90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper

his name together.
    I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me, freeing me from all my fears.
    P SALM 34:1–4
    S ometimes the depression became so bad I didn’t think I could breathe. It carried me back to the days in the ICU when I received breathing treatments because my lungs had collapsed. Except now my lungs weren’t collapsed, only my spirit. Few things sap the human spirit like lack of hope. For weeks and months, no one could tell me when or even if I would ever be normal again. As a result, I went into a full-scale depression.
    As my horribly mangled body mended, I needed spiritual mending as well. I began to think of it this way: The Greek word for “spirit” is pneuma. The word can also mean “wind” or “breath.” That Greek word is the root for what we call pneumonia . Just as it was necessary to reinflate my lungs to overcome pneumonia, I needed the breath of God to help me overcome the depression of my spirit.
    I don’t know when I became aware of that depression. In the first few weeks of my recovery, I was in such constant physical pain I couldn’t hold any thoughts in my mind for more than a second or two.
    I also battled a lot of anger during those first weeks. I wasn’t angry with God, though I often wondered why God had sent me back to earth and why I had to go through such intense physical agony. But even being in pain was not the issue for me. From my first day in the hospital, pain has always been present. Like many others, I’ve learned to live with that reality. My struggle is that I had experienced the glory and majesty of heaven only to return to earth. In my weaker moments, I didn’t understand why God would return me to earth in such awful condition. Many live in greater pain, but few—if any—have experienced heaven.
    Instead, my anger focused primarily on the medical staff. I suppose it was because they were there all the time. Deep inside, I seethed with an inner rage, perhaps at myself as much as the medical staff. Why wasn’t I recuperating faster? I blamed them for the slowness of my recovery. In my rational moments, I knew they did the best they could. Despite my antagonism and irritation—which I’m sure they sensed—they stayed right with me and constantly encouraged me.
    I didn’t want encouragement—I wanted results. I wanted to be healthy again. Why couldn’t my life be the way it used to be? I wanted to walk by myself, and I didn’t want to depend on others all the time.
    The medical staff wouldn’t give me any definite answers, and that sent fresh waves of rage through my system. In retrospect, I’m sure they told me what they could, but I was anything but a typical case. No one knew my prognosis. In fact, for several weeks, they weren’t even sure if I would live, let alone make a significant recovery.
    I became paranoid—I knew I wasn’t rational even when I complained and demanded more attention or additional medication to alleviate the pain. Nothing suited me. The pace was too slow. They made me wait too long before responding to my bell. No one wanted to answer questions.
    “How long will I have to wear this Ilizarov frame?” I asked almost every medical person who came into my room.
    “I don’t know,” was the most common answer.
    “But I want to know something,” I finally said.
    “A long time, a very long time,” was the only other answer a nurse or doctor would give me.
    A couple of times I just had to have an answer, so I kept pressing the doctor.
    “Weeks. Months,” he said. “We can’t tell you because we don’t know. If I knew, I’d tell you.”
    Common sense said they were doing their best, but in those days, I didn’t have much common sense. Part of it was the pain, and perhaps the mammoth doses of medications affected me as well, but I wasn’t a good patient. Instead of being satisfied, I kept asking myself, Why won’t they tell me? What do they know that they’re hiding? There are things they’re not telling me, and I