"I Knew Him" - Bridget Meets Jesus In Her NDE

0:03 From the time that they pronounced me that was a good 45 minutes They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart my heart stopped and I could see people screaming and crying But I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else The only thing that I could feel if you can imagine Absolute love and peace there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I'd known in the past I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death everybody and our wonderful guest this morning. You are going to love her, Bridget Cooke Birch. How are you? I am so grand. Thank you for asking. Delighted to be here. You got me up early this morning, but thank you for that too. We got each other up early this morning. That's awesome. Hey, before we jump into your story, it's Interesting. Sometimes, well quite often, one of the things I get asked is how do you find guests for your show? And I admit they come from all over the place. A lot of people reach out to me through our website and people are sometimes recommended. Every once in a while I'm online in like a near -death experience social media group or something and something will just stand out to me and I'll reach out to that person. But For you, I was having lunch with a friend recently. Shout out to Val Hale.

1:34 I don't think he'll mind. And he said, if you haven't interviewed Bridget yet, you have to. Her story, it'll be like your best interview ever. So Bridget, you came highly recommended from a mutual friend. And we both love and respect Val very much. So we're assuming that this is going to be as good as he hoped for. But anyway, hey, Bridget, before we jump into your story, would you just tell us a little bit about you so we can get to know you? Sure. I'm used to talking about everybody else just because I get to work with amazing storytellers from around the world. I will tell you, I'm a very proud and delighted mother of four, three daughters and one son. and also a Mimi of four. I have two granddaughters and two grandsons and they are the highlight of my existence in my life and I absolutely love it. I also get to work with stories and my clients call me the book whisperer. Just I see threads of stories that's happened ever since my near death and I'm able to help people to put that into extraordinary, you know, it's their real stories, but I'm able to see the rises and falls in a way that other humans can understand the deep impact that they've had. And so I'm, I'm a book coach and a publisher and I just love what I do. I have an incredible

3:07 team and we work together and it's always about something greater than ourselves. Wow. Well, it's kind of fun talking to somebody else that has a gaggle of girls and then one boy. Was your boy the youngest? He was the youngest until my third daughter came along. So she's my bonus daughter, but she's the daughter of my heart too. Okay, I won't tell the others. They're gonna be jealous. They all hold a special place. It's amazing. You know how that goes. I know how that goes. Four daughters, one boy. But he was the caboose, and so he had five mothers growing up raising him. I was going to say he had all of that influence on him, yeah. I just wrote a book with a gentleman who had, I think, five older sisters, and he called himself the bendy doll.

3:59 He was the bendy doll of his sisters, and when they all left to get married, he felt very bereft and abandoned. So interesting. Yeah, you know, it's funny and maybe I'm just old -fashioned but the one thing that I put my foot down on with the girls was you are not dressing him up in dresses and makeup and curlers and all that kind of stuff and There you go. I'm sure I'm gonna get harassed for making a statement like that. But Hopefully it turned out well for you will listeners of the show have heard about will he does our editing And he's a huge part of what goes on here. So anyway, but enough of all that.

4:42 I want to jump right into your story. How many years ago are we going back to when you had this, this scare, this wonderful thing? Well, I'm old now, so we're going back decades. We're going back to when I was in my early twenties in college. I was a perfectionist. I wanted to excel at everything. I wanted to experience all of life. But also, Eric, I had a deep wound inside. I'd been adopted when I was six months old. So I'd been through three sets of parents by six months. And there was a deep part of me that didn't trust that the big people would stay. I was fiercely independent.

