90 Minutes in Heaven (23 page)
I was able to talk to that boy, hold his hand, and pray with him in a way that made him realize I identified with his plight. For the first time, he had a sense of what he had to look forward to in his treatment. Until then, like me after my accident, no one would give Chad any specific information. Like me, he felt angry and depressed.
“The pain will last a long time, and the recovery will seem to last forever, but you’ll get better. Just remember that: You will get better.”
And he did.
Cancer claimed Joyce Pentecost one week before her thirty-ninth birthday. I loved her very much. She was married to Eva’s brother Eddie and left behind two beautiful redheaded kids, Jordan and Colton.
Not only was Joyce one of the liveliest people I’ve ever met, and a fireball of a singer, but she could also light up a room by merely entering it. She rarely just sang a song; she belted it in the great tradition of Ethel Merman.
I felt honored to speak at her memorial service at First Baptist Church of Forrest City, Arkansas. More than six hundred people packed the auditorium. Because Joyce had recorded several CDs of Christian music, she left a legacy for the rest of us. On that sunny afternoon, we heard Joyce sing her own benediction.
Following her recorded music, her father, Reverend Charles Bradley, delivered a message of hope and salvation. He told the crowd, “Years ago Joyce and I made a covenant. If I went first, she would sing at my funeral. And if she went first, I would speak at hers. Today I am fulfilling that promise to my baby girl.”
That moment still stays with me. Melancholy smiles broke out, tears flowed, but I don’t think anyone felt anger or hopelessness.
After Joyce’s father concluded his message, it was my turn to speak.
“Some may ask today, ‘How could Joyce die?’” I said. “But I would say to you the better question is, how did she live? She lived well, beloved. She lived very well.”
I told the hurting throng that Joyce was a redheaded comet streaking across the stage of life, that she lived and loved to make people happy, that she was a devoted friend, an ideal daughter, a doting aunt, a sweet sister, a loving mother, and a wonderful wife. I admitted freely that I didn’t have the answer to the question that must have penetrated many hearts in the room: Why?
“There is comfort when there are no answers,” I said. “Joyce firmly believed that if she died, she would instantly be with God. She believed that if she lived, God would be with her. That was her reason for living. That can be our reason for carrying on.”
I concluded by sharing one personal moment. The last extended conversation I had with Joyce before she returned home from the hospital was about heaven. She never tired of hearing me describe my trip to heaven, so we “visited” there one final time. We talked of the angels, the gate, and our loved ones. (Joyce’s own mother had died of cancer.) Joyce always wanted me to describe the music, and our final conversation together was no different.
“Just a few days ago,” I said to the congregation, “I believe God was sitting behind those gates, and he told the angels, ‘What we need around here is a good redheaded soprano.’
“‘That would be Joyce Pentecost!’ the angels said.
“God sent for Joyce, and she answered the call. She is singing now with the angelic hosts. Joyce Pentecost is absent from the body but present with the Lord.”
My final words at the service were a question: “Can you lose someone if you know where she is?”
I was thirty-eight years old when I was killed in that car wreck.
Joyce was the same age when she was diagnosed with cancer. I survived the ordeal; Joyce did not. But I know this: Because I was able to experience heaven, I was able to prepare her and her loved ones for it. And now I am preparing you.
Many times since my accident I have wished someone who had already gone through the ordeal of wearing a fixator for months had visited me in the hospital. I know it would have relieved a lot of my anxiety.
Whenever I hear about people having a fixator, I try to contact them. When I talk to those facing long-term illness, I try to be totally honest. There is no easy way through that recovery process, and they need to know that. Because I have been there, I can tell them (and they listen) that although it will take a long time, eventually they will get better. I also talk to them about some of the short-term problems they’ll face.
My visits with Chad and Brad and others also remind me that God still has a purpose for me on earth. During that long recovery period, I sometimes longed for heaven. Looking back, however, I can see how the personal experiences I have shared with others provided a gentle pull earthward when I was in heaven. “When God is ready to take me,” I was finally able to say, “he’ll release me.” In the meantime, I try to offer as much comfort as possible to others.
