What I'm about to share with you is true and stranger than fiction!
I'm a former Marine and retired international executive who has spent most of my professional life traveling and working around the world with security clearances for a variety of government agencies and corporations. In other words, my personal and professional life has been very conservative and not prone to the esoteric or metaphysical. I would be the last person anyone would identify as “religious”.
I had planned on keeping this information to myself and never sharing it with anyone other than my family for a variety of obvious reasons. It has been several years since the event occurred and now I think it is time to share my experience.
Friday, 17 August 2007 started off like any other day with the exception that my wife had taken this day as vacation so we could have a long weekend together. We started the day by having breakfast and then going downstairs to the fitness center for a 30 minute workout. Later, we went to our favorite restaurant for lunch and visiting with the manager who is a friend and used to work for a five star hotel we enjoyed. Up to this point, everything is going great and we are enjoying the day. Next we went to the Galleria in Houston for some shopping. My wife was looking at some shoes in Louis Vuitton. I started to feel warm and light headed and decided to get out and walk around a little. We shopped at a couple other stores and I noticed that the blood had run out of my hands and they had gone completely white as had my face. I mentioned this to my wife who was a registered nurse at the time. I explained that I was feeling pretty bad and wanted to go home and lay down. I suggested that she drive since I felt a strong urge to go to sleep. I don’t remember much of the ride home or getting home except her helping me get into bed. At this point, I felt like I was literally "dying". I could feel the life leaving my body. I wasn’t afraid and everything felt so natural that I didn’t even think of saying anything to my wife. I was just at peace with the whole thing and just wanted to lay down and go to sleep and although I didn’t think I would ever wake up, I was very comfortable with that and just wanted to go to sleep and go along with the process.
I had come close to dying before in the military and in civilian life and had the same peaceful resignation of what was going on just before I passed out. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light. At some point during my sleep, I heard a voice and I couldn’t tell if it was a male or female. It was more like a sense of an unidentifiable voice telling me that “you will live and I will tell you how”. Next I heard the voice say “hear these three words, remember them and tell no one until the time is right; you will know when the time is right. Now rest.” I woke up and felt great! My wife said that I had laid in one position for 10 hours without moving and when she checked on my breathing, she noticed that my breathing was normal and quiet. This in itself was unusual in that my wife says I constantly have breathing difficulty while sleeping and my breathing is always labored.
The fact that I had slept peacefully in one position without moving is unusual because for the past 40 years I had never slept in one position without moving and in fact, I frequently toss and turn throughout the night. I could remember everything that had happened in great detail and was not at all uncomfortable. It was not the feeling you normally have after waking from a dream. I had an overwhelming desire to get up and write down my experience in great detail. I have had “dreams” before and not only couldn’t remember them in great detail, but never felt compelled to write down the experience as quickly as possible.
Anyone who knows me knows that I would be the last person to have a "religious experience". The next thing a person would think is that I got hold of some good drugs. Wrong, the only medication I am taking to this day is a small thyroid pill which I’ve been taking for years. The next thing a person would think is that I had too much to drink. Wrong, the only thing we had to drink was a small glass of white wine with lunch as usual. The next thing a person might think is that I was worried about something and that caused me to dream. Wrong, if anything, I have felt great over the past few days, have been working out daily and the day before, we had gone shopping for some new computer gear for a video project I was working on.
The bottom line is that something went seriously wrong physically that day and then something went seriously right to the point that I currently feel more at peace with myself than I have in my whole life which is why I guess I have decided it was important enough to write about this event and share it with you. The good news is that I think something good is going to come from this “event” and if my life comes to and end tomorrow, I am comfortable in knowing that it will be a peaceful "event" with nothing to be afraid of as was the case with this “event”.
Now if that wasn’t strange enough, the following events are even more difficult to explain. For about a week following the "event", I woke up like clockwork around 0300 every day with an overwhelming desire to get up and write poetry. Not only had I never written poetry, I never even thought of trying. It wasn't as though I thought about getting up and thinking about what to write, it was as though the poems had already been formed while I was asleep and all I had to do was get up and transcribe the words verbatim as they came to me already formed. This happened every day for about a week where I woke up in the morning and wrote down the poems that had come to me in my sleep. Then as quickly as it started it ended! I have not written a word of poetry since and when I "think" of trying to create a poem, it’s as though there is a mental block that prevents me from even thinking of a beginning.
So there you have it! An event that has been in my thoughts for the past few years and I am still waiting for the right time to share those three words. As the voice said, "you will know when the time is right". In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my retirement in southern California and wait for the next "event".
They say "God works in mysterious ways." Well, apparently as an "A-Theist" so do I!
The Poems
The Poems