5:28 I wanted, it was one of those oxymoronic things, like I wanted so much to be wanted. I wanted so much to be loved and felt I had to prove myself for that love. But when it would come, sometimes I would push it away. By this point in life, everything was crumbling. I'd been working in Salt Lake and was making decent money as a waitress and then I moved to Logan to go to Utah State University and The economy there was very slight and tips were very poor. And so all of a sudden my income plummeted. I was doing construction. I was working at a gas station at night. I was waitressing and I still, I could not keep up with my expenses. I had no social life. I was trying to go to school. I started failing classes, was failing in my relationships with my parents, with my friends, with my roommates. I just, I was not living a great life. The stress started to eat away inside my body, but I didn't know what was going on. I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and going to work and going to school and staying up and trying to, you know, manage a final and failing miserably. And in my world where I kept trying to prove myself to fail was the worst thing that could happen. One day I was just so sick. I didn't know what was going on. My brain was a little fuzzy and I just wanted my mom. I took my last five bucks in my pocket and filled my truck with some gas and headed

7:00 down this very steep canyon from Logan to Brigham City that had no business driving. And all I could think about on the way down there, Eric, was just what a miserable failure I was. I still get a little emotional about it because It was such a big part of my identity. I pull up in my mother's driveway and I can barely get out of my truck and I go to the door of the woman that I wanted to please the most. She opened the door and she took one look at me. I was completely emaciated. I'd lost 30 pounds in three days. And she said, we're going to the doctor. And she put me right into her car. and rushed me off to the doctor's office and luckily was right next to the hospital because I collapsed in the doctor's office and they rushed me into emergency surgery and they had to do exploratory surgery to figure out what was going on and they pumped out pints and pints of sepsis from my abdominal cavity. I was in a lot of trouble. Because I was so emaciated, they had to give me what's called a subclavian. So they had to put an IV in near my heart and pump in all these intravenous antibiotics. There was about six or seven and I would remember them bringing them in on a whole pole and then hooking me up to the wires and things. But what nobody knew was that I was allergic to one of them. I never had it before. It was

8:31 making it so that it was killing me. So I was spiking fevers up to 106, 107. They were getting worried about brain damage. There were all the things. My mom brought in the priest. I had grown up Catholic in a Mormon town in Brigham City and she was very worried about me. She stayed by my bedside for the longest time and a couple days went by and I wasn't getting better. I was only getting worse. And then I had befriended. Behind the curtain, this faceless woman found out her name was Linda, but her husband was reading to her from what was called the big book. I recognized these words of God. And in my high fevers and when I wasn't feeling good and I was reaching towards this, I had been through a 12 -step program.

9:22 It was something that had been a light in my life. It had reintroduced God into my life. So I'm hearing these words. So we talked a little bit and then she went in for gallbladder surgery. And when she came back, you know, I'm still just in my bed and I'm still just dying and she was writhing in pain. And her husband and a clergy member of their church gave her a blessing, this bishop. gave her a blessing and part of it was that her body wasn't accepting any pain medication and she had that old -fashioned gallbladder surgery and she could feel every cut and every stitch and I didn't even know that I was empathic but I felt her pain in my body and I was hurting for her and felt so bad for her and then I heard this clergy member he commanded her body to accept the medication And it was the craziest thing for me to experience from behind the curtain because the pain left my body, I heard her sigh, and then she fell asleep. And I was like, oh, that's wild, but I didn't know what to do with it. It didn't have anything to do with my upbringing.

10:35 I thought I might want to become a nun at one point, but to be honest, Eric, I didn't feel like I was ever worthy enough to be, you know, considered and then nothing like that. So later on, it was about two o 'clock in the morning. And I only know because of Linda, but we were listening to nurses outside in the corridor. And the one said to the other, I think we better call her mom back because she's not going to make it until morning. And I just laid there recognizing that I was not going to be around anymore. And I will tell you that there was this deep part of me that had recognized that I had not fulfilled the measure of my creation. There was something that I came here for, but I didn't know what that was. I had no idea what that was.

11:27 But in that moment, hearing them talk about my death, I just knew I hadn't done it. So I felt this deep sadness, and I reached my heart out to God. You know, like, I don't want to die. I also felt my mother's intercessory prayers. She had been praying her heart out for me that I would survive. It was one of those I like to call it a Mack truck moment. Never before would I have let down my guard enough to go against my own religion, but also my own beliefs about who God was and what I was worthy of. And I just said, hey, can anyone have one of those blessings?

