Mary C. Neal, a Wyoming surgeon, has a more spiritual view of life after a near-death experience following an accident while kayaking in 1999. (Family photo, Credit)
Posted on 06/02/2012 2:25:23 PM PDT by NYer
Mary C. Neal, a Wyoming surgeon, has a more spiritual view of life after a near-death experience following an accident while kayaking in 1999. (Family photo, Credit)
JACKSON, WYO. — The way Mary C. Neal sees it, she has essentially lived two different lives: one before her “accident,” as she describes it, and one after.
“I would say that I have been profoundly changed in all aspects of my life,” said Neal, a respected orthopedic spinal surgeon in western Wyoming. “The details of my life, before and after, are similar. But the essence of my life — who I am, what I value, what drives me — is completely different.”
Which isn’t an unusual thing, especially when you consider that her “accident” included death by drowning, an all-too-brief visit with spiritual beings in the life after death, and a remarkable resuscitation after 14 minutes under water, bringing her back to life whole and complete.
But forever changed.
Mary C. Neal (Family photo, Credit)“Since then I’ve spoken to others who have had similar experiences,” she said during a recent telephone interview from her home in Jackson, Wyo. “Everyone comes back a profoundly changed person.”
She pauses, then adds softly: “I know I did.” Which is not to say that her life before her accident was in tremendous need of change.
“I think I was pretty typical,” she said as she outlined a life that included faithful church attendance as a child and “some spiritual experiences during my high school and college years.”
“I should have been more committed to my Christian faith,” she said, reflecting on adult years that were largely consumed by her work as a surgeon. “I was very busy, and like most people I experienced life on a daily basis. The details of my daily responsibilities sort of crowded out my responsibilities to my spiritual self.”
(Family photo, Credit)She was a believer, a person who believed in God and in the inspired words of the Bible. “But other than just trying to be a good person,” she said, “I don’t think I was particularly religious.”
That all changed in January 1999, when she and her husband, Bill, traveled to Chile for what was intended to be a fun, restful kayaking adventure with friends in the rivers and lakes of Chile’s southern Lake District.
As she explains in her new book, “To Heaven and Back: The True Story of a Doctor’s Extraordinary Walk With God,” she was going over a waterfall on their last day of boating on the Fuy River when her kayak became pinned in the rocks, trapping her under the deep surging water.
Despite her best efforts to free herself from the boat, she “quickly realized that I was not in control of my future.”
At this realization, she says she reached out to God and asked for his divine intervention.
“At the very moment I turned to him,” she writes, “I was overcome with an absolute feeling of calm, peace, and of the very physical sensation of being held in someone’s arms while being stroked and comforted. I felt like I imagine a baby must feel when being lovingly caressed and rocked in his mother’s bosom. I also experienced an absolute certainty that everything would be OK, regardless of the outcome.”
Although she felt “God was present and holding me,” she was still very much aware of her predicament. She could not see or hear anything, but she could feel the pressure of the current pushing and pulling her body.
“It sounds rather morbid, but from an orthopedist’s perspective I was intrigued as I felt my knee bones break and my ligaments tear,” she said. “I tried to analyze the sensations and consider which structures were likely involved. I seemed to feel no pain, but wondered if I was actually screaming without knowing it. I actually did a quick self-assessment and decided that no, I was not screaming. I felt curiously blissful, which is remarkable because I had always been terrified of drowning.”
As her body was slowly being sucked out of her kayak, she says she felt “as though my soul was slowly peeling itself away from my body.”
“I felt a pop and it was as if I had finally shaken off my heavy outer layer, freeing my soul,” she wrote. “I rose up and out of the river, and when my soul broke through the surface of the water I encountered a group of 15 or 20 souls who greeted me with the most overwhelming joy I have ever experienced and could ever imagine.”
She describes the feeling she felt at the moment as “joy at an unadulterated core level.” Although she could not identify these souls by name, she felt that she knew them well, “and knew that I had known them for an eternity.”
According to her published account, these souls “appeared as formed shapes, but not with the absolute and distinct edges of the formed physical bodies we have on Earth. Their edges were blurred, as each spiritual being was dazzling and radiant. Their presence engulfed all of my senses, as though I could see, hear, feel, smell and taste them all at once. ”
While she says she was aware of the anxious efforts to revive her physical body, she felt herself being drawn with her new companions down a path that led to a “great and brilliant hall, larger and more beautiful than anything I can conceive of seeing on Earth.” She sensed that this was “the gate through which each human must pass” to “review our lives and our choices” and to “choose God or turn away.”
