better person than I am you know I just was watching her pay that forward that little thing you know when I was 1 in my 20s and it took me this long to figure all that out I just thought what a wise person she is and I have to say it's interesting because talking about this has put so many people in my life that are the ages that my grandparents would have been and so I lost my grandmother really young my other grandmother died when I was 18 so I never had that sense of grandparents and wisdom and roots that I would have loved to have had and now I've met all these people that are you know 70 to 90 and they have so lovingly poured into my life with whizzed and I mean they don't have to do that and I just see us kind of pushing away our older population as though they have nothing to offer and their dreams so in a way because they got old or whatever and and I just love talking to them and I love listening to their stories and they are so willing to add back to someone else's life and I don't know I feel like that's part of my thing going forward is to bring value back to that amazing generation that I don't know I feel like largely is shut away that kind of hurts my heart I guess it really came to light with Kovac because we lost so many elderly people and and I just thought gosh there's a book that just closed you know there's a story I'll never hear you know some life lesson that would have been so helpful and it's just gone now so yeah those really really affect me and I get angry about that I hope that helps yes thank you don't feel to yourself it's a process you got it I can tell you have a good heart you have an experience thank you you're welcome my mother-in-law used to the first time I went to her house um before we were married Don went in the other room with his dad and I was sitting in there with his mom and she was just starting to get just a little bit confused at that time we've lost her sense but I was sitting at the table with her and she's like I said she was from Argentina a little just cutest just put her in your pocket she's so sweet and she looked at me and she said you and love my Donny I can see it and I said I do and and then she we're sitting there talking and she just stopped all of a sudden weirdest thing that's ever happened to me and she said okay your spirit is so big it shines all around you and I thought that is the most beautiful thing any human being has ever said to me in my life and I'm so glad that I got to her before she had you know completely gotten lost in dementia because I try to live by that you know I try to live up to that I think that's a huge mark to set for yourself and and I thank her for saying that to me because it does make me think twice before I use my words oh that's cute you'd have loved her she was wonderful when she passed it was Christmas Eve don was in Michigan with her and I was here because I had I think I just gotten off the bed and and I couldn't go and at 3:40 in the morning I woke up because I felt her go past I've known a lot of people like I've known they were going to die before they died or that something was going to happen and when Mary Melba died I just have to tell you it was the first time that's happened to me where the world felt emptier and I sat up in the bed and I'm like oh I felt her like wind went past my face and I called Don and I said she's gone and he said she just said she got dementia really early into our relationship but me and I love that woman mm-hmm beautiful soul I can't wait to see her again Sarah hi do you think that you said God is like really Maggie like he pushes you say it's a it's a great um do you think that he frequently speaks through us and maybe sometimes not without our knowledge yes I think I think one of the coolest things that's happened to me since the near-death experience is I'm able to sort out what's me and what's God you know what's kind of this the Spirit of God in me pushing me to do something because it's really it was really hard before so I would have I've always had that I think we all do like this sort of hum you know like that you'll you'll pull into a parking lot and you'll kind of get the heebie-jeebies and and you talk yourself out of it you're like no no it's fine I'll Park by the light everything every time I have ignored that in life something bad has happened to me I ignored it the night I got raped in college I ignored it the night that a guy tried to attack me and school parking lot every single time every time and finally I grew a brain and was like hey maybe that thing is right you know and so I've been pointing it out to my kids I'm like you'll have this feeling inside you like something is not right never ignore it it's it's this God voice in you and so it's interesting like since the near-death experience kind of at the three-year mark when I started sorting it out a little bit better but even initially something would happen in there that I definitely would have attributed to my own craziness before I would have said oh you're just being weird or or you know you're taking this idea and you're gonna act on it and that's just that's just your internal dialogue now I know when it's him and when it's me and it's so helpful because no I know I'm not just doing something stupid that's gonna look crazy right so like if God gives me something for somebody did it happen today this happened with somebody recently one of the one that was a girl that had private messaged me so she had private messaged me about somethin Kovan and I started talking to her and God was doing his you know push push push and and I was like I'm not gonna do this I don't know this person well and but it doesn't matter if I know him well or not cause if I dunno am i I say I'm not gonna do it either so I that excuse is ridiculous like run into this person I'm not gonna do it because I couldn't just avoid them like I could on Facebook if I said something stupid and so I just kept getting pushed and pushed and pushed and it was her mom and her grandmother and she had lost her grandmother young and and I just started physically describing her I could see her I knew what she looked like I knew what wow she had on that had this little scalloped instead of being pointed at the collar it was scalloped and all these things and she's like oh my gosh how could you know that and I'm like I could not know that that's just and I can't do it well nor would I want to because when it first started happening right after the near-death experience it was always scary stuff it was knowing how somebody was murdered or in feeling it as though it were happening to me I couldn't separate myself out from it and I did not like that um but you know there was a man that got shot and I knew where he got shot in his head because I could feel it in my head and and I didn't like that and there was a man that was burned in his house alive and I could feel the smoke in my own lungs and I was like okay I don't know what