While I have read it before, the title caught my eye at the local thrift store. Certainly it was worth pocket change. Ninety Minutes in Heaven is the retelling of Don Piper's experience of clinically dying, and visiting his heavenly home.
The occasion of his death was a gruesome accident with an eighteen wheeler driven by an unqualified prisoner. But that doesn't really matter. What does is that his friend came upon the scene and felt compelled by God to pray over the body. The one with no pulse. After intense petition and singing, Don began to sing along.
It was not easy to get the police to believe that the ravaged body they had checked on an hour before housed a living person. But eventually they sprang into action and called the Jaws of Life to free Don from the crumpled can of his car.
The excruciating story of his hospital stay and the thirty some surgeries to reconstruct his limbs makes for a tough read. But the piece that stays with me is the list.
A friend came to visit. Unlike the dozens of others who were intimidated by the tubes and screws all over Don's body, this man was not afraid to challenge him. To tell him to step up.
"I want you to make a list of all the things you can do. Stop fixating on all that has been taken away from you."
That is a pretty gutsy challenge from someone who walked into the hospital room on his own two matching legs, maybe even used the stairs, and pulled his pants on that morning in the privacy of his own bedroom.
Don was resentful at first. Indignant. But he agreed. What happened broke through the depression. There were a thousand actions on the list. Which, not being able to hold a pencil, were spoken into a recorder.
I have my own lists. Things I am thankful for. Because remembering them is like eating dessert and having it still be on the plate to enjoy again tomorrow. Without the calories. One list is focused on blessings around Benjamin. Another is of couples we have spent time with. One is of quilts I have given, and the happiness that affords me. Yet another is big life events like weddings and babies and graduations. I keep this evidence of Gratitude on my phone. Which is not quite as close by as
my daughter who recently got a tattoo of the words "give thanks" on her forearm, or her brother who got "bread from heaven". In Hebrew.
Don went to heaven for ninety minutes. He was more than irate at being forced to come back, especially to a body held together with steel rods and wire. But the indescribable joy he felt for those minutes stays with him, as a beacon to aspire to.
'There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, not crying, neither shall there be any more pain." Revelation 21
