A Personal Testimony On Orthodox Easter

Our Dog, Sammy Lee, and the Brumby Rocker set in our library room, in which I spent weeks
recovering from a 120 MPH head-on collision. 

What is the nature of testimony? It says, here is where I was, here is what I saw, here is what I experienced. Of the very nature of testimony is ego.  How can one relate a personal story without the incessant "I" that make stories boring. Trust me, this story is not boring.

I'm a coward. For most of my life miracles have accompanied my prayers and for all my life, except for a few close confidants, and an occasional person trusted for the purpose of witness of Jesus Christ's actual presence with us, for the purpose of "SOZO" moments, healing/saving moments, I haven't "testified" to miracles.  So some friends, some family, some friends I have lead to the Lord, or counseled may know this story, but most of my friends, most of my family and most of those I lead to the Lord, or counseled do not know this story.

I say I'm a coward because in the world of extreme materialism that holds sway over the minds and understanding of the nature of reality in the "modern world" stories like the one I've lived are discounted as the realm of the "wishful thinkers" the "fiction writers" the "charismatic charlatans" who populate the so-called "revivalist circuit."

My eldest brother, and for many years my best friend and confessor witnessed many miracles in my presence. He would remind me of something I continually remind myself.  That being Jesus' words saying, "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." I have never mistaken my Faith for my salvation. I've always been and continue to be aware of my sinfulness, and that as the Holy Father's clearly teach it has dimensions I have not yet measured, understood, or conquered. So the coward that I am, never wanted the burden of asserting the reality of any sign or any miracle. Those in my prison ministry will attest that I greeted miracles with cautions and a lot of reserve. Why? Because I have witnessed the carnival shows, the fake healers, the falsely weeping Ikons, and shame that some have called "pious deceptions."  But at this old age, I've come to the point that I could really care less what most people think of me. I would as soon be viewed the genius or the fool, the saint or the sinner, if the Holy Spirit makes use of that image of me in the life of others. So, I am to some a genius, to others a fool, to some a valued minister and priest and to others a horrible fraud and sinner. That is LIBERTY. And in LIBERTY I want to share the most amazing experience of my life. +++


November of 1991 I was in a headon collision 120mph combined impact. My car was tossed 85 feet in the air and landed on another car, the young lady who hit me wasn't wearing a seat belt and bounced down the road on the yellow line. I was pronounced dead on the scene when the first EMT's arrived. I can't relate much of that experience except to say there is little true I can say about it, little that will fit the human tongue. Saint Paul said, "Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, neither has it entered into the imagination of man what God has in store for those who Love Him and are called according to his purpose." I can say that I lived lifetimes in those moments without a heartbeat. But all the time I was present, yet . . . My corpse lay for 22 minutes and when the second EMTs arrived, the cop who was standing by my door to keep people from gawking at my body said to the EMT crew. "Don't bother, this one's gone." I summoned painful breath and said, "I'm here." The cop about jumped out of his skin. I was lucid and joked with them as they extricated me from the car and loaded me in the Ambulance. I even instructed the cop to secure my gun, because I didn't want it stolen or to fall into unsafe hands, etc.

When they got me into the ambulance I asked if I had a choice what hospital they would take me. I did, so I told them to take me to where my wife worked so she would not have to drive in fear and apprehension 20 miles to their preferred hospital. Also the only doctor I had seen in many years practiced there and his office was across the parking lot. After that was settled they contacted Parkway Hospital and the emergency physician radioed he was ready to see an EKG. When the little female EMT put the EKG paddles on my chest and turned the machine on, the machine whined and I was flat-lined. She beat on the machine thinking it wasn't working, and she was talking to the doctor on the radio who was looking at the machine readout at the emergency room. After she tried twice I said, "Why don't you put them on your chest to make sure it is working." Without thinking she did and it bleep-bleeped like a healthy heart.

The radio immediately crackled with the doctor telling her what he was seeing. She had to say, "No that was me. Now this is him," and of course, whether you can believe it or not, I didn't have a heart beat.

