I have had a hard time trying to describe this experience to anyone. Even the words themselves are hard to find. I have been living a very selfish life for many years. I have felt like the worst sinner in existence. I have feared death now for many years. I have hated life, especially mine. I have treated my family horribly. My wife was a very loving, happy person who always smiled. Somehow in my misery I managed to erode her happiness down to a level lower than mine. Then she just stopped smiling.

I feel this all started a few years earlier when my grandfather killed himself in front of my grandmother. I had been really close to him, and his suicide affected my feelings and then my behavior. I started having dreams of him where he always has a bandage on his head where he shot himself. Then he keeps trying to kill himself over and over again but never succeeds. My religious upbringing taught me that my grandfather was in hell for what he did. So I turned away from religion and from God. I became an atheist.

Later, I joined the Army, and then we found out that my wife was pregnant. I saw the pregnancy as an unwanted burden, and I constantly blamed her for not using birth control. I started running my household like I was the man of the house and felt that my wife should bow down to my every need. I wanted to treat people badly because that is how I felt.

Things got worse. My wife and I both started doing drugs. Hard drugs. It wasn’t difficult to get them since my brother was a drug dealer. When the baby would cry or get on my nerves I just took more. Soon my wife and I both got addicted.

I can’t begin to go into detail about this period of my life. I started wanting to kill myself. I felt so empty and so alone. I could be in a room full of people and feel like I was the only one there. I had tried to read the Bible, but it was like reading something in a different language. So I just took more drugs.

One night when everyone was sleeping, and I was withdrawing emotionally from life, with no money, no job and an eviction notice on the table, I figured I would just end it. I went out on the balcony and stared at the stars. I was so self absorbed I couldn’t even cry. I was really going to do it that night, except there was on thing stopping me: the fear of going to hell.

And I realized, suddenly, that I wasn’t an atheist after all. Somewhere deep down I knew God was real. So I talked to him. I told him I was messed up and that my wife and child deserved better. I said we were getting evicted the next day and that I had no money to stop it. Then I felt a calm.

The next day in the mail box was a severance check from the Army. I had been out for a year and wasn’t expecting this. It was enough money to pay exactly the rent and to get the food and diapers we needed. The next week I got a good paying job. But the feeling of calm began to wear off, and I dismissed the authenticity of these miracles. I continued to be the demon that I set out to be.

Then I started reading articles about near death experiences and began to notice a real change in myself. One night I came home after the midnight shift at work. Everyone was sleeping. As usual, I lay down on the couch where I had been sleeping alone for years. Then I started thinking how much I had become a stranger to my wife. I felt to go upstairs and lie next to her, which I did.

Then something remarkable happened! It's what I have a hard time describing to people so that they understand.

I sat softly on my wife's bed, and as I looked at her in that moment and felt the beauty of unconditional love, memories starting flooding into my head. I suddenly remembered that I am an eternal being having a human experience. I remembered that we all are sent here to remember what unconditional love is and to learn to use it. I remembered being with my wife before coming to earth and making an agreement with her about our lives here. She agreed to come because she knew I would forget what love was and would also forget for a time what my mission here was to be. I remembered being afraid to come, but still I wanted it. I remembered that she held my hand as we made the decent to earth. She told me that we would go through this life together and help each other succeed.

These memories freaked me out. I got up and ran out of the room. I found myself sick in the bathroom. My whole being was vibrating at an intensely high level as though every atom of my body was going to shatter with pure love. I have never felt anything like this. It was awesome. But I also felt that I would die if it didn't stop. The feelings were familiar yet at the same time strange because my body was not used to them. My mind was still open, and I knew answers to everything. But I begged God to make it stop. I wanted so much more, but fear and my attachment to this life crept in. I didn't want to be taken.

Then I fell to my knees and just bowed before God. I thanked him and truly got a sense of what it means to fear him. It isn’t like earthly fear but more like a total respect for all his power and for his boundless unconditional love. Then he took it all away. He knew it was all I could handle that night.

Now so much has changed inside me, but I want to change more. I have had bouts with depression since this happened. I feel regret for telling God to make it stop, and I wish I could remember more about the Other Side. That is why I am going to read Embraced By The Light and give copies to my dear friends. My wife and I are making amends. I'm trying to be better and feel grateful she is here with me. We will get through this life together and return to where we came from to know always that power of unconditional love.

She is starting to smile again.

God bless all of you to remember what Love is.

Eric S.