12:12 And she said, yes. And so she called her husband right then, and he came down with another gentleman. It wasn't a bishop, but they gave me a blessing, and the energy of it, the frequency I can now say, but at the time I didn't know how to describe it, was different than when the priest had given me a blessing, and they were both comforting. And I just said, thank you. And I fell asleep. And when I woke up, My entire hospital room was just filled with light. Like it was this brilliant, amazing, you know, you've been a producer. So you know what a bright, bright white light is, is nothing like that. It permeated everything.

12:58 It was so brilliant. It was blinding. And at the same time, like I could feel the light in my body and I recognized it immediately. It was this unconditional love. I was filled with so much love, so much joy, so much bliss, and there was a figure right in front of me. There was another light -filled being over in the corner, but I hardly even paid attention to him because this being right here, I knew him. And his eyes, oh my gosh, his eyes, they were filled so much compassion. and so much love and he didn't care what debt I was in. He didn't care how lousy my grades were. He didn't care about my love life and everything that I had screwed up. He didn't care about, you know, the mistakes that I had made with my parents. He didn't care about any of those things. He just, he loved me for me. And I could feel that love permeating everything in the room. It was like... A scripture came to me later about how the rocks and the stones themselves, you know, would sing his praise.

14:09 Like my skin was vibrating with his love. My metal tray table, I'll never forget. Like I could see it vibrating in his presence. Every atom was excited to be in his presence. And I knew why, like I knew him. And I was so grateful. to be with him. And it was like, it was like I had been living in a thimble. And all of a sudden, all the universe was open to me in his eyes. It was the most extraordinary thing. And he told me I was being given a second chance at life. I can't even tell you the joy that I felt in being able to have a do -over. My round trip, right, to be able to do this was extraordinary.

15:05 And I fell asleep. For the first time, my fever went down and stayed down. Early in the morning, they wake you up and they're bringing in more into intravenous antibiotics. And I looked at the nurse and I had never been one to go against authority ever in my life. But I looked at the nurse and I said, hey, I can have every single one of these, but I cannot have this one. Cannot have this one and she says what do you mean? This is the only thing saving your life We thought we were gonna lose you last night. You have to be on these and I've said not this one. It's killing me so she goes racing off to tell the doctor that you know, I'm a french fry shy of a happy meal and I was really blessed because I had a doctor who'd had other patients with near -death experiences. I didn't know that's what it was called, but he said, well, it doesn't matter. She's on all the rest of these. We'll take her off this one and see how she does. And the next day, on my own power, I walked out of the hospital and I would never forget the love that I felt. Never forget how I was changed, how I was reborn, how I was made whole and different.

16:21 Definitely not perfect. I have made so many mistakes in my lifetime. And I will tell you that I had a recent spiritual experience where he told me a very uncomfortable truth. He said, ever since that day in the hospital, you have been lying to yourself about my love. And I'm like, what are you talking? No, I haven't. No, I haven't. He says, yes, you have. He said, I came to you with this unconditional love. And he said, you told yourself there must have been something worth saving. And you have set out to prove that to yourself ever since. And I didn't realize that that had become my impetus before I wanted to be worthy of love. Then I knew that I was worthy of his love, except I wanted to prove it. crazy what our human egos will do even in the presence of something so beautiful. And I think that's a good lesson in what exactly unconditional love is. When we use that term and it gets thrown around like whatever but it really means something.

17:36 So what did you learn that unconditional love really means? I learned I could be sitting on the couch eating bonbons and watching TV and he would love me just as much. And in my mind, I couldn't even put that together. It was like, well, how could that be? Because that's not fulfilling the measure of my creation, right? Like that's just, that would be a waste is what I felt in my mind. And his love came in again, so strong. And it was just the truth of it, of the love around. the choices, how important our choices are. And I'm the one who wants to fulfill the measure of my creation, but I am His creation.

