00:00Take us to the day you died. You were 16 years old. You were out at a horse ranch riding your favorite horse, Heather.
00:06Yes.
00:06Your sisters were with you there. Tell us what happened.
00:09We were in an accident caused by another horse, a runaway horse, and she flipped over backwards, fell off a hill, and crushed me.
00:20Immediately, unexpectedly, left my body, and I found myself 30, 40 feet up in the air looking down at my dead body.
00:27And I realized, as I watched everything happening, I felt really bad. I didn't want my sisters to see me die.
00:35But I noticed a light over my shoulder. It was coming over my right shoulder, flowing a golden light.
00:41And I turned to look, and there was a man floating up there with me, and I recognized him immediately, which was kind of unusual.
00:48I shouldn't have recognized him. I was raised in an atheist Jewish family, and I knew this was Jesus.
00:53So, the minute I recognized him, I said, hi, I know you. And he floated right by my side, and that was kind of the beginning of my adventure.
01:06That's amazing. And it's interesting, Heidi, how you recognized Jesus right away.
01:10But as you just said, you grew up in agnostic, a family, Jewish family, atheist Jewish family.
01:17Atheist Jewish family, yes.
01:18So, that's incredible that you even could understand who Jesus was.
01:22And I know our viewers are wondering right now, did he have a physical appearance?
01:26Like, what did he look like?
01:27He had a physical appearance. He was a man.
01:31He was, I knew he was more than a man, but he appeared to be a man.
01:35But he was a perfect man. And I always say I couldn't look away from his face.
01:41His face was the most important thing because of the joy and the love coming from his eyes.
01:45I did not want to look away from his face.
01:47And Heidi, you know, you said that there was so much joy and humor even emanating out of him.
01:52In the next moments, he began to show you a review of your life.
01:56But as you look back, you're seeing him with you in the moments of suffering.
01:59Yes, I'm seeing him with me the entire time.
02:02He was never, I was never alone.
02:05I didn't know, in a sense, I knew that, but I also didn't know that.
02:09So, this life review shows you that Jesus is with you when you're crying, when you're joyful, all throughout your life.
02:14And even in moments, you said he was rocking you to bed at night.
02:17Yes, he did. And I didn't know it was him.
02:19I would just have a sense.
02:21I would talk to God all the time.
02:23I believed in God despite my parents' atheism.
02:25And I talked to him every night.
02:27And I had the sense that after a while, it would be time to go to sleep.
02:31And I would feel as if I was wrapped up in the warmth of a cloud.
02:35And I could feel my bed start to sway back and forth and then even up and down.
02:40And I knew it was God doing that for me.
02:43But I didn't know it was Jesus until I saw him in the life review doing exactly what I pictured God doing.
02:50A lot of people, they think, you know, when I meet Jesus, when I die, I'm going to have questions for him about why I've suffered or why this happened.
02:57Or what was that like for you?
02:59Did you have those questions?
03:00Did you feel like this, you know, you were getting answers?
03:04I didn't have a lot of questions because all of my questions at the time were answered.
03:09Yeah.
03:09They were gone.
03:11And it all made sense.
03:12If you ask me now exactly what made sense, I can't answer that because I can't remember.
03:17But everything made sense.
03:19And I realized even through suffering, God was with me.
03:24There was a purpose to that suffering.
03:27That journey with Jesus was so beautiful.
03:31And it continued until you were with God the Father.
03:34Tell us about that.
03:35It was amazing.
03:37I had so much fun with Jesus.
03:39We surfed on a wave of light.
03:41And I could see this light of all colors underneath our feet.
03:43It was tickling the bottoms of my feet.
03:45It was flowing through my fingers like water.
03:47And we talked and we laughed all the way to heaven.
03:54I guess it was what I can only describe as heaven.
03:57We did pass things, and I detail that in the book.
04:01But a lot of what I saw, I only saw because I was staring at Jesus' face.
04:04I couldn't look away from his face.
04:05And I would see things passing by behind him.
04:09But when we did get to God the Father, we came to a point where there was almost a threshold that we crossed, like a doorway, like entering a doorway.
04:17And once we entered the doorway, we entered a light.
