Meeting God Part ?

Been kind of busy last few weeks after our return  from our European Vacation and having a gaggle of my daughter's cousins and girlfriends wanting to see her after not seeing her for six looonnnggg months....for them it's an eternity--for us, well it seems like a blink of an eye.  Trying to get our house back in order, getting our RV back on station at our semipermanent site at the campground plus just trying to manage all the social events we like to do in WNY and NW PA.

So have you ever met God?  Not in your prayers or looking at a cloud formation in the sky or looking at the wood grain in the door at the doctors office.  But have YOU MET GOD ONE ON ONE?  Now we all know that no one can actually see the face of God, however we can see the face of His Son the Christ Jesus who was God in human form to be seen and be "real" for us.

My time came on a cold night in January 2012 one week after having my fourth cervical fusion followed by a DVT and a Greenfield Filter placement in my IVC.  I was up walking around as per doctors orders when suddenly this cloud of doom came over me and excruciating pain starting at my toes and going up my legs into my back drove me to my knees and literally into the cement of the basement floor.  I remember seeing this hill of the greenest grass with the bluest sky imaginable....then absolute BLACKNESS.  Then this OMG bright light with a shadow below it and next to it were there and I came closer....I recognized the face of one shadow next to the light and it was my Dad who died in 1964.  The light had features but they were barely discernable but seemed to be a peaceful calm face of our Lord Jesus.

All I remember at this point is incredible peace, warmth and happiness and NO PAIN.  It was my Dad who spoke merely saying that "it's not your time son.  You have things to do yet."  Both of them turned to leave and I awoke upstairs in a pile on the floor with my one daughter screaming in my face to "WAKE UP!" and my across the street neighbors who happen to be ER Dr and nurse state that "he had a pulmonary embolism, he's lucky he woke up he'll be okay now!"  Next time I woke up i was in the ER.

Next time "What's next?"

FEAR:

A cloak being pulled over your head
Your toughts....what thoughts....all jumbled
A knife thru your skull, in a vise
Falling, i can't hear I can hear I can't see...

Forever for help, I can hear the word stroke though I know nothing

Time slips how long eons, i can see i can't see but I hear
Sirens scream, head screams can't feel nowhere
Medic screams can't find veins all collapsed...
A single tear is all I got left

Awake but its dark, I can hear machines-talking quietly
Knife thru your skull in a vise can't feel anything
Doc says something about lucky, 15% and flight
Darkness, no dreaming no nothing no voice no comprehension

Nothing but FEAR

Recall:  Five years ago I was sitting on my porch of my RV near North East PA where I was recovering from a pulmonary embolism, stroke and DVT during January and February of that year.  Just a month previous I had lost my job as the borough manager (city/town mgr) of North East.  Additionally my personal life was crap; my wife asked for divorce and was running around with another man gambling every dollar away.  She was attempting to introduce my daughter, son in law and grandchildren to him plus i was estranged from one of my other daughters.  Life couldn't really get any lower....believe me though it got lower.

I was essentially banned from the house i paid for and forced to live up on the hill.  Everything was a secret which really wasn't nothing new in my life.  In the end i was ultimately responsible for all this as I never said no when I should have or stood by limits we had set.  The life I led for the last 18 years finally caught up with me and was killing me.  I was just to stupid and proud to step back and accept that I wasn't in charge of my life.

Next time...I don't know what I will talk about.