90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life by Don Piper; Cecil Murphey

Author:Don Piper; Cecil Murphey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Revelation
Published: 2011-09-30T10:48:54+00:00

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So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in his good time he will honor you. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you. 1 Peter 5:6–7

Some people who have known me for a long time see me as some kind of courageous figure. I certainly haven’t seen myself that way—not for an instant—because I know too much about the real me. I also know how little I did to get through my ordeal.

Despite my own perceptions, friends and church members say they received encouragement by watching me as I progressed from a totally helpless state and gradually moved toward a fairly normal lifestyle. A number of individuals have said to me in the midst of their own difficult times, “If you could go through all you endured, I can go through this.”

I’m glad they’ve been heartened by my example, but I’ve had a great deal of difficulty accepting myself as a source of inspiration and courage. I don’t know how to cope with their admiration and praise, because I didn’t do anything. I wanted to die. How uplifting can that be?

When people tell me how inspir ing I’ve been, I don’t argue with them, of cour se, but I remember only too well the time David Gentiles told me that he and other s would pray me back to health. I lived because other s wouldn’t let me die. Those praying fr iends are the ones who deser ve the admiration.

Most of the time when people have that if-you-can-do-it attitude, I nod, acknowledge what they’re saying, and add, “I’m just doing the best I can.” And really, that’s all I did during the worst days. Sometimes “the best I can” was nothing but to endure. Even when I struggled with depression, it was still the best I could do. Maybe that’s what God honors. I don’t know.

By nature, I’m a deter mined individual, which I admit can sometimes be a first cousin to stubbor nness. Yet many times I felt terribly alone and was convinced that no one else understood.

And I still think that’s true. When our pain becomes intense and endures for weeks without relief, no one else really knows. I’m not sure it’s wor thwhile for them to know what it’s like.

They care. That’s what I think is important.

After I came home from the hospital in the middle of May, I still had to sleep in a hospital bed until Februar y 1990—a total of thirteen months. Even after sleeping in my own house, I had setbacks of various kinds or developed infections. Back to the hospital I’d go, and some of those trips, especially in the early days, were for life-threatening infections. Sometimes I stayed two weeks and other times three. On most occasions Eva drove me there, but I always came home in an ambulance.

After they initially released me from the hospital, church members kept telling me how good I looked “considering all that’s happened.

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