04:21And it was a living light.
04:23The light was love.
04:24And I knew the light was God.
04:26And the next thing I knew, I was sitting on God's lap.
04:29And it was God and it was Jesus.
04:31They're both together.
04:34The Holy Spirit, if it was there, I was not aware of it at that point because Jesus left me with the Holy Spirit later.
04:40But I saw God the Father and Jesus were one and the same and yet separate.
04:45So I was sitting on God's lap like a toddler, kicking her feet.
04:50And I had my face buried in his chest.
04:53And I never wanted to leave.
04:55I just wanted to sit there forever, for all eternity.
04:58He's a big God.
05:00I tried to look up and sneak a look at his face, but I couldn't see it.
05:04It was shrouded somehow.
05:06It was covered somehow.
05:08But, you know, I kept my eyes glued to Jesus' face the entire time.
05:12I couldn't look at God's face.
05:13And it was from God's lap that he showed me what I did see of heaven.
05:21What did you see?
05:22I saw, it was infinitely far away.
05:26If you can imagine looking across an entire universe, I was looking across an entire universe.
05:32And the first thing I saw was grass.
05:35I'm not, I was very nearsighted on earth.
05:38I couldn't see very well, but I could see perfectly.
05:42And I could see green grass.
05:45I could see every single blade of every, of this green grass in this massive meadow, this infinite meadow.
05:52And I heard the grass singing, which was remarkable.
05:59It was amazing.
06:00And it was the thing that left the biggest impression on me was that grass and the song of the grass.
06:05The grass was singing the praises of God.
06:08I looked a little bit farther, and I saw flowers.
06:11And I saw all different colors of flowers, but I kept coming back to these really blue flowers that looked like irises.
06:18I looked farther, and I saw a grove upon grove of trees.
06:22And they look kind of like aspen trees.
06:24That's the best way I can describe it.
06:26And I could see every leaf on every tree and every vein on every leaf on every tree.
06:32And I noticed they were moving.
06:33The leaves were moving.
06:34The leaves were quaking.
06:36The flowers were swaying.
06:37And they were all moving in time to the song of the grass, and everything was moving in the light of God.
06:42It was God's light animating everything.
06:45I looked a little farther, and I saw a pathway.
06:49A pathway now began to open up through the meadow.
06:52And I could hear and see, I could hear people singing.
06:56And they were singing the same song as the grass.
06:59And I could see them coming, but they were veiled.
07:01I couldn't see their faces yet.
07:02I couldn't see them yet.
07:04And it was then that Jesus came back and told me I needed to go back.
07:09And so you are sent back to earth.
07:12Well, I argued with them about it.
07:14You argued.
07:15I get it.
07:16Yeah, I didn't want to go back.
07:17You've seen heaven.
07:17I get it.
07:19Oh, wow.
07:20And you come back to earth with this big experience.
07:22You told your sisters what happened, but you didn't tell many family members.
07:26You tried to.
07:27I tried to initially.
07:28You tried to, yeah.
07:29And Heidi, now today you're sharing your story.
07:33And, of course, your story appears in one of John Burke's books on near-death experiences.
07:39But I'm sharing your story now in your book.
07:41And there are so many life lessons you've learned from this journey.
07:46You know, for our viewers watching right now who may be facing the end of life or are having or in a situation where their family member or a loved one is,
07:57what would you say to them as a word of encouragement given your experience of the reality of God and heaven?
08:04The one word is hope.
08:06I had no hope.
08:08Before my near-death experience, I was hopeless.
08:12I had no hope whatsoever.
08:14So I would say, yes, I took away hope.
08:16It's probably the biggest takeaway, that and God's love and the fact that he is real, that heaven is real.
08:24And I knew that the one thing I needed to do in this life was follow Jesus.
08:32Honestly, follow him and follow, treat my neighbors well, treat myself well, treat my children well, and love God.
08:41But, yes, there's a lot of tragedy in this life.
08:45I'm a nurse.
08:45I'm a hospice nurse.
08:46So I've dealt with tragedy for years, and I understand that.
08:50But God is always with us.
08:52He never leaves us.
08:54He's always there.
08:55He's always there.
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