The condition of Unconditional Love

My near-death experience

Stress is a leading contributor of heart failure.

2 Timothy 1:7 (AMP)  For God did not give us a spirit of timidity or cowardice or fear, but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of sound judgment and personal discipline [abilities that result in a calm, well-balanced mind and self-control].

On February 16, 2016 I was a consultant working with a client in Omaha. On that day, the client had given me a task that was way out of the bounds of my skill area. I had talked with my team and there was no help coming in how I would complete or even approach this task. So as I returned to my hotel that evening a great stress was upon me, a feeling of being trapped in a problem with no resolution in sight.

Travelling consultants are a breed apart. We go back to our hotels and furiously study and prepare for the next day. And that was what I was doing that evening. Exhausted with no clear plan, I went to bed that night, unsure of what I was to do when I went back to the client site in the morning. I did not know at the time I would not be going back to that engagement.

I woke at 1 AM in a heavy sweat. My arms were heavy, my throat feeling dry and pained, a constant gripping pain in the right side of my chest, generally a tight feeling across my whole upper body. I sat on the side of the bed deciding to try a cold shower. It relieved me, but by the time I got back to my bed I was already sweating again. I thought about what to do. Maybe I should lay down and try to get back to sleep. At that moment a thought of our passed son Robert came to mind. I remembered seeing his lifeless mortal body lying on the floor not unlike the room I was in at that moment. I heard him in his voice saying to me. “Maybe you should get this checked out”. So I called the front desk and asked them to call a squad come to pick me up.

The squad was there in just minutes. They took my vitals, funny I remember the first responder saying to me, “well, your pulse and blood pressure looks normal, what do you want to do?” Well in my great medical opinion... lol! What a question. I took the advice given to me by my passed son Rob.  

In the ambulance he took an EKG and called ahead to tell the ER something. “Yeh, it looks like there’s something going on here” he said. Amazing talent for understatement these guys have. He did not want to put me in shock by telling me my left anterior descending (LAD) artery was showing no response at all. Later I learned that athletes in their prime had dropped dead in the middle of a game with 60 percent LAD blockage.

This is the first miracle. From a medical science perspective, there is no explanation for how I could take a shower, walk around in my room, contemplate the power state of my laptop, walk over and call the front desk. There is no clinical explanation to how an entire side of my heart could stop functioning for 30 minutes while I casually interacted with the world around me. No explanation. But there was a divine reason - beyond all our understanding.

As they pushed me through the doors, over a dozen pairs of eyes were upon me and immediately started moving to my assistance. Not something on an introvert’s top 10 list of experiences to be sure. But I’m starting to get a feeling at this point that something is critically wrong. I’ve always been slow to understand, which has turned out to be a gift.

They get me into the ER. Adding more tubes, wires and test equipment and begin to administer the MONA protocol (Morphine, Oxygen, Nitrates, Aspirin). The nurse to my left seems to have an intern with her. She is connecting me to an IV and preparing to inject Morphine. He asks, isn’t that typically administered in a drip? She answers, “Yes, but we push the whole dose when the situation is dire”

Oh, so you’re saying it’s a dire situation then?  I’m getting a clue here...

Interestingly, I feel my body relax even more at this point the room has gone dark but somehow I’m acutely aware of all that is happening. Somehow I understand the pseudo EngLatin being spoken around me. She injects the morphine. I instantly feel it hit my bloodstream and seem to lose all the sensation in my body. I’m still fully aware of what is going on around me, but also highly detached from it. 

At 1:38 AM 17 Feb 2016, Omaha Nebraska, Bergan Mercy hospital emergency room, My heart has stopped beating. “Oh no!” she cries out and the dozens of pairs of eyes are rushing back into my little room. I feel them flopping me about, staccato commands being issued.

But there’s something more important, something drawing my attention.  The room and all the activity fades, or rather seems to become irrelevant, as the entire room is transformed into a white light. The staff are gone from my consciousness.  Where I am now is a warm expanse of this white light expanding out to my right to what seems to encompass the entire universe. It has a texture to it like fine silk. And above all, there is a sense of enduring, unconditional love that seems to radiate from the source of this light, and I cannot look upon it but it is to my left.

“How big is this wonderful place? What is the structure of the universe?”

As I am having this thought, I see an image of a human-like figure (GOD), carrying a sheaf of wheat as he climbs what seems to be stairs. This object seems to be a doughnut or toroidal shape, with only a very tiny part visible being the sheaf of wheat, where the stalks bend around and great clusters of the fruit being the stars of the known visible universe. This was conveyed to me instantly as I had the questioning thought. So much was embedded in this short vision. We are the fruit. The figure carries this sheaf because he has his own plan, a mission. He is sustained by it as he sets about his work. The invisible parts were not only communicating the infinite cyclical nature of the universe, but also the pairing away of those parts that do not sustain Our Father. GOD needs us and this is why he loves us. He sustains, aids and cares for us because we are important instruments in his work.

Back in my experience, I know what has happened. I know I have died. I know the source of this presence is my Almighty God himself and I am positioned at his right hand, at the seat of Jesus Christ himself. I know in that moment I could only be in this place for one reason, and that is that Christ had already sacrificed himself for all of my sins, my failures that would otherwise prevent me from this experience.

I did not feel unworthy of the unconditional love surrounding me, I felt incredibly blessed by it. But I was full of regret. Regret for how I’d lived my life, now knowing the depth of love already given to me. Shamed to be in the presence of God with my mission unfulfilled.

I hear a voice behind me. I know this voice well. (More on that in future posts)

"Do you want to go back?”

Why on Earth would I want to leave this place?

At that same instant I am standing in two places in the very moment in the physical world. I am in the door to my dad’s study. He has fallen asleep in front of his computer, his hand still on his mouse. I’m also standing in my 7-year-old daughter’s room. I see her in her rocking chair, the one her dad says is to not sleep in, she is to sleep in her bed. Calling home, I was able to verify both these things.

My regrets still fill my thoughts. I want to visit a person who is the object of my greatest regret, my greatest, most shameful misuse of what God has given me. The entity behind me lays a hand gently across my chest. “There is no time”.

I have since come to a slightly better understanding of spiritual time. It is a season, a period that can last seconds to decades, it is a period of how we experience God in our reality. There are times of sorrow and regret. There are times of trial, and there are times of bountiful joy. I was being told this time being spoke of has passed.

“But who will be a blessing to my father and daughter?”

And instantly, even as I was having the thought, I was transported back into that ER room in Bergan Mercy in Omaha, NE. I looked to my right to see an ER doctor and said to him “I just had a near-death experience”. Which he clinically ignored, telling me that my LAD was 100 percent blocked, and I was being taken immediately to the heart catheter lab to get it repaired.

I knew my life had changed on that day. Leaving the hospital bruised and beaten like a defeated prize fighter, I knew my journey had just begun. It has taken many years and many trials since, and he’s still not done teaching me.

The unconditional love I take with me every day. The things that keep me from being an instrument of God’s will seem to melt away even ten years on, and yet even today like a fool I cling to the lies I listened to in my youth. But his grace abides, and my heart yearns for him, and I yearn to find ways to bring this amazing peace I experienced to the uncounted masses of people just like me that are full of fear, stress and anxiety while tremendous peace and understanding live right here in our hearts.

The Kingdom of God lives in our hearts, if only we tear away our fears, surrender fully to him and accept what has been given to us.