About 25 minutes in the car, and another 22 minutes to the hospital and all the time I'm joking with the crew, completely lucid. When they opened the ambulance door at the emergency bay, a group of people were there looking at me like I was a ghost. My doctor had quickly rushed over. As they were rolling me off the ambulance he asked me a series of questions to verify that I was not mentally impaired or altered, date, name, wife's name, where I was, who had brought me, what had happened. I answered everything correctly including the type of car I was driving and the type of car and oddly the correct age of the girl that hit me and also the fact that he was pregnant. (She had just discovered that she was pregnant, her husband did not yet know.) My doctor said, "Butch, we don't understand anything we are seeing here. These young doctors will want to immediately crack your chest and I'm not going to let them, since you are lucid and seem stable, but the fact is you don't have a detectable heartbeat. But, if you lose consciousness, that instant we will crack your chest.” They wheeled me into a space closed the curtains around me because people were gawking, mostly hospital staff not believing what they were hearing and seeing. The tech hooked me up to another EKG and had to turn the alarm off. The doctor turned white as a sheet and repeated, “I'm not going to let these interns crack your chest. You don't have a detectable heartbeat and you ought not be talking - hell man you ought not be breathing, you ought not be alive. He made me wiggle my toes and fingers. I assured him (which is backwards) that I didn't have a spinal injury. My chest was caved in and sternum broken into three pieced, sheared by the shoulder harness that had held me in the car. (Pre-airbag, 1987 Pontiac).

Impact put the left front wheel under the driver's seat and my knees through the dash.

The police officer who I had frightened by speaking, (dead man talking) came to my bed. And while I had no heartbeat I made my statement concerning how the accident happened, read the transcript of my statement and signed it. Knowing how accident information can be confused after an accident I asked if there were witnesses and he confirmed that three different people independently confirmed my story. I instructed my wife to go with him to his car to recover my gun. It was more than an hour before the EKG began to wiggle - then slowly rise and slowly descend. The first hundreds of heartbeats took about a minute on the EKG to rise and fall. All the time I had perfect autonomic nerve responses, speech, rational mind etc. I know what LIFE is and it isn't housed in the body. It is not truly according to the model of extreme materialism which holds our modern mindset hostage. If one is truly alive it animates the body, it informs the body, is it not a product of the body. Life isn't truly housed in the body rather it animates the body, is larger than the body, functions in life in harmony with the body, but not dependent upon it.

What is on the other side is impossible to put into human language, and NO picturing of it (like all the near death stories) have any reality to me, except Saint Paul's words, “to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ.” No seventy-two virgin mythology, no Mormon human/gods. However when reading some passages of the Bible there are true shadows or "icons" of it. I can tell you that for years afterward when I closed my eyes I saw glory and not darkness and I could walk anywhere in the dark for a very long time. And now there is a consciousness that never fades and makes a clear distinction between religion and LIFE.

I had contused my heart so badly that they immediately put me on the heart transplant list. My breastplate was in three pieces, as I said and multiple broken ribs. They told me that I would have to have surgery to remove the pressure from my heart. In reality pulling my ribcage out and back into place, wiring things in place. They told me that my heart might explode in the process. They assured me that my heart muscle would rot where it was so terribly contused and that I had mere days to live without a new heart. On top of that they doubted that my heart was strong enough to handle the anesthesia needed for the surgery. Pretty dire news, right? But I was perfectly at peace. Relatives phoned and I insisted on speaking to any who phoned and I assured them that I was alright and not to worry. Out my window I could see I-20, traffic barely crawling in the extreme rain, long after sunset. I didn't want anyone to drive an extra mile in those conditions, to sit in a waiting room and obsess about my condition.

I could see the angels surrounding my bed, they had been there from the first moment. They stood around me as I stood over the young woman who was lying in the middle of the road. I saw with a new dimension the sweet spirit that inhabited my wife and the love and faith that upheld my children. I found myself instead silently, joyfully worshiping our creator and marveling at the things I learned in a moment that seemed a life time of knowledge. I cannot explain to you how wonderful was that time of suffering.

In the middle of the night about 18 hours after the accident, my wife stood at the foot of my bed, her back turned to me, her soul literally glowing, as she prayed silently. An angel stepped to my bed, reached to my chest, set my bones in place with a loud pop. It felt like electric shock, like the BAM of D.C. Currant. As I drew my first deep breath in 18 hours or so, my wife literally jump in fear, turned to me and said, “What was that sound?” I literally chuckled at her and said, “The Lord just pulled my bones in place. She watched me closely and in a very short time I was for the first time dizzy. They had me on 100% oxygen; I was suffering oxygen intoxication. The nurse turned the percentage of oxygen down and drew blood to blood gas test. In a short while she came rushing into the room and almost jerked the oxygen tube off my face.

In the morning the doctors did a series of tests, xrays and a C.A.T. Scan. He could not understand what he was seeing. I heard him say to my wife as he entered the room, we are looking at a totally different situation this morning, a different man. He told me, "It would take hours of surgery to accomplish what seemed to have happen on its own." He showed me the xrays and said, "This tiny spot is the only place not set perfectly. And if we wired you together it would not be this perfect. But, still if we don't get you a heart soon yours will explode, the walls have taken too much damage. All we can do is keep you perfectly still and hope for a heart." I said, "I'm going home, sign my release papers." He mocked me and said, "Butch if you can sit up, I'll sign the papers." I not only sat up, I stood up, on broken bones they had yet to discover. He turned to my wife and said, "He's a stubborn SOB, take him home he can die there as easily here." I wanted to walk out of the hospital, but they would not let me. I insisted and they said “No way” that their insurance forbade it. So after about an hour of me standing by my bed they managed to complete all the paper work and wheeled me to the car.

