'God was in that room,' a near-death experience and the change it brings to life
My husband, John Myers, tells people he died on Jan. 11.
In reality, he did. He had been hospitalized for a day because of shortness of breath, and at about noon on Jan. 11, his heart stopped. By the time I walked into the ICU an hour later, after a perilous back-road drive on a winter day, the medical team was still working on him.
He had gone into something called cardiogenic shock, said the doctor who ushered me out into a hallway, away from the room where all of the activity was happening. His heart had stopped. His blood pressure was zero. He had said on his initial hospital paperwork that he didn't want CPR, so they were trying to bring his blood pressure up chemically. There were signs organs were shutting down. At some point I asked, "What does his life look like if he survives this?" She said she didn't expect him to live through the night.
I would learn later that night that there was more happening in that hospital room than this team of doctors and nurses and other specialists working to get a guy's heart pumping again. Because God was in the thick of it all.
Much later that night, when John was stabilized and quasi-coherent, after a handful of friends who came to say goodbye to him had left, he said, "I think I had a near-death experience." I think I said, "No doubt."
He said, "No, really."
And I answered with probably more snark than was appropriate: "What? Did you see The White Light?"
He had. And in the hours and days that followed, as his memories became more solid, his story became a story of new life, grace and peace.
Here's how he has described it:
When his heart crisis began, he felt an intense pain, the monitors around him started to alarm, and the medical people came running. He said it was like watching a TV show or a movie. He described it as looking into a mirror dimly.
They were all wearing blue scrubs, and he could see this sea of blue surrounding him. Suddenly the blue morphed into this vibrant color, and then, quickly, a brilliant bright white light surrounded the blue. He calls it the most brilliant white light he has ever seen. He said it was so bright it was almost hard to look at.
He is sure that God was in that room in that moment.
He said it was the most incredible grace and love he had ever felt.
Later, he said that he's come to believe that the white light was not drawing him to it. The white light, he said, was lifting up the work of those who were saving him.
He said he feels like he got a glimpse of what happens next, and, even though he said he didn't feel like he had adequate words to describe it, he said it is a beauty and light beyond our knowing that is "more than we can ever imagine."
John was hospitalized for 15 days. It turns out that an infection in a toe is what pushed his heart into crisis. He came home from the hospital with only nine toes and a new look at life. It is the view of someone who has been resurrected, who is experiencing the promises of God now, in this life.
A week after his hospital discharge, we attended the funeral of a young Lutheran pastor who died in his 30s of heart failure while waiting for a heart transplant that would never come. Our friend Ben was our touchstone; he knew all about heart issues and could explain things to us. It was quite something at that funeral for John, with his nine toes, to be able to walk forward and receive communion from the Lutheran bishop who had, on Jan. 11, been one of the clergy to surround John's hospital bed and anoint him and commend him to God.
A couple of weeks after that, John came home from his church's Ash Wednesday service, and said it was emotional for him to hear the words, "You are from dust, and to dust you shall return." He knows how close he came to dust.
Today, when Christians around the world are celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord, Easter, we are celebrating not just the promise of eternal life, but the promise of life now, before are hearts finally stop and we return to dust.
In our house, we are celebrating the gift of time, however long or short.
As we have shared John's experience, we are celebrating those who have told us of their similar experiences in seeing the light and living to tell about it.
We are celebrating the humor in life, like the gift of a nine-toed skeleton that a parishioner gave to John, while inducting him into the club of people who can no longer count to 20 on their digits.
We are celebrating that miracles can happen, but that we also live in the promise of the resurrection from this life to the next.
On the night of Jan. 11, a friend who was keeping vigil praying for John reminded us of a hymn John and his choir sang at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, England, on a choir trip in 2018:
"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation;
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles
and to be the glory of thy people Israel."
Jan. 11 was not John's night to depart in peace, and we do not know the day or time when our lives return to dust, but we live in hope, the promise of Easter.
The Rev. Brenda Martin retired in 2018 after 30 years as an editor at the Erie Times-News, and now serves as pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Greenville, in Mercer County. She previously was pastor of St. James Lutheran Church in Fairview for nearly 10 years.
John Myers is a professional singer well known in Erie for his work with the Erie Opera Theatre and Lake Erie Choral Artists (formerly the Erie Renaissance Singers). He sang for many years at Saint Peter Cathedral, and currently sings at the Cathedral of St. Paul Episcopal.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Former Erie couple shares how a near-death experience changed them
