It was spring of 1977and I was sleeping late, aftertelling Sharon to wake me by 10:00. There were no clients that morning but had other workto complete.

Laying in bed for what seemed like a short moment and then instantly finding myself jogging down Short Beach in Nahant, seeing and feelimg everything, even more real than right now! Everything radiating light. The sand, the plants, everything is incredibly beautiful. Light reflecting everywhere and off everything. Looking ahead, down the beach, seeing something that normally is not there, a large section of sea wall right in the middle of the beach across from the Coast Guard station, standing upright as if it were placed there.

Running toward it, a huge man, approximately twelve feet tall stepping around from behind the wall holding his hand out to me. I don’t know how to describe the terror I feel. All my breath is taken away from the fear, but I still leep running straight toward this figure thinking I am going to die. But reaching him he takes my hand by the wrist and the next thing my feet hit the top of the sea wall as we go up into the air.

It is incredible! We are flying north along the seacoast when we turn inland and go west over Massachusetts and fly over my parents’ house. Stopping there a moment and looking down from about three hundred feet at my father working in his garden and my mother hanging the clothes on the clothesline. It is beautiful. And without a word he takes me north very fast.

He never spoke. We started to descend into a beautiful lush clearing with fir and pine and warm sun all around. As we are almost landing, and realizing our flight is almost over, I blurted out, feeling like a four-year-old: “How come you don’t want to fly anymore?” Touching down into the clearing, I feel myself back in bed. Something incredible just happened to me. It was not a dream, and realizing that it was not a hallucination.

Laying there trying to understand what had happened. Getting up immediately going out in the kitchen and telling Sharon what had occurred. I tried to explain it to her the best I could. As we were talking the phone rang. I went to the phone and heard my mother say hello. As she was saying this, electricity is going through my whole body and I know what she is going to say before she says it. My father had just died suddenly an hour before while they were on their way to vacation in Florida. He had a massive stroke and coronary while he was driving and died instantly. My mother took the wheel and drove onto the grassy median strip, unhurt.

I began weeping, but it was not from grief. Somehow, I knew that what had just happened to me was God letting me know that there is more to life than what is visible, and that my father was now in the presence of Him. I knew that, down to my deepest fiber, and was hooting and whooping between sobs of grief and joy.  

During the whole funeral, before and after, I was telling everyone what I saw and comforting them with what I felt God had showed me. Most thought I was nuts, but I didn’t care. I knew what I knew, and I wanted to share it with them and let them now my father was alive! The neighbor across the street from my father and fellow deacon with my father at the Glenmont Reformed Church, told me at the funeral service that there had been a great change in my father in the past two years and that he had come to a new faith in God and looked forward to being with the Lord. I told him that I knew it and that he was with Him.  

An angel was sent to deliver me and impart a message that he gave without a spoken word. The angel took me by the hand and delivered me to a point where I could not stop reading and drinking God’s word and thirsting for more.

It was not much later that I asked Christ to make a new creature out of me and to come into my life.