What happens when we die?
As I wrote in my Backstory #12 post, I was very close to dying 2 years ago. I knew that if we didn’t find help soon, I was going to die. It was just something I knew and couldn’t explain.
Then, last year, my doctor at the time reiterated the same thing. After a few weeks of being his patient, he revealed to me that I was very close to dying when he first met me. I never told him that I knew I was dying, so I was surprised when he said it. Being his patient for 8 months challenged my spiritual beliefs more than any other time in my life. I was raised in a family that was not religious, so there was not a lot of discussion about the spiritual world. I would say that I was always a little bit more spiritual than the rest of my family of origin, but I was not raised in, nor did I follow, a specific faith tradition. This previous doctor challenged me to dig into my spiritual beliefs. He never told me exactly what to believe or pushed any specific faith tradition, but he encouraged me to do some research to determine what I believed to be true. He said the specifics didn’t matter. In the meantime, he worked on my physical health and said things to me that there was no way he could have known. He predicted what was going to happen in the future many times over. He knew what my physical body needed without much logical explanation. Each time this would happen, I would be in a state of disbelief. I had many unusual spiritual experiences right before becoming his patient and for the 8 months that I was his patient.
I have continued to have seemingly inexplicable spiritual experiences since being his patient as well. I was given a free psychic reading as a gift from one of my practitioners in January of this year, and I kept the notes from that experience. When I go back and review the notes every so often, many of the things that were said during that reading have been true throughout this year.
All of these experiences have changed me. I am still a very logical, scientific person. However, I also have a deeper understanding of my own spiritual beliefs. I have researched and read about this topic quite a bit over the last 2 years, and I am now a lot more comfortable living in the unknown — the in-between. I am okay with the understanding that not everything can be explained, and that fact is comforting to me now. I feel like I am a healthy mix of relying on both the known and the unknown in my daily life. (By the way, being comfortable in the unknown only applies to the spiritual part of my life. I am still way more comfortable with “certainty” and having a good plan in the other parts of my life. 🤣)
Recently, I read the New York Times bestselling book, The In-Between, by Hadley Vlahos, RN. (There is another book out there with the same title, so take note of the author’s name.) Hadley is a hospice nurse and part of her purpose is to help people feel less fear about dying. As I am someone who likes to learn about a variety of topics, and the spiritual world is a topic of interest, I decided to give it a read. It was one of the best books I have read in a long time. (Also, I haven’t been able to read for a long time due to fatigue and brain fog, so even being able to read was a nice surprise since reading is one of my joys in life.) Despite the topic, it was a really uplifting book. If these types of topics interest you, it is definitely worth the read. It is written for people of differing faith traditions and spiritual beliefs and also for those who don’t believe.
The book was a good reminder to live in the moment. It can be difficult to stay in the moment with chronic illness. It is very easy for me to think about the past and question certain health decisions or to be anxious about the future and worry about what’s next on the health journey, but I try really hard to stay in the present moment as much as possible. Even though I love a good plan for the future, I try to find as much joy as possible in the right now — the messy middle. It is not always easy given my health parameters and limitations, but it is a constant goal of mine. This is the life I am living, and I don’t want to waste the moments I do have. The truth of the matter is that I don’t know how much time I have left — none of us do.
This book was also a gentle reminder to continue telling the people in my life how much they mean to me. We never know when we will no longer have the chance.
Brutal. Being so close to death that I could feel it.
Beautiful. Inexplicable spiritual experiences. Being comfortable in the unknown. Living in the moment and finding joy. Telling people that I love them.
Just another day of . . . This Brutiful Life: The Brutal & Beautiful Moments of My Life.
(image #1 credit: unknown–with my “(& family)” addition in red; image #2 credit: unknown. Click on images to make them bigger.)
This Brutiful Life 