18:26 And He loves me just as I am, just as I am. Like I still get so emotional in remembering the love in His eyes. There was there was no condemnation. There was no retribution There was none of the the things that I thought God and Jesus would talk to me about when I met them again You know, there was nothing like that. It was all just this like You know the the delight that you feel when when you've well, you wouldn't know about giving birth to a baby But you would know with your gaggle of daughters and your son. When you hold that child and you look in their eyes and they look at you and you have this outpouring and it doesn't matter what they would ever do.

19:17 You would never stop loving them. Those words are paltry compared to what I felt in his eyes, in his presence. And so now I just seek to be that wherever I go as much as I can in my very human frail Sometimes really stupid form. I just love to be that love and show that to people and it's really not even a showing it's a It's an embodying. It's a Recognizing the gift of every presence, you know, I remember just within several months after this I I got married I Got pregnant and I was told I'd never have children because of how messed up my entire abdominal System and cavity, you know, I had issues and and I had fissures in my colon and it just spread everywhere that sepsis and I had. Several things that happened afterwards and topic pregnancy and and some other things, but here I was I was pregnant and it was going to be okay. I was going to be able to give birth. And so I was just overjoyed that not only was I going to live, but I was also going to be able to be part of this process of giving birth to a new creation. And just how incredible that was. And I gave birth to her.

20:42 Her name was Brianna. She now goes by Raven, but I'm holding this miracle child in my hands, in my arms. holding her and just recognizing, you know, what a miracle life is. Before this, you know, I just, that avid student, I was going to go to Washington. I wanted to be an envoy at the Capitol. I was taking Russian, although I was failing at the time. But there were all these things that I wanted, you know, to prove myself. When I held her, it was like, oh, what can I do in the world that's different? What can I do in the world and still be with her? And so one of the things I'd always loved was writing and books and other things. And I would take her to the gym with me when I would go to work out. And she got to be around these other children, which she delighted in. And I would work out. At the YWCA, there were these young kids that were high -risk youth that were brought in by a place called Community Learning Centers.

21:45 And I could see the story that I had told myself for so long about, you know, the big people would always leave. I could see those stories in their eyes. I could see the way that they looked at the world and it was in a box. And, you know, talking to them and asking them questions and being curious about their lives. And, you know, mom and dad are gang members and grandma, grandpa. And they were many of these kids so immersed in gang life that it was like a religion to them. It was all they knew. Someone recognized my ability to draw stories from the kids and hired me to be a consultant to write some of their stories, especially the ones that were turning the corner, the ones who decided that they didn't, you know, maybe out of everyone in their whole family, that they were going to take a different path.

22:41 And Eric, I just fell in love with the human soul. I got to see how important these choices are that we make, but especially the stories that we tell ourselves, they're the most important stories. We might be bombarded by social media and parents and other people who tell us stories, but the most important stories are the ones that we decide about ourselves. And so I've been able to watch that unfold and then also see what happens when we say, I made these mistakes, but I can write a new chapter. I can do something different. That's when I began this writing journey. And I feel like every time I am privileged enough to sit before someone else and hear their story, that I get a sense of what God sees. of what a magnificent creation every single one of us is, all the opportunities that we have as we're here on the planet. It's incredible the opportunities of growth that we have here. I used to think of this place as a test and it was either pass or fail and I was failing. And then I began to see that this is a place of learning. and how extraordinary that every single morning you and I woke up early this morning going, oh, rather go back to bed for a little bit. But also the opportunity for us to talk today, for us to share

24:13 experiences and discussions about our kids and just the beauty of what is possible in each one of us. Wow. I'm glad I got up early. The wisdom is just oozing out of you. I have to admit I got a little stuck on the TV and bonbons because to me that's not a bad day. But if you don't mind, let's go back and talk a little bit more detail about the near -death experience itself. I want to see if we can draw just a little bit more out of it. And what a beautiful experience, by the way. How it changed your life is amazing.