that is but I'm pulling back from it because it's not good for me you know not all things we know are in our best interest and so I really had to kind of push those memories away but and that's what they felt like like memories I could had happened to me but I knew it was the other person but now it's more like you know God is in on something that I'm not in on and and he needs me to kind of step out and and just be his love to somebody and so now I just there is that tendency in me to question it and and by questioning and not have to do it it's just an accountability thing I'm like well if I just say it's me than I like he doesn't know right but I still try to scam him for some reason I don't know what it is about human nature and so yeah like recently when it happened I was like oh no that's just me just because I care about this person and and then I know I'm not lying to anybody that would believe it and so I'm like and it always works out I don't know why it it's so scary to me I guess because it's weird to put yourself out there like that you know when people are like oh you're psychic and I'm like no please don't use that word that word it just brings up crystal balls and and I'm like no God can give a word of knowledge to anybody for somebody else and and some of us are just a little better at sorting out but that's not our own dialogue and that that is from you know his spirit so but I hope that answered that yeah thank you just do it if you feel it just do right I'm feeling after hearing that to you thank you you'll have to like reach out and let Peter Janis know if you do it cuz I so want to hear about it and how weird it felt to you and so going off of that question about like going up to people and feeling nervous about it I'm wondering if you like normally get some kind of sign from the person that what you're doing is like acceptable or if you ever like approach someone and there's the voice of God and then you the person just like doesn't show any sign that what you're saying is hitting or like they're kind of like really you know nervous about you approaching them what does happen in your own life No No so I always try to be really conscious of how I'm coming across because it does sound crazy it's just weird to have somebody come up to you and do that and so a lot of times it'll happen when I'm having a Facebook discussion with somebody so I always kind of put it out there and put the weird thing out there so that they know that I know it's weird because that makes it seem a little less crazy to them so you know you're not this person that would normally do this and so I always kind of lead with I know this is going to sound crazy and if it makes you uncomfortable just let me know and I'll stop but I just feel like I need to share this with you and I kind of go that route and and so since they know that I know it's weird they don't think I'm crazy because I kind of would be of the opinion if I didn't know this person that they might be crazy if they did that it's just one of those things that we think because here this person you don't know is now telling you things about your life that they shouldn't know or have any way of knowing and and they're approaching you on Facebook it doesn't thank goodness it's not happens like face-to-face a bunch because I just don't know if I could deal with that kind of nervous anxiety but it has happened in church a couple of times and I have requested that God ask someone else and he never does he's like got this incredible sense of humor and I always try to like when it has there's been a few times it's happened in public I try to be very thoughtful about that person's time are they trying to rush out of church or rush to somewhere because I can say that I can write it down for later when it's a more intimate setting and they're not going to feel uncomfortable if it's for a man I try not to ever do that in a situation that would make his wife feel uncomfortable because if you know something about her husband that you should know she's always going to wonder how you knew that thing and you don't want her to get this impression that you have internal knowledge about her husband because that makes wife's very uncomfortable so I'm very careful with that because I don't want her to get this you know who was that woman and how could she know this about you and have you talked to her before and and so you do have to really test the water before you go for it and sometimes I've said no I'm like you know I'm not going to do that because that's going to make all of those people very uncomfortable and it's going to be a bad car ride home - next question it sounds like you ever haven't ever really had the experience of saying something to someone in the person saying what are you talking about you know go away it's always that they're more surprised or moved that you empathize with something that they're struggling with that they people generally have I mean I've had a few and it's a lot of times it's big stuff that I am like but this is not something I feel comfortable it's like if I had a person I did not know I didn't know his story I didn't know anything about him and we were in Facebook I had never spoken to him before and God just kept poking me and poking me and I'm like I am NOT doing this I don't know this guy and I'm not comfortable saying this thing to him and and I just couldn't he wouldn't quit and so finally I message a person like I knows it's gonna sound crazy just tell me to stop if you want but you lost your daughter and she was young and the girl was like 14 or 15 and that is just not something I ever feel comfortable as a first interaction with a person and thank God he took it well and we are still very good friends to this day but yeah it just puts me in a really bad situation but he really needed to hear that he needed to hear it it was very specific to his situation and and I believe that it was very helpful for him because he was really struggling he had it had been long and so yeah there there are those and I just hate it when it is something like that I'm like could you start small be so much better than you know hey I have this sense that you just lost your kid that's just not a way I like to open any conversation but and then the other one that was really weird was somebody that I had gone to elementary school with that had recently Facebook friend me and I didn't know anything about her life since we hadn't gone to school anymore I mean I moved when I was 14 and I just felt God pushing and pushing and pushing and I didn't want to do it and so I tried to gain some rapport with her first you know talk to her about what you know how had her life been and you know she have kids was she married all this different stuff actually the mess if she was married and and then one day it just kept pushing and pushing and I had to say it and I'm like you're using drugs and it's going to end up killing you and you are and I could