Discussion Post I submitted for my Atlantic University TP6100 Course – March 11, 2020. I’ve used an assumed name for my friend.
I interviewed my friend Cammie, aged 44, who had a Near Death Experience in 1993 when she was 17 and in high school. She was attending an art program in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and one evening, she was returning from the beach with 4 other friends in a Jeep, which had open sides and a hardtop. She was sitting with another person in the “jump seat” in the back, which faced backwards as they sped along a highway at approximately 75 mph. She was dressed in her bathing suit, long sleeved tee-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.
The song on the radio was Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenbaum. Cammie remembers distinctly that the teenagers were belting out the line in the song “Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky/That’s where I’m gonna go when I die.” As they were singing, since she was facing backwards, she noticed a car coming up from behind them at about 100 mph weaving in and out of traffic. She intuitively knew the car was going to hit them but couldn’t say anything.
Cammie believes she may have blacked out for a bit after impact but the next thing she knew she was floating above the highway. She could see the jeep flipping over and the traffic screeching below but all she felt was peace. Time appeared to be suspended, and the next thing she noticed was her body sliding along the pavement. The image and scene faded as she suddenly became enveloped in a brilliant white light. She knew she was dying. She understood that in the light was the presence of the Creator, and added that prior to this experience, she was an agnostic teenager having not given God much thought.
As she looked into the light, an overwhelming feeling of sadness and disappointment came over her as she couldn’t believe that her life, which seemed to be just beginning, was now ending. Cammie spoke into the light and said, “I’m not ready to die.” She added that she wanted to “be a mother and wife, and to serve You.” She noted that she had never thought about any of these things in her life before, yet when faced with certain death, it’s what came to mind.
As soon as she uttered these words, she found herself back in her body just as it had stopped sliding along the estimated 150 feet of highway. The white light was gone. Cammie pinched herself on the arm to make sure she was actually alive. She stood up and started walking to the median strip. The next thing she recalls is a woman standing next to her with one of those huge “brick” carphones of the early 1990s screaming at the top of her lungs since she didn’t believe there was anyway Cammie could be still alive. Cammie apparently was covered in blood and had 3rd degree burns up and down her body where her shirt and shorts didn’t cover. The tee-shirt was ripped up too.
The out-of-control car, which was lower to the ground than the Jeep, had hit the back at a high speed thereby launching it into the air and back onto the highway where it rolled over three times before stopping. Two others were also tossed from the car and the two who were underneath the hardtop miraculously were pinned against the floor boards the whole time as the car flipped over a few times and slid on the roof. Cammie has no idea with the open sides how neither or both weren’t decapitated. None of the five broke a single bone, and other than some 3rd degree burns Cammie and others suffered, they walked away from the accident. A paramedic at the scene described it as one of the worst accidents he had ever seen, and couldn’t explain how none of them perished.
In terms of the impact of the NDE, Cammie first says that it’s still the most vivid memory in her life. She can still see every detail as if it were yesterday and remembers it in greater detail than even her wedding day or when any of her three children were born.
Cammie also notes that the NDE marked the beginning of her spiritual journey. She spent the next decade “church shopping” as she put it. She checked out New Age, numerology, various protestant denominations, and in 2003, she found herself in a Catholic Church. She spent a year investigating what the Catholics were all about and in 2005, after going through their initiation program, she became a full member. She’s very devout, attends daily Mass when she can, and has raised her children in the faith.
She adds that people who have had an NDE have a certain bond that they don’t have with anyone else. In the early 2000s she did a lot of reading about NDE’s, including Life after Life by Dr. Raymond Moody. When she was in a bookstore buying a book for her mother-in-law, who had just been diagnosed with cancer, an NDE book written by Ned Dougherty fell out of the shelf and literally hit her on the foot. She picked it up and decided to read it since he provided a Catholic’s take on NDEs.
I first met Cammie in 2006 or 2007 as we were both on an intense spiritual journey that neither could fully understand, and still can’t. She’s a fellow traveler who I can turn to whenever I need good advice or just to swap stories. She’s an incredibly compassionate person, brings joy to everyone she meets, she’s a fantastic mother, and she still has a long life to go so I’m sure she’ll leave her mark in a dramatic fashion when it’s actually her time.
References
AZLyrics (n.d.), “Norman Greenbaum lyrics: spirit in the sky.” Retrieved from: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/normangreenbaum/spiritinthesky.html