24:53 I wanted to clarify one thing. A lot of people that I meet with have an experience where they feel like their spirit of who they are leaves their body and has some kind of journey either to a place or maybe up near the ceiling in the hospital room looking down. Did you have that experience or were you in your body in your bed the whole time? I was in my body, but I will tell you he gave me what I would like to call a brief glimpse. Now I've read many other people's experiences and mine was different than that. I didn't travel anywhere. What I got to see was, I got to see him looking at me and me looking at him and I was above. So I got to have this experience of this witness if that makes sense of me me staring into his eyes and him looking at me and When I was there it was like that same experience of looking in his eyes and I was able to see universes like complexities of space and time I felt like I I knew everything I felt like Like He was giving me the gift of the mind of God to understand everything. And, you know, when I woke up the next morning, I was so frustrated because I didn't have that anymore. But I just

26:25 remember, you know, in that moment, me watching Him watching me and it's so hard to put into words all the colors, all the cosmos, all the stars, all the all the life. It was like this breathing organism was the entire universe. It was all of creation and it was what I saw in His eyes when I woke up and He was right there and I knew Him. You keep saying He and Him. What's His name? Jesus. Can I call Him my Jesus? Because the it was so personal it was so different from Just the knowledge and the understanding that I had as a child when I longed for him You know when I? My dad was a deacon in the Catholic Church and my mom would bring in converts to the church and they were often busy with people and you know my little brother and I would play around the churches and stuff but sometimes I would just sneak into The church itself and I would I would kneel you know in a pew but at the foot of the cross and I would long for him but he was this thing that was that was not a thing but he was this this presence this this unknowable person that I longed for this this son of god this creator He was unknowable to me as a child,

27:57 except when I was outside, except when I was among the trees and the flowers and the grass, and I felt close to Him there. And then when He was across from me, He was all of life. And I call Him my Jesus because He knew me. He knew every hair on my head, every sin I'd ever... Committed but he also knew my every joy and my every laughter my every book I'd ever read my the key he looked at me with Just he knew everything and there was nothing to hide There was nothing to hide from him. Like I was embarrassed of my life circumstances For not even a split second The love was so consuming that all of that didn't matter and I can tell you that that is the thing that has stayed with me for so long as all of that didn't matter. So even when I make mistakes in life, when my budget is not as strong as I would like it to be, when maybe I've given away the farm for too long or whatever it might be, money for me, physical trappings have little to do with what I felt in that room for Him and from Him. I love the moniker of my Jesus. I like that a lot. You very briefly mentioned another being in the room. Tell me about that. I will

29:28 tell you if Jesus wasn't right there I would have been so attracted to this being as well because he was just so bright and So beautiful. It's so powerful powerful is definitely a word that I would use Was later when I was doing some some study and all of a sudden it was like oh my goodness That was Archangel Michael. It was like that immediate knowing just like when I had been in front of Christ and he was looking at me. It was this immediate knowing that that was Archangel Michael. And I will tell you that, gosh, it's hard to put into words. Magnificent protector comes to mind, which is so interesting because my Jesus did not need a protector. but there was still this presence. And I can't tell you too much more than that because there were other things that came later that helped me understand who He was and why He was there. But in the moment, I didn't know. I was just like, wow, that's cool.

30:36 And my Jesus is right here. Yeah, you got the extra cool. Okay, my Jesus. Tell me about His eyes. You said you looked into His eyes. Oh my gosh. There is not a color on earth that can describe everything that I saw in his eyes. They were like this beautiful blue with purple and again I saw universes. I saw all these things in his eyes and the colors beyond description just so alive and so full of love. just so much love and compassion and I wish there were words.

31:22 I'm a wordsmith and I am a voracious reader and I love words and I love descriptions and I love other things but I am often so at a loss to describe just how incredible those eyes. I knew him. I knew him. If you were an artist you could paint them maybe. Feel like I am an artist with words and I feel like I still shy from the the gloriousness there is a She's probably a woman now, but was a child painter of Jesus she is the closest I have ever seen to anyone that has been able to portray his eyes and his light and his compassion.

