take us to the day you died you were 16 years old you were out at a horse ranch riding your favorite horse Heather yes your sisters were with you there tell us what happened we were in an accident caused by another horse a runaway horse and she flipped over backwards fell off a hill and and crushed me um immediately unexpectedly left my body and I saw my found myself 30 40 ft up in the air looking down at my dead body and I realized as I watched everything happening I I felt really bad I didn't
want my sisters to see me die but oh I noticed a light over my shoulder it was coming over my right shoulder flowing a golden light and I turned to look and there was a man floating up there with me and I recognized him immediately which was kind of unusual I shouldn't have recognized him I was raised in an atheist Jewish family and I knew this was Jesus so the minute I recognized him I said hi I know you and he floated right by my side and that was kind of the beginning of my adventure
that's amazing and it's interesting Heidi how you recognized Jesus right away but as you just said you grew up an agnostic athe U family Jewish Family atheist Jewish Jewish aist Jewish family so that's incredible that you even could understand who Jesus was and I know our viewers are wondering right now did he have a physical appearance like what did he look like he had a physical appearance he was was a man he was I knew he was more than a man but he appeared to be a man but he was a perfect man and uh
I always say I couldn't look away from his face his face was the most important thing because of the joy and the love coming from his eyes I did not want to look away from his face and and Heidi you know you you said that there was so much joy and humor even emanating out of him uh in the next moments he began to show you a review of your life but as you look back you're seeing him with you in the moments of suffering yes I'm seeing him with me the entire time he was
never I was never alone I didn't know in a sense I knew that but I also didn't know that so This Life review shows you that Jesus is with you when you're crying when you're Joy all throughout your life and even in moments you said he was rocking you to bed at night yes he did and I didn't know it was him I would just have a sense I would talk to God all the time I believed in God despite my parents atheism and I talk to him every night and I had the sense that
after a while I would it would be time to go to sleep and I would feel as if I was wrapped up in the warmth of a cloud and I could feel my bed start to sway back and forth and then even up and down and I knew it was God doing that for me but I didn't know it was Jesus until I saw him in the Life review doing exactly what I pictured God doing a lot of people they think you know when I meet Jesus when I die I'm going to have questions for
him about why I've suffered or why this happened or what was that like for you did you have those questions questions did you um feel like this you know you were getting answers I didn't have a lot of questions because every all of my questions at the time were answered yeah I I they were gone um and it all made sense if you ask me now exactly what made sense I can't answer that cuz I can't remember but everything made sense and I realized even through suffering God was with me there was a purpose to
that suffering um that Journey with Jesus was uh so beautiful and it continued until you were with God the Father it tell us about that that it was amazing I I had so much fun with Jesus we surfed on a wave of light and I could see all this light of all colors underneath our feet it was tickling the bottoms of my feet it was flowing through my fingers like water and uh we we talked and we left all the way to heaven I guess it was what I can only describe as heaven we did
past things but and I I detailed that in the book but a lot of what I saw I only saw because I was staring at jesus' face I couldn't look away from his face and I would see things passing by behind him but when we did get to God the Father we came to a point where there was almost a threshold that I we crossed like a doorway like entering a doorway and once we entered the doorway we entered a light and it was a a living light the light was love and I knew the
light was God and the next thing I knew I was sitting on God's lap and it was God and it was Jesus they're both together um the Holy Spirit if it was there I was not aware of it at that point because Jesus left me with the Holy Spirit later but I saw I was God the Father and Jesus were one and the same and yet separate so I was sitting on God's lap like a toddler kicking her feet and I had my face buried in his chest and I I never wanted to leave I
just wanted to sit there forever for all eternity um he's a big God I tried to look I tried to look up and sneak a look at his face but I couldn't see it it was shrouded somehow it was covered somehow but you know I I kept my eyes glued to jesus' face the entire time I couldn't look at God's face and um and it was from God's lap that he showed me what I did see of Heaven what did you see I saw it was infinite infinitely far away if you can imagine looking across
an entire universe I was looking across an entire universe and the first thing I saw was grass I'm not I I was very nearsighted on Earth I I I couldn't see very well and but I could see perfectly and I could see green grass I could see every single blade of every of this green grass in this massive Meadow this infinite Meadow and I heard the grass singing which was was remarkable it was amazing and it was the thing that left the biggest impression on me was that that grass and the song of the grass
the grass was singing the Praises of God I looked a little bit farther and I saw flowers I saw all different colors of flowers but I kept coming back to these really blue flowers that looked like irises I looked farther and I saw a Grove upon Grove of tree trees and they look kind of like Aspen trees that's the best way I can describe it and I could see every leaf on every tree and every vein on every leaf on every tree and I noticed they were moving the leaves were moving the leaves were quaking
um the flowers were swaying and they were all moving in time to the song of the grass and everything was moving in the light of God it was God's light animating everything I looked a little further and I saw a pathway a pathway now began to open up through the meadow and I could hear and see I could hear people singing and they were singing the same song as the grass W and I could see them coming but they were veiled I couldn't see their faces yet I couldn't see them yet and it was then
that Jesus came back and told me I I needed to go back and so you are sent back to Earth well I argued with them about you argued I get it yeah I didn't want to go back you've seen Heaven I get it oh wow and you come back to earth with this big experience M you told your sisters what happened but you didn't tell many family members you tried to I tried to ini yeah and Heidi now today you're sharing your story and of course your story appears in um one of John Burke's books
on near-death experiences but uh story now in your book and there are so many life lessons you've learned from this journey you know for our viewers watching right now who may be facing the end of life or are having um or in a situation where their family member or a loved one is what would you say to them as a word of encouragement given your experience of the reality of God and Heaven the one word is hope I had no hope before my near-death experience I was hopeless I had no hope whatsoever so I would
say yes I took away hope it's it's probably the biggest takeway that and and God's love and the fact that he is real that heaven is real and I knew that um the one thing I needed to do in this life was follow Jesus honestly follow him and follow treat my neighbors well treat myself well treat my children well and love God yeah but yes there's a lot of tragedy in this life I'm a nurse I'm a hospice nurse so I dealt with I've dealt with tragedy for years and I understand that but God is
always with us he never leaves us he's always there