“I felt ready to enter the hall and was filled with an intense longing to be reunited with God,” she writes.
But her companions explained that it was not her time to enter — that she still had work to do on Earth.
“I was not happy about coming back — to be honest, I fought it a little,” she said during the interview, chuckling at the memory. But eventually her companions convinced her to return to her body and to begin the long process of recovering from her physical injuries and completing the work she knows she was sent back to complete.
Today, more than 13 years later, she is fully recovered — she didn’t suffer any brain injury despite being under water for 14 minutes — and dealing with the ups and downs of life, including the tragic death of her son, Willie, a bright and promising Olympic skiing hopeful, in 1999.
But she is dealing with life differently than she did prior to her kayaking accident.
“How I view life, every moment of every day, has changed,” she said. “How I view myself and others has profoundly changed. How I do my work as a physician has changed. I think I’m a better doctor now, in that I try to treat the whole person, not just the injury. Physical challenges can be opportunities for growth — I think that’s a valuable perspective to maintain. I wouldn’t have been able to do that before.”
And so she continues her life with new perspective. She says she now finds it much easier to balance her work with service to her family, her church and her community. She has served as an elder in her Presbyterian congregation, on the board of directors of several nonprofit organizations and helped to found the Willie Neal Environmental Awareness Fund.
And, oh yes, she still finds time for kayaking.
“Based on my experience, I know that God has a plan for me and for everyone,” she said. “Our job is to listen and try to hear what God is saying to us as he tells us what he needs us to do. The real challenge for us is to give up control and be obedient to what God is asking of us.”
If we can figure out how to do that, she says, we will be ready when the time finally comes for us to enter that “great and brilliant hall” she encountered during her brief foray into life after death.
“I look forward to the day that I get to go back,” she says now, almost wistfully. “That’s our real home.”
It is Jesus who will resurrect believers. It is Jesus with whom we will fellowship for eternity, sharing His throne (Revelation Chapter 3). Those who belong to Him will never be “beyond Jesus”.
No, that didn’t annoy me. You annoyed me. That’s what you got out of this story, really? I will take one of her for a thousand you’s.
On the side of a mountain, after a fall and bleeding out internally during a snowstorm.... I'll take that. It puts me out and the pain goes away.
On the other hand.... I did have a personal experience that changed my life forever.
Faith is personal, and not up for debate.
I expect I'll find out eventually. ;)
/johnny
This woman was a guest on Coast to Coast AM (radio show), and she seemed both intelligent and sincere. I enjoyed hearing her story.
I’ve never had a NDE . . . but I did have a “life after life” experience that changed MY life. My grandfather had Alzheimer’s for two or three years before he died, and unfortunately I had not seen him during that time. My understanding from my grandmother was that toward the end, he couldn’t talk at all. But on the night he died, I received a visitation from him, in my dreams. It was an odd but amazing meeting. It was extremely formal, and wordless — defnitely a leavetaking. At the same time, I could tell (in my dream) that he was SO excited to be going where he was going! He seemed very, very happy. The next morning, we received the phone call that he had died. (We had not received any information beforehand that he was failing or near death.) Anyway, since then, my understanding of the afterlife has been completely different. Whatever it is, I’m certain, it is something wonderful, and someplace that we all want to be going.
Thank you, MHGinTN, I appreciate the link and will check it out.
very cool!
I’m sorry to have offended you. That was not my intention. The story was moving and very interesting, but I merely raised a question. See also posts 20, 25, and 28. Did those offend you also?
Years ago I had a personal experience. We were at our vacation home when I got the shivering shakes. My wife had to literally carry me to the car to take me home. At home my son insisted I go to the hospital a short distance away. I was about out at the hospital emergency room when I was given a bunch of injections. I then completely ‘passed out’. I remember being in a lighted L shaped building and being led down one wing to the cross hall and on to the next wing. When we got to that wing it was lighted by a very brilliant white aura. The person with me asked if I wanted to go into the corridor. I hesitated. The person with me said I was not ready to go down the corridor so we walked back to from where we started. When I woke up and was able to talk with the doctor I was told I had the same blood fluke that Jim Hendrix of Muppet fame had died from just a few days before. He being of Christian Science faith had waited to long for medical treatment. My doctor said if I had not been in the hospital and received the multiple doses I would not have lived. Since then I have thought much about human life. I believe in God the Creator, in Jesus Christ the Savior, and in the Holy Spirit that is the communicator between God and myself. I also believe that within God’s creation elements for humans exist and there is no limit on these elements of/for human existence that can be joined when God’s power and grace gives birth. As such humans can be very different or very much alike, it is the Creators determination.
