Walking with Jesus.
I had a near death experience after I'd been seriously injured in a near fatal automobile accident which caused me to stop breathing necessitating the use of a ventilator and an accompanying coma.Since coming out of my coma I've had vivid remembrances of the time I was on the other side of veil in a heavenly realm. There was a bright mist permeating everything. The light was everywhere, it even passed through me! I can remember looking at my hand and the light passed through it. I could see my hand was transparent, but this did not surprise me.
As I walked with this heavenly personage his countenance shone forth with such a brightness that I can't describe. I knew this heavenly personage was Jesus because I recognized him as a familiar friend. He didn't announce who he was because this wasn't necessary. I remember walking with Jesus, but we weren't walking in the physical sense, the best way I can describe our walking was that we were walking in mid-air, floating a bar spare above the ground of this beautiful garden we were walking in. Everything in this garden had an overall whiteness and brightness about it. I was seeing the bright green of the plants. I could see the water, and a bright glow surrounded it and the burbling of the water had a musical sound to it, this stream of water fairly sang! The water was so sparkling clear!
I remember wanting to bend over and take a drink from the stream that was running through this garden we were walking thru. When I tried to scoop up water with my hands the water ran through my hands, literally, and it wasn't wet! Jesus stopped walking and looked at me while I was bent over trying to drink this water. I could feel his eyes on me. My thirst for this water even though I wasn't able to put it to my lips and drink it was gone at that moment! I can't describe the sensation I felt when the water was running through my hands, but I did feel something. I felt this overwhelming desire to experience everything about this garden.
When I and Jesus talked it wasn't with our mouths, but I knew we were communicating, his countenance fairly shone, and how he felt about me shone forth about him. He simply exuded love and concern and caring for me just by standing there. The feeling of peace I felt was undescribeable! I was given the choice that I could either come back to this earth and live more life or stay with him there in Heaven. We both knew that returning to this earth would be a struggle because I'd told him that I wanted to return to this earth if I could help myself and others. He knew that I didn't want to live more life on this earth if life meant being trapped in an unresponsive body, unable to communicate. The look of love in his eyes filled me with joy then, and as I remember that feeling of joy I felt then I'm filled with joy anew now.
I don't know how I did this, but then I remember that I was in a hospital room looking at my husband holding my hand and talking to me. Only I wasn't seeing from the vantage point thru my own eyes. I recognized that was my body, but I was outside of it, looking at my body from above. As I viewed this scene I felt a strong desire that I wanted to return to this earth and live more life with my husband, if I could communicate with him and help him.
I was understood and the desires of my heart were heard. The next thing I remember was being trapped in my body while others cared for my physical needs. I can remember that I could tell what the nurses were thinking about me by how they touched me. I knew if they thought I was going to live or not thru their touch. I knew if they thought they were caring for a basically dead person whose spirit wasn't there. I remember trying to scream out, "Look! I'm alive! I'm in here! I'm going to live!" I relaxed and trusted that person much more if I knew that they knew they were caring for a living person. I obviously could read their thoughts!
While in my spirit body I remember communicating telepathically, this is how I and Jesus communicated in that heavenly garden. It was so easy, it required no effort, you thought the thoughts and they were communicated. Speaking through my physical mouth is so difficult, and frustrating, and sometimes you're misunderstood, and they get the wrong meaning of what you're trying to say.
The phrase the world uses of being soul mates is referring to the communication between two souls, spirit to spirit communication. To communicate on a spiritual level is a very profound experience. I believe I've had this spiritual gift ever since my near death experience, and this gift profoundly blesses my life as I use it. I feel this great need to communicate on a spiritual level with others, and one of the only ways I'm able to communicate in this way is through writing.
I have to prepare myself mentally to be able communicate on a spiritual level. You have the time to do this as you are writing in your home, without distractions. We are what we think. I find trivial thoughts distracting, I rarely watch TV and then only if it stimulates good thoughts. I listen to different music now, and gravitate towards the ethereal.
