I was nineteen and living in a cheap walk-up apartment I had rented with my 18-year-old girlfriend. We thought the place was a mansion. The two of us had just graduated from Business School and landed a job.
I invited my 12-year-old sister to spend the weekend with us. We were sitting around the table laughing and acting as silly as teenagers and a twelve-year-old can, when I got very tickled and the fish I was chewing got sucked down my windpipe. I tried to stay calm. I got up and walked around trying to get my breath. When I couldn't, I panicked and began running frantically around the apartment in a wild and crazy last claw for life. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I was going to die...and ...I did!
I traveled very swiftly down a black tunnel and toward a small round dot of light. I was totally unafraid to go to that light. The round circle got larger and larger and larger and just as I began to enter, a figure came between me and the light. I knew him! I knew him! I perceived that he was Jesus. He turned me back toward my body on earth.
Meanwhile my roommate was trying to call an ambulance and my baby sister had tackled me. She got me into a sitting position on the floor pressing my midriff hard onto my knees, forcing the fish to dislodge. I could finally get a breath. When I became aware of what was going on in the room, my roommate was still thumbing through the phone book to call someone. I told her I could breathe and to not call anyone. That night I cried and cried and cried and couldn't tell anyone what I was feeling. I could not go to work for a few days because my lungs, my sinuses, my nostrils, my muscles and everything else hurt so badly from my struggle to breathe.
The awesome experience of seeing something I could not explain or understand was more overwhelming than the fact that I almost choked to death. I had never heard anyone speak of any of these things so I kept it locked away in my heart like a precious secret. Thirty years later my sister and I were discussing the incident and I left out the part about going down a tunnel to the light and seeing Jesus. Then I asked her, "How did you know what to do? The Heimlich maneuver was not even invented then and you did a rendition of that move."
She replied, "A voice told me what to do."
That’s when I told her the rest of my story. My sister became a nurse and I believe she was called to the occupation when, as a twelve-year-old, she saved my life. However, I floundered around until I finally found MY true calling—one that has taken me on a wonderful path to spirituality.
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