Now understand, My bones were not healed, merely moved into place to mend. My heart was not healed. I knew there was the possibility that I would suddenly collapse and die and that would be that. However I had absolutely no fear of it, because in those moments following the accident the Lord had assured me that I was in his will, that I would have the strength to do whatever I was supposed to do.

It took six weeks before I could lift my elbows, and for two months I sat my pulse at an extremely slow rate, I could feel every heartbeat, like a gently rocking boat. For a very long time I did not have the strength to stand and talk. I could stand for a very long time, I could talk all day, but try doing both at once and I would fade fast. I recovered those first weeks sitting in my Brumby Rocker, (pictured above) which my wife had padded every way possible. It has a removable desk attachment, custom fitted to rest on the arms of the chair. I discovered quickly that I had to find other “fulcrums” to act instead of my broken-up chest. By propping my elbows on the desk, I could feed myself, drink coffee. I would have been able to turn the page of a book, if only I could have seen the print. But now the glory of the lord was so bright, so luminous, there was a fog of glory surrounding everything. Print on a page just held no attraction, nor did T.V.  I sat next to a 6 foot window and the movement of the air, the birds, the fall colors, the ever changing light was my entertainment for many silent weeks.

About three months prior to the accident the Lord started awakening me with a dream. It was the image of me being run down in the street, a blow so hard it left me unable to move and by all appearances, dead. I dismissed the dream at first but it persisted and about six weeks before the accident I said to the Lord. “Okay, if this is it, I understand. I'm willing to be run down in the street. If you are going to hit me, hit me.” That morning when the headon collision happened I instantly thought, “so there it is.” Then the next as I was flying through the air was, “I can't imagine taking a lick harder than that and surviving it.” Immediately the Holy Spirit asked, “Who said you are going to survive it”? And as all the books relate in an instant I saw my life passing before me. I realized there wasn't a single person that I truly loved that I had not recently told, “I love you.” And just as fast I saw an image of my then grown children without me, my wife without me and I was at peace.

All the time that was happening I was following the young woman who hit me through the air. I watched her literally bounce down the road, two or three times. I remember thinking that the motion looked impossible. The second her body came to rest, I was standing over her, praying sincerely for her. The Lord placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Butch, look what you are doing?” I said, “You see her condition, I'm praying for her.” I continued to press her case to the Father's throne and the Lord said again, “Butch, Look what you are doing?” I said, “Lord, I'm praying for her.” He said, “No, look what you are doing?” I admitted that I didn't understand. He said, “Here at the moment of your death, you are unconcerned that you are dying and your heart drew you to this suffering child. While you have been holding her up, you haven't taken a thought about your survival.” For some time, I had really been emotionally beating myself up for my failures, for my sinfulness. I turned and saw my car down the road and my corpse slumped in the driver's seat. The Lord said, “This is who you have become because you belong to me.” Hours went by that I cannot relate. At the end he said, “Choose, do you want to return or stay with me?” I didn't want to return, but I would not say. He pressed and I said stubbornly, “Lord you know, I will not choose. I only ask that you don't send me back if I am going to be a burden.” He said, “Only where needed. You will have the strength to do everything you are supposed to do.” Instantly I saw a host of things that I would do that were way outside of my personal vision range. Things that frankly were very foreign to me. I could write a book about all I saw in that instant that was shocking and unbelievable to me, a great portion of which has already happened in these 21 years since. Just that quickly with the feeling of being sucked through a tube, I was in my chest and I heard the policeman say, “Don't bother with this one, he is gone.” I said, “I'm here.”

I exchange my weariness for His strength,
I exchange my weakness for His power,
I exchange my darkness for His light,
I exchange my problems for His solutions,
I exchange my burdens for His freedom,
I exchange my frustrations for His peace,
I exchange my turmoil for His calm,
I exchange my hopes for His promises,
I exchange my afflictions for His balm of comfort,
I exchange my questions for His answers,
I exchange my confusion for His knowledge,
I exchange my doubt for His assurance,
I exchange my nothingness for His awesomeness,
I exchange the temporal for the eternal,
I exchange the impossible for the possible,
I exchange my fear for His love. - unattributed. 

I can add, "I exchange my body of death for his life."