My near death experience has changed me, I desire righteousness and I abhor evil. I'm actually quite thankful for my accident, even though it has changed my physical abilities adversely, but at the same time my spiritual abilities have blossomed enormously! Ever since I woke up from my coma I've had an attitude of peaceful hopefulness. I believe the reason why I still live, one of the reasons I came back to this earth to live is because I'm supposed to testify that the spirit world is real and beautiful, and that Jesus is who he says he is, he is our brother, and we knew him well as a friendly brother in the spirit world. This knowledge, this belief, affects every facet of my life, and my desire to communicate this to others. I believe, this is why I came back to live more life to relate this to all who will listen.
Derry Bresee
Waiting
Waiting for answers to my prayers
is a movement of my heart,
I am consciously abandoning thoughts
of what I thought God would say to me,
and being still & waiting.
I give myself time this morning to hear God's quiet voice.
I give up my expectation of what I think he'll do,
and give him a chance to do what is best for me.
In watching the sunrise and awaiting God's voice
I see in the dark morning sky
a faint predawn light.
A rosy glow is spreading from the horizon
to the edges of clouds.
Orange gold beams of light are spreading out
fan like to touch the top branches of trees,
to travel downward to bushes, to the cold, dark earth.
The darkness has fled, illuminating me,
I feel the rosy glow of his love, the warmth of his spirit with me,
as I await answers to my prayer I prayed in the predawn dimness.
I am preparing myself to hear his voice as I watch the sunrise.
As I see the beams of sunlight breaking forth from the clouds,
my soul finds joy! My spiritual aptitude is growing,
as I watch in thankful silence seeing the day dawn breaking
as I wait, listening for God's voice this morning.
What a beautiful way to begin a day!
Waiting. . . .Derry Bresee
Oct. 28,1999
About me by Derry Bresee I thought it might prove helpful if I tell you in more detail of my own personal rehabilitation process.
Let me tell you a little personal background information first. I am a registered nurse, in fact, the day of the accident, I had taken my 16 year old son to the DMV to take his driving test for the 2nd time, he'd failed once already the week before. He passed so he got his first driver's license. I let him drive home from the DMV where he was going to switch to an old Mustang we'd bought him, and then he was going to go to high school and I was going to see some patients I saw in their homes that were expecting me. I worked for a Home Health place here in Las Vegas.
Instead the course of my life changed forever that day. While driving home my son came up to what he thought was a 4 way stop. He stopped, then pulled out in front of a gravel truck, fully loaded, heading from the gravel pits on our side of town.
My son, Clint, thinking it had to stop pulled out in front of it, not knowing that it didn't have to stop, the intersection was only a 2 way stop. The truck was on the gravel truck route, and the truck hit the drivers side of my brand new Chevy Prism, (3 weeks old), my son, Clint, was not wearing a seat belt, and neither was I. The police said that if he'd been wearing his seat belt, he'd have been crushed and killed and I would have walked away, without a scratch. The truck dragged us 80 feet before it stopped, and I think we had to be cut out of the car.
My memory is totally blanked out of the accident occurring. The last memory I have of that day was talking to my boss for Hospice nurses on my cell phone at the DMV waiting for Clint while he took his driving test with my car. I also saw patients in their homes for hospice as well as for Home-Health nursing.
As you can see I was one busy, productive lady then! Clint was knocked unconsious, suffered a pneumothorax, some cracked ribs and a broken collar bone on his left side. He remembers coming to in the ambulance. I was much more seriously injured, I had to be resuscitated, either at the scene, or in route to the trauma center, at UMC, where I underwent emergency surgery for a hemothorax (bloodclot) on my brain, and abdominal exploratory surgery.
My husband was notified at work of my accident and he called my two places I worked at that they'd have to get someone else see those patients and he informed them of my auto accident. Nurses from both agencies showed up at the hospital and reviewed my records and status and knew how seriously I had been injured, and that my death was expected imminently.
