Happy Thanksgiving, My Chickadees. The beautiful truth I have learned in my life is that every day is a day of Thanksgiving! Every day is a precious gift from God, packed with grace, new mercies, and pregnant with every promise God has made to us in His Word. We so often take the fact that we woke up for granted, but many people didn’t wake up. Every breath we take is a gift from God. Grateful should be our permanent state of being, but we often don’t realize this until something happens that nearly snatches the gift of life away.
It was certainly that way with me. About 20 years ago, I had a near-death experience that awakened not only me, but everyone who knows and loves me. It set fire to the power of prayer in my life and reminded me of the precious gift that life is.
I haven’t talked about this incident much, but I was recently reminded of it by several people (who still refer to me as the miracle lady) in various settings, which leads me to believe that now is the time to share my story with the world. The irony of it is that my family, friends, church members, and coworkers are very familiar with the story of how God snatched me from the mouth of death, where I lingered in the shadow of the Valley of Death, on total life support, for 13 days. My condition was listed as grave, but people prayed and God performed a miracle on my behalf. This is my testimony:
Every two years, my family gathers for a reunion. One particular year, it was being held in Jacksonville, Florida. I was excited about this trip for several reasons: One, because I had opened my own counseling agency, The Pathfinder Project, a few years earlier, and had not taken a vacation since the opening of the business. Two, I had friends and family who lived in Florida and I was looking forward to seeing them. My plan was to attend the reunion and then spend a week with my good friend, Joan, who moved to Winter Springs, Florida. I had not seen her in several years.
The reunion went off without a hitch. It wasn’t until the last day of the events when I began to feel a fullness in my throat. I am a seafood lover and I took the liberty to enjoy myself and indulge in all of my favorite things on this trip Seafood had never bothered me in the past, but this strange feeling in my throat caused several of my family members to wonder whether I might be developing a reaction to the seafood. My good friend Roscoe agreed to pick me up from my hotel the next day and drive me to Winter Springs, which was about two hours from Jacksonville. Before leaving Jacksonville, we had lunch, and I shared with him what I was experiencing the night before. He suggested that we stop at the hospital and get a shot of Benadryl just in case I was having a reaction to the seafood. I protested, but his response was, “I don’t want Barres (my husband) to say that something happened to you on my watch. You’re going.”
With my suitcases in the car, I called Joan and told her what happened and that I would be there as soon as we left the hospital. Roscoe dropped me off and went back to his office to lock up, just in case he didn’t make it back to Jacksonville before his workday ended. I remember waiting anxiously in the waiting area and feeling annoyed by this hiccup in my vacation plans. After about an hour or more, they called me back into the treatment room where I was seen by a doctor who ordered Solu-Medrol, Epinephrine, and Benadryl – the treatment usually given for people experiencing anaphylactic shock. Just as the medication was being administered, Roscoe returned and was allowed to enter into the treatment room since he worked in the Fire and Rescue Department of Jacksonville and they knew him. Reportedly, I had been laughing and talking and then suddenly something went horribly wrong.
While the technician was connecting the heart monitor, my heart began beating so fast that I thought it was going to beat out of my chest. The doctor had left the room after ordering the medications, and the nurse was putting the medication away when I raised up off the table and stated, “Somebody help me!” Roscoe, who was sitting at the end of the table, perked up and noticed that my pupils were fixed and dilated. He began yelling, “She’s in cardiac arrest! Hit code blue!”
Thirteen days later, I woke up in the critical care ICU with tubes coming out of every part of my body. I was told that my heart stopped and that I had been on total life support for those 13 days. I learned that they had defibrillated me an unheard of eight times in an attempt to bring me back. In fact, at one point, one of the doctors looked at his watch to call the time of death and Roscoe, who worked the code and did CPR with the emergency room doctors, insisted they keep trying. I learned that when your heart stops, all your organs began to shut down, so in the several hours that they worked to revive me, my renal system shutdown, my kidneys failed, and both lungs collapsed. My husband, who was still in Maryland at the time, was notified and told that if he wanted to see me, he needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible, because they were not expecting me to live through the night.
Word went out about what happened, and people that I didn’t even know began to pray. I was a consultant for the Prince Georges County Department of Social Services and I am told that they announced it over their PA system and asked for a moment of silence in this government building. The National Association of Black Firefighters, who I also served as a consultant for, put out a national call for prayer among their members. My church family and countless others – some who knew me and others who didn’t – heard what happened and prayed. On the 13th day, during a prayer vigil led by my pastor with my choir, I came out of the coma.
My husband, who had been trying to make arrangements to bring my body back to Maryland, was told that if I lived, I would be in a vegetative state because of the lack of oxygen to my brain. BUT… GOD!!! Coming out of the coma I heard a voice in my ear say, “Touch not my anointed,” and to everyone’s surprise, I woke up.
My life is a testimony to what God can and will do, and the fact that He is still in the miracle-working business. Those who went through that experience with me still praise God for His miracle-working power and the testimony of my life to that power. Even doctors who read my records have had to make some reference to God.
On this Thanksgiving, I am reminded that life is a precious gift from God and we should never take it for granted. In the blink of an eye, we could vaporize and cease to exist, but God.
My Chickadees, every day is a day of Thanksgiving. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Peace, Blessings, and Happy Thanksgiving,
Gail