like see her mother and she was in the kitchen and she was throwing rolls to people and that was a very specific thing for her because her mom would do that she would stand at the stove and put them all in a bowl and then she would say who wants a roll and she would throw them to him and she pinched people and so I could see that and and I said you know you're ruining your life they're ruining your life and your kid is now in trouble because you've taught him this and that didn't go well at all I mean she ended up getting in a car accident she got into drugs worse and I will always feel like I had a part in that and ultimately it is her choice to make and she probably was going to go that route anyway because she wasn't stopping but still I mean it was very soon after and so that's why I've pushed a lot of the the big stuff to the side I just I don't know I mean I get that God wants it's got something big to say but you know I just always feel like I have a certain amount of culpability for how that turns out so I try to be really gentle with it and I didn't like just come out naylor with it I'm like something's going on in your life that you're ashamed that you're hiding you know nothing is hidden and eventually all these things come to light and it's very difficult and it would just be better if you got ahead of this and did something proactive to correct it then got forced into it because of a very negative situation and she's like no no no no no that's not happening I don't know what you're talking about everything's good and then finally I just have to do the work you know she may be okay today I don't know and I wonder whether if you hadn't said anything and then she had gone and done the car accident know that stuff you wouldn't wonder you know if I had said something at least I would have heard the opportunity yeah and you you gave her an opportunity to look at herself and I think that's what you're right I would have I would have thought maybe if only I'd older that she wouldn't have anything happen yeah that's a good point you could and you did it out of love and and you know you can't you can't control what she doesn't do with the information you know yeah some people are just on a demolition course and yeah it's very hard to pull them back and maybe that's part of their path it's a hard life to watch though it is is really hard to watch people that have so much promise and we lost my cousin last year and it was just devastating none of us knew any of this was going on and I was very close with him and didn't know it and I think man you know of all the things I didn't know like you know that I've known that I didn't want to know I could yeah just not the way it works sometimes okay so quickly coming to time travel and penny so since you saw a future event so how does it is that disorienting for you sometimes or what's your perspective on knowing that many of the events have already happened because that's why you were able to sing it and that we are now catching up to what's already happened and then what Janice had mentioned you know there is always a potential so there's destiny versus free will so some of it has already happened and some can be changed well how do you reconcile I don't I just for me I'm just enjoying the mystery you know I do think that we see some things and you know I think even as moms were all a little bit of time travelers you know you see that you know the glass of milk is going over you know it um and your husband can't see it and nobody else can see it but you know it and you move the milk and when you don't move the milk it falls and and so you know you see a future where the milk is gonna fall and somehow you get there and you stop it and I think life is just a lot like that you know sometimes you get to those moments and sometimes you don't when they play out the way you thought they would have if you hadn't seen it you know what I mean I just think people asking questions all the time you know they're like well why suffering and why this and and why that and I'm like there are just some mysteries and and I'm really okay with that it used to really bother me and I felt like I needed to understand everything but I think the more you understand them where you try to control and you get kind of caught up in controlling or trying to control or having this perception of control that you are not present in your life and experiencing things as they're happening every moment I would rather not know the things that are coming I don't so much mind God giving me a word for someone else's life that is really needed in that moment I don't mind that so much because that's not me seeing what's happening for me that's just something they need to hear I just don't want to know and I think God gives us confirmations so you'll get yo something will happen if you watch for it you'll see it these kind of synchronistic things that happen so you know like me being with God that last time in him saying you have to say yes I'm putting people in your past I'm putting opportunities you have to say yes and the first phone call I get when I get home is my friend with an opportunity to speak and I say yes and and so God you know of course you could say well any opportunity could have come up but I just think those are little validations and it and it links to something in your head you know and you think that's weird I was just thinking about doing that or thinking about calling that person and then there's a little validation somehow don't ignore it because there is something to that and I think a lot of times we choose to let it go because we think it's just silliness or craziness or internal dialogue or whatever but I would encourage you when it's most uncomfortable to step out and do it because it is weird how it always turns out in some really cool way but we do choose it I could have not gone to that soccer game that day and not heard that and I would have never known that that it had happened that he had made that decision in his own mind so it was because of a choice I made that I actually got to see it come to pass I didn't even know it was future I thought it was just symbolic mm-hmm so yeah I don't want to know thank you I don't that helps thank you yes so is it just is it about time for us to close tonight because - yeah so penny I just want to echo what Pete said I'm so grateful for your presence with us tonight and the love that you just emit and your spirit is really big and and the love comes the love really does come through through you so I I felt it so thank you I'm gonna say Thank You Janice I'm so excited for you I can't wait to hear all your things going forward you'll have to post if I have to be friends so I can hear about it living vicariously that's good

Channel: DFW Friends of IANDS

Views: 64,441

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Id: rIL4Vs1yW9s

Length: 105min 56sec (6356 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020