The Chaplain for Safe Harbor Hospice, (now called Odyssey) held a prayer service for me at a Lutheran church and invited all the nurses from In-House Home Health as well. I know they came because a book was given to me later where the people who attended this prayer service had signed in and wrote notes of encouragement to me. All the members of my ward congregation were asked to fast and pray for me all on the same day.
My parents, in Utah, who were temple workers in the Logan, Utah, a temple for the Mormon church, had my name written on the prayer list of names prayed for by those attending the temple that day for all the temples in the western United States that day. Prayer is a tangible force, a power for good here on this earth!
Many people ask me what was the 1st thing I thought or felt when I came out of my coma, about 3 weeks after the accident. What I felt, was the incredible feeling of power by being thought of by many and them praying for my recovery to God. I could feel his love and compassion for me, and I believe this communication led to my incredible experience with Christ in that heavenly garden.
I now no longer hope that there is heaven and that Christ's life experience and atonement are real, Now I know! Just like I know that I gave birth to all 5 of my children and tangibly held them in my arms. My testimony of Christ burns within me, now when I think of him, I have a visual memory of him looking at me there in that heavenly garden. The love and concern in his eyes for me is overwhelming if I think about it too long I feel emotionally overwrought.
Since my accident all my emotions have been on the surface, many would think I'm emotionally immature, like a kid. I am an innocent, emotionally, I say what I think, I'm very honest, but I've never said anything cruel or hurtful to anyone, just my observations surprise people, and quite often they don't quite know how to take me.
My husband is very protective of me, but he is often happily surprised how I say and do things now. He quite often says now I've lost the cautiousness I used to have in conversations with others, he says my naivete is refreshing. I now pray each day for and follow the promptings of the spirit of whom I should talk to and about what, my soul tells me who I should speak with and whom is distracted by other things, who wouldn't listen to what I had to say and if they have good motives.
I was in a Convalescent Care Center for about a month, that's where I came out of my coma. Then I went to a Rehabilation Hospital for 2 days. They had told my husband that I'd receive physical therapy and speech therapy and occupational therapy everyday and that these therapies would aid in my recovery but progress was very slow.
My parents had come from Utah to see me and assist in my care, because my husband had to go to work each weekday. So what we all came up with was that I would go home and my parents would stay for as long as I needed their help, and that I would receive the therapies I needed from In House Home Health, from my friends. Basically all my rehabilatative therapies have been done in my home. From walking around my house, exercising, walking around the block with my physical therapist from throwing and catching a foam ball with my affected side, to carrying a weight in my left hand while exercising.
The exercises got even more complicated when the occupational therapist starting making visits. I had lots of memory exercises and hand eye coordination stuff to do, and in between their visits I was doing rehabilatative stuff for myself just by doing things caring for our home, instead of being tied in a bed peeing on myself because no one answered my call button to untie me and take me to the bathroom.
Everyone rallied around me, my Dad would massage my sore spastic muscles each morning after I got out of a jacuzzi tub we have in our master bathroom, and then we'd go for a walk together, this is during the same period of time the therapists were coming to the house. My nephew is a Chiropractor, but he lives in Laughlin, but his partner lives and practices here in Vegas, and so for about 3 months, I went to his partner 3 times a week, finally graduating down to once a week.
My parents stayed for 1 month, then I was able to care for myself at home. The ladies in my church all signed up at a Relief Society meeting for different days of the week to go walking with me. I now have many interested friends, involved in my life, because they had volunteered then to go walking with me.
I find the more I share about my NDE the more I bless others life. The more I talk about my NDE and relate how it has changed my focus to others the more I take my Near-death experience out of the dream world of their consciousness and make it more real and usuable for people to grasp.
May the telling of my personal life since my NDE bless the lives of all who read of it.
God bless, Derry Bresee