32:10 I was really intrigued with her paintings. When I first saw them, I was like, wow, someday I will have one and put it on my wall. This is just reminding me the fact that you're a wordsmith and don't have all the words. One of the artists that I've had on the show tried to paint not so much him, but the things that he saw in heaven as he had a visit to. And he said there was a problem because those colors, they're not in my palette. I could not mix up the colors that I saw there. So it's okay that you don't have all the words because he didn't have all the colors of the paint either. But I'm going to make it even harder for you now to try to explain more with words. Please try to explain the love.

33:06 We've talked about the unconditionality. Let's let's dig deeper than that. I told you about the vibration because that's one of the ways that I can describe it. My cells in my body responded in incredible joy. Like just his very presence was so amazing. Bliss and and joy and and it so was really beautiful because there was a I don't know with the recognition of him, with the witness of him that I, you know, that was such a gift, but this, this, there was a back and forth, you know, um, and my lips didn't move and his lips didn't move, but we were having conversation mostly about this, this second chance and this love. It is, see this word, the words fail me again. It was active. It was. everything that He was and is and embodies. It is why it's the very first thing that would come to my mind to describe besides light. It's an expansiveness.

34:19 It's a... And my words again. Remember when I said about like living in a thimble and then all of a sudden... I think the love that I had experienced and I had incredible adoptive parents that they were so loving and very open and non -judgmental in their own ways the best they could be as humans and all the love that I had ever experienced in the world which was quite a bit from many different people but it was like this thimble compared to his universes his expansiveness of love it had no bounds it had no darkness in it it had no judgment it had only truth and light it was full of joy like he was full of joy looking at me that's why I was like I hadn't not had that I had not had Been in the presence of someone who didn't care about all my foibles and my mistakes and everything else It was usually like, you know, get your crap together girl. This wasn't a get your crap together girl at all this was a You are mine and you are delightful and I love you. He was blissful in that recognition of one of his creations and When I see other creations, I recognize that like how beautiful This soul,

35:51 this child that gets to decide for herself, that gets to make choices, that gets to make mistakes and learn and make decisions and choose to love and choose to err and all of these things. I still have never experienced anything like it, but sometimes I witness it in other people's eyes and I'm always looking, even in the hard stuff. I've written some really hard books about former skinheads and the daughter of a serial killer and the woman who was the 19th wife of 65 women. You know, there's been a lot of darkness in their lives. I have the opportunity to look for light in the eyes of Warren Jeffs, to look for light in the eyes of Keith Underjusper and the happy face serial killer, to look for the creation that we all are and that I have come to realize he loves so much. I think that recognition, it blew away a lot of my prejudices and I felt like I grew up prejudiced against prejudiced people. I felt like I grew up in a very open family and very open, you know, to people of all different backgrounds, face, walks of life, loves, skin colors, religions, etc. He blew away all of those parameters. And it's still funny today, Eric, because whenever I hold a judgment,

37:22 he'll send me a story. And then I get away from another human and I get to break down my walls again. Yeah, that's awesome. A couple more things before we wrap up here. One, you've had an experience that most humans haven't. What has that done for your level of fear in the future? I often ask people, how much fear of death do you have? So how about you, Bridget? My fear of death is only have I fulfilled the measure of my creation and now... After that recent experience, it's less about the doing to prove and it's more about am I Experiencing like what I came here to experience in this physical body where I have certain limitations and also have incredible opportunities and choices I Lost my train of thought and that rarely happens, but I was I was going into something. So please and again scale of 1 to 10 How much fear of death do you have? Oh, so of dying itself, none. Just living before I die. That motivates me every day to have new adventures, meet new people, have experiences, be as much of his love on the planet as I can be before I go. And then I will also, I would like to add a caveat because, you know, especially since COVID, in our everyday world, there's been a lot of darkness. There's been a lot of fighting. There's been a lot of

