One of the most exciting times of my life took a totally different twist, one that changed my life forever.
I was expecting our first child and was so excited to have a new baby come into our lives.
But I started to have some complications.
During the last two months of my first pregnancy, I experienced a lot of edema or water retention.
I went in for my regular weekly physical two weeks prior to my due date and the doctors decided to place me in the hospital to get rid of some of the water.
In the early morning hours, my water broke and I started into labor.
The doctors were concerned that I would have trouble delivering the baby because he would be as swollen with water as I was and might be too large for the birth canal.
They prepared my for a cesarean section.
I remember counting backwards from 100 and then I was out.
Next thing I remembered was that I found myself floating above the room watching the doctors performing the surgery.
The table and the instruments were a very shiny chrome and reflected a light so bright that I found it hard to keep looking that direction.
I remember turning and leaving the room, floating upward into a brightly lit open area.
I did not see flowers or a river as some people have reported but I heard the most beautiful music ever.
This was music that I could not recognize as coming from instruments that I had heard before.
The music came from everywhere.
It came from different directions and each strain was melodious and harmonized with the other strains like they were all woven together.
It is really hard to explain but it was beautiful.
Then I remember noticing how peaceful everything was.
Extremely peaceful.
It made me realize how we put up with pressures, aches and pains that we get so used to in our daily lives that we do not notice them anymore.
We just accept them as part of life.
But when they are totally gone, it is an extreme freedom.
I wanted to experience more and kept drifting upward until I heard the doctor calling me.
He said, "Mrs.
Strouse, wake up.
You have a new baby boy to take care of.
He is your responsibility.
He needs you.
" "Yes," I thought.
"I want to be the one to raise him: my new baby son.
" I remember coming back into my chest, filling in my legs and then my arms.
As soon as I was back into my body I woke up.
They wheeled me to my room and then they brought my baby to me.
It was much more vivid than a dream.
Each time I think back, I experience the same details all over again.
I am convinced with no uncertainty that life continues after death.
We are just in a different realm.
When I gave birth to my second son, I was anxious to know if I would have a similar experience.
At first I thought that maybe the anesthesia made me hallucinate that experience.
But even though I was given the same anesthesia, nothing happened other than that I was out for the duration of the surgery and then woke up in the recovery room as planned.
It convinced me beyond a shadow of doubt that I truly had an out-of-body experience.
The key, though, is to be ready.
People asked "What must we do to be saved?" The answer was given in the Bible in Acts 2:38.
The key is to be ready.