Thank you.
One of my favorite passages from scripture is from the 16th Book of Luke
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.* 19“There was a rich man* who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. 20And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,i 21who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. 22When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, 23and from the netherworld,* where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 24And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’ 25Abraham replied, ‘My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.j 26Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’ 27He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, 28for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’ 29But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ 30* He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 31Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.’”k
God has given us the good things for now while saving the best for later.
Thanks!
“Why haven’t the dead communicated back to us?” IF you believe eyewitness accounts, there have been dead who have come back to communicate with us, not the least of Whom is Jesus Christ. There is also the case of Lazarus whom Jesus raised from a tomb where he had been dead long enough that his sisters said ‘he stinketh’. and we have the case of Elijah restoring life to a child, and the rasiing of Tabitha ... and we won’t even go into the scenes such as Daniel chapter five where a hand/arm reaches from some other realm over intot he palace party central of a Babylonian King, or the scene where Elijah and his student are running from ‘the murderous king’ and the student’s ‘eyes are opened’ to see the massive army encamped on the ridge above the murderous king, whose troops snuck away int he night, to avoid that massive army on the ridge, or ... well, you perhaps get the gist. If you choose to NOT believe eyewitness acounts, you close your mind to the possibilities of new data to consider.
Thanks for sharing your story.
NDE show that human consciousness transcends our physical body as well as time as space as we know it.
Indeed. If the border between here and there is as penetrable in both directions as these NDE practitioners (for lack of a better term) tell us, then why don't we ever hear from our dear departed?
No debate at all...
I should have been more clear in my statement: Doctors will tell you that the feeling of well being is endorphins.
One of my Dads best friends had an NDE and it changed him at a young age. I’ve never met a more “together” guy in my life. You just could not ruffle this guy, because as he would say, “he knew.”
I tend to side with you and my Dad’s friend.
It's the greatest thing in the world when you are dying horribly on a mountainside in freezing weather. Bleeding out is easy. Broken bones hurt a lot. Hypothermia also sucks.
Any time you wake up and think 'I'm awake again, I have to call on the radio' life is sucking.
/johnny
This spring I learned that my ureter is about 1mm wide. I learned this when I produced a kidney stone that was 7mm. They mis read the ct scan and told me I would pass it in a day or so. Ten days of the most excruciating pain made me consider that death might just be a relief—not killing myself...but just giving up and dying.
I can appreciate your perspective. But I learned a lot about myself, and who and what are important. I dont take anything else very seriously. Pain is a great clarifier. And the suddenness of it—either falling off a mountain...or sitting down after a great dinner and being on the floor seconds later in agony.
Life is too short to complain.
A friend died from leukemia back in Oct of 2009. I was not there when she passed away but the people there who witnessed her passing saw the peace she had and definitely felt the presence of Christ. Her last moment, she looked up like someone was there to take her and then she was gone.
She was a college student at Colorado Christian University. I saw her a few times at Church when she was in HS/College. At the time, I was single-divorced and I was kind of interested in her. She was similar to me, she liked her shorts and sandals like me. However, I was 19 years senior to her but she was cool and nice :)
When she was sick, I got to visit her like less than a week before she passed away and I took my son with me. He also went with me to her funeral service at CCU.
> In the last moments, she became absolutely lucid and free of pain - recognizing all of her loved ones gathered around her long enough to catch up on things and receive the love of them all, chatting as merrily as the many times we spent as a whole family at her kitchen table. Then her eyes shifted to the door, and she saw something which gave her incomparable joy... And with three sighing breaths, she was gone; nothing left but the eternally peaceful expression on her face.
I just picked up my brother Phil from the Albany airport for Molly’s wedding - he lives in Jackson - back hill skier/biker. He fell and wrecked his shoulder - I told him about Mary Neal’s experience - I let it drop (meaning the post death thing) - her son’s was a tragic death according to Phil, far more than this story is telling us.
Pray for Molly’s wedding - the gowns are in the house
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