Like me, when other victims first see the fixator attached to their leg, and especially when they begin to experience the pain and their inability to move, depression flows through them. They have no idea what’s going to happen next. Even though doctors try to reassure them of recovery, they hurt too much to receive comfort from the doctors’ words.
Sometimes, however, the patients may be inadvertently misled into saying to me, “I’ll get over this soon.”
“You may get over it, but it won’t be soon,” I say. “This is a long-term commitment, and there’s no way to speed up the process. When you face injuries of this magnitude, there is no easy way out. You have to live with it for now.”
I could share other stories, but these are the experiences that kept me going through some of my own dark periods. I found purpose again in being alive. I still long to return to heaven, but for now, this is where I belong. I am serving my purpose here on earth.
You do this because you are looking forward to the joys of heaven—as you have been ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.
C
OLOSSIANS 1:5
O
ne of my favorite stories is about a little girl who left her house and her mother didn’t know where she had gone. Once the mother missed her, she worried that something might have happened to her child. She stood on the front porch and yelled her daughter’s name several times.
Almost immediately the little girl ran from the house next door. The mother hugged her, said she was worried, and finally asked, “Where have you been?”
“I went next door to be with Mr. Smith.”
“Why were you over there?”
“His wife died and he is very sad.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that,” the mother said. “What did you do?”
“I just helped him cry.”
In a way, that’s what I do. Sharing my experiences is my way of crying with others in pain.
I’ve discovered one reason I can bring comfort to people who are facing death themselves or have suffered the loss of a loved one: I’ve been there. I can give them every assurance that heaven is a place of unparalleled and indescribable joy.
Without the slightest doubt, I know heaven
is
real. It’s more real than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I sometimes say, “Think of the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and everything in between; heaven is more real than any of those things.”
Since my return to earth, I’ve been acutely aware that all of us are on a pilgrimage. At the end of this life, wherever we go—heaven or hell—life will be more real than this one we’re now living.
I never thought of that before my accident, of course. Heaven was a concept, something I believed in, but I didn’t think about it often.
In the years since my accident, I’ve repeatedly thought of the last night Jesus was with his disciples before his betrayal and crucifixion. Only hours before he began that journey to heaven, he sat with his disciples in the upper room. He begged them not to be troubled and to trust in him. Then he told them he was going away and added, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2–3 niv).
I had never really noticed it before, but twice Jesus used the word
place
—a location. Perhaps that may not stir most people, but I think about it often. It is a literal place, and I can testify that I know that place. I’ve been there. I know heaven is real.
Since my accident, I’ve felt more intensely and deeply than ever before. A year in a hospital bed can do that for anyone, but it was more than just that. Those ninety minutes in heaven left such an impression on me that I can never be the same person I was. I can never again be totally content here, because I live in anticipation.
I experienced more pain than I thought a human could endure and still live to tell about it. In spite of all that happened to me during those months of unrelenting pain, I still feel the reality of heaven far, far more than the suffering I endured.
Because I am such a driven person and hardly ever slow down, I have often felt I needed to explain why I can’t do certain things. When I’m fully dressed, most folks would never realize I have such debilitating injuries. However, when I face an activity that this reconstructed body just can’t do (and people are sometimes surprised how simple some of those acts are), I often get strange responses.
“You look healthy,” more than one person has said. “What’s the matter with you?”
Occasionally, when I follow someone down a flight of stairs—a difficult experience for me—they hear my knees grinding and turn around. “Is that awful noise coming from you?” they ask.
“Yes.” I smile and add, “Isn’t it ridiculous!”
My relative mobility is quite deceptive. I get around better than anyone imagined I would. But I know—even if it doesn’t show—that I’m quite limited in what I can do. I work hard to walk properly, because I don’t want to attract attention to myself. I had enough stares and gawks when I wore my fixator.
Trying to act and look normal and to keep pushing myself is my way of dealing with my infirmities. I’ve learned that if I stay busy, especially by helping others, I don’t think about my pain. In an odd way, my pain is its own therapy. I intend to go on until I can’t go anymore.