Your Dying Spouse 465 - A Near-Death Experience {FMF}

I am writing this in the mid-morning of April 26, 2018. About seven hours ago, I crossed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and came back again. I'm a bit shaky, and in pain; please excuse my awkwardness.

As I lay abed, unsleeping, I was suddenly gripped by a pain that was both crushing and tearing, across my upper abdomen at the bottom of the ribcage. I could feel breath and life departing, and I floated out of my body; I could see myself, contorted and still.

But the pain remained, a fiery thread, stronger than steel, connecting me to this life, and I fought harder than I have ever fought to regain that failing and broken body.

It was an incredibly harsh experience, and the pain is still with me. Morphine would be nice.

I knew that Heaven with its promise of peace and infinite vistas of possibility lay behind me, but I dared not look, because if I looked I would surely go.

And it wasn't time to go.

I returned to my body, and to the worst chills I have ever experienced, malarial in quality but far, far worse, and to eerie hallucinations as I fought to stay conscious.

Yeah, a long night.

When I rose in the pink dawn, I was put in mind of some couplets from Flecker's poem, The Gates Of Damascus:

"And God shall make thy body pure, and give thee knowledge to endure

This ghost-life's piercing phantom-pain, and bring thee out to Life again.

"And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen thousand Æons pass.

And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see dew upon the grass."

I don't know why I was led here, to these lines in this poem; I have no doubt that there is purpose to this experience; I was meant to see something.

But what?

It's like a night-flash of lightning, making visible an object you know to be familiar but whose shape is impossible to grasp in time's small fraction.

I can't find a way to frame 'takeaways', but there is something strong, a colouration to the day, if you will.

And this is that there was a sort of consummation, an understanding on coming out to life again that the dreams given us by God are never to be lightly put aside; that they stay in our faithful hearts though in their specifics they may seem trivial when set against a calamitous world does not obviate the Almighty using them for a higher purpose.

We are here for a reason.

And that, for the moment, is all.

The only appropriate music is Soundgarden's Live To Rise, because I did.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in. I'm really not doing well at all.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.

WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!

And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.