38:53 anger and sides and divisions and and other things. And there have been a lot of people who have been losing hope. And I've been asked to, you know, do you see death and destruction and Armageddon and all these things? And I've heard that there are others who have have seen that. I don't think very many. I will tell you this. I came away from that experience recognizing that God and my Jesus have ultimate faith in humankind. When I went back to my studies and I was reading about the Renaissance, when I read about the aftermath of wars, when people came together, when I saw firsthand 9 -11 and I saw the horror, but also the way that people came together. And it was almost as if I could hear the collective prayers of a nation. We have a unique ability to come back from any level of darkness. God has ultimate faith in us. And it's just time for us to have faith in ourselves and to begin to act accordingly and to certainly begin acting with a lot more love. Last thing, you had mentioned I'm trying to remember how you put it now. Something about if we could see everybody the way Jesus sees them. And you gave examples of murders and horrible

40:27 things like that. How can we? Well, let's do this. Leave us with some kind of a message of hope and instruction on how we can all see each other that way. Would I be allowed to share something when my dad came back to me from the other side? Of course. I was in a meditation and all of a sudden I was gone. And my father came and he's dressed in a tux and he just has this big grin on his face. And he was younger than when I had seen him last. His hair was darker and his mustache was darker. Big grin on his face. And on his arm is my grandfather, my grandmother. This is my mother's mother. It's really fascinating because there's a story between those two that when my father married my mother and then they decided to come to Utah, she was angry with him because he was taking her and her two grandchildren away from Michigan to this heathen land of Utah. and she took down their wedding photo and put my mother's graduation picture back up on her mantle.

41:40 So there was some friction between the two during their lifetime. But my grandmother came to live with us for a while before she passed, and I think they were able to make it up. But here's my dad showing me. right, showing me. So they're, they're big band dancing and my grandfather's off to the side. He's still wearing a tux as well. And my grandmother was dressed to the nines and they're dancing. And my father said, the games we play in life. And then, then he showed me this, this beautiful prayer that I've been saying, which was, father, let me see through your eyes and hear with your ears and feel with your heart. and when prompted, speak with your words. Let me have experience of you when I'm viewing the world and people." And he showed me this great light that was surrounding me and it was, it felt like that light in the hospital room. It was beautiful. It was a living intention.

42:42 It was gorgeous and I was very humbled. But then Eric, there was a black wall and it was shocking. compared to this light and I was like, what is that? And he said, look behind it. So I was able to peer up and behind it and behind that wall was Keith Hunter Jespersen, the happy face serial killer in his prison cell. And my father said, how much light and love do you think he gets behind those prison walls? And I realized I had never hated this man. I was a little fascinated by him. but I had been angry at him for what he had done to my friend Melissa. I was angry with him for the way that he would psychologically twist his daughter's life around. And I had not forgiven him, nor had I done one thing. I saw that I had withheld my love in my judgment of him. And I can't say that I pour out gallons to him every single day, but I do look at him as a child of God now. And I wish for him the best and he is in my prayers. And also when I walked into the courtroom, I was just about three feet away at one point from Warren Jeffs when I went down to Texas into the trials. And this was a prophet pedophile and he was manipulating

44:13 and twisting the minds of his people. And he was also hurting little girls. But I will tell you after that experience, I do not agree with nor like nor love any part of his actions in what he did. But I did look for light in his eyes. And I'm not capable of the same kind of unconditional love that I was shown, but I do my best. And I think... that if we were all to do our best, just simply come to the table with more love and to choose to have that love walk before us and have the presence of this unconditional love and beauty and light that we choose to surround ourselves in and make it a part of our daily walk, that our lives would be incredibly different than they are today. Thank you. Thank you so much, Bridget. Hey, if anybody wants to find you, should we have them reach out to yourinspiredstory .com? Yes, that would be great. Or you can find me on social media. And I love making new friends and hearing new stories. So thank you. And Eric, thank you. You're an incredible host. It's an honor to be on your show. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast. Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtripdeath .com. If you

45:44 want to share your near -death experience or if you have questions or comments about the show, send an email to eric at roundtripdeath .com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.