Over a decade ago I treated a patient for depression and traumatic stress. He was an alcoholic and big time drug abuser who had received a heart transplant.
"Being a full-time drug abuser and alcoholic how did he get on the heart transplant list?," you ask. Good question. I don't know.
He told me he had died on the operating table. Familiar with life after death experiences, I asked him to tell me about it. He replied, "It was bad," and said no more.
For several weeks, perhaps a month or so, he refused to discuss the issue. Finally when he continued to show no improvement in his symptoms, I interposed: "Perhaps since you aren't getting better it might be helpful to tell me about what it is like to die."
Reluctantly, and with great hesitation, head bowed, body twitching, he began to tell his story, slowly at first and then rapidly, his voice rising into a crescendo of high pitched terror. His entire body became rigid, petrified by dread. A hideous, hollow-eyed stare seemed to penetrate into the depth of despair and savagery. This is what he said:
I was lying on a table with doctors, assistants, technicians and nurses all around. Machines and equipment hummed. I was getting scared with all the people and machines crowding around me and I started to say, 'Hey boys this is not for me; maybe we should stop' when a nurse began injecting the rubber tubing leading to my vein. She told me I was going to get sleepy and began counting down from ten and I was out.
I don't know how long I lay there asleep. The first thing I saw was darkness, but I could see through the dark, like being in dirty, smothering jello. I was in a straight jacket of gooey jello. No mud. Thick, slick and slimy, gooey mud surrounded me, squeezed me. I felt I was in a coffin of suffocating mud.
In the background I could hear a low, rhythmic pounding. Like a heart beat. Like a blacksmith pounding on a metallic heart, grating and harsh. Lub dub, pause; Lub dub, pause. The throbbing, palpating pounding grew louder and louder. The Lub dub began to speak. Nothing else spoke. It was the pounding. The rhythmic, pulsating Lub dub pounding: Something's coming, pause. Something's coming, pause.
I knew it was true, but I couldn't move. I couldn't run. I couldn't scream. Over and over; louder and louder. Something's coming, pause. Something's coming, pause. I wanted to squeeze my ears against my skull.
Above the blacksmith's pounding I heard rasping screeches, like thousands of finger nails dragging across a blackboard.
And then through the mud I saw them. Hideous creatures. Dozens of them scrambling toward me. Some of them looking like giant cockroaches scurrying toward an open pantry. Some were gigantic spiders. There were monsters, gaunt to the point of emaciation, their eyes pushed back deep in the sockets. They all gave off an odor of decay and decomposition.
They all began pulling, tugging me toward a vertiginous abyss filled with a whirlwind of thunderclouds and lightning. Ghastly screams and hideous cries seemed to exude from the depths.
Suddenly I was released and began flying through the air pursued by grotesque bats, fiendish and diabolical. I awoke in the ICU with nurses bustling around. I told no one of my experience.
"My God," I thought, "He is going to hell."
I encouraged him to talk more about the experience and his feelings and vaguely mentioned God and the spiritual life, but I never firmly said, "Your only hope is Jesus Christ."
Why? I don't know. Maybe I didn't have the courage of my convictions. Maybe I thought a psychiatrist shouldn't be so direct. Maybe I thought he wasn't ready for an intervention. Maybe I was afraid he would reject Jesus...and me. Or maybe it was just easier to tell myself that I would talk in detail about Jesus next week.
The Saturday after our visit he was decapitated when his 1971 yellow Triumph Spitfire ran under a 18-wheeler. His alcohol level was 0.44. He had opiates and benzodiazepines in his blood.
Shoulds and oughts provide no benefit, but I know I failed that man and in doing so discounted the power of the forgiving grace of Jesus.
All around us live people in quite desperation--the millionaire next door, the checkout lady at the grocery store, our doctors and lawyers, our mail carriers and bank clerks, our friends and family. They live lives of desperation because they have never experienced the love, joy and peace Jesus offers.
When we get a chance to offer Jesus, let's take it. Be aware. Be aware.
And forgive me, dear Jesus.
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