The social media site Medium recently carried a post about a woman named Amanda Wideman whose car had flipped upside down after hitting a concrete guardrail. She and her partner were on their way home from a music festival. A car in the opposite lane lost control and headed into their lane. They tried to avoid it by driving along the gravel shoulder, but everything was happening too fast.

Their car spun, hit another vehicle, flipped, and was stopped by the concrete guardrail from falling down the mountain.

From Amanda’s perspective, it looked like they were going to die.

When they collided with another car, the impact sent Amanda’s body deep into the seat, and she decided to let go. She was a paramedic in the area, and they often never rescued people from accidents in that zone.

If an accident happened in that zone, cars would often go over the edge, and she thought that was what would happen to them. Thus, Amanda closed her eyes and welcomed her passage from this realm. In a moment, she found herself in a “fluffy darkness” that seemed infinite.

It didn’t terrify her. The space felt like a safe, endless cave. Amanda was more concerned about how very light–weightless–she felt.

Was she even there?

Another interesting thing: she was aware of everything. To her, human vision felt like how things seem fuzzy when drunk, and that awareness felt like the clarity that comes with sobering up. That mind clarity and sharp awareness of what’s going on as compared to being inebriated.

Amanda also felt like this space was more real than earth. Time passed differently; she could absorb a lot of things in an instant.

Everything felt infinitely peaceful. Nice to hear!

“On Earth, even if you’re in a peaceful moment, there’s a part of you that knows it could end anytime or that some trouble could come around the corner,” she said, “Here, there was no awareness that it could end and no awareness that any trouble could come. It was the most safe, beautiful, secure, perfect feeling I had ever experienced.”

She felt surrounded by God and “an infinite number of everyone and everything that ever existed.”

The Divine Presence represented itself as God and was perfect love. Never-ending perfection.

Then, a distant sound emerged.

The sound became louder and louder. Amanda realized a small crowd had formed around the accident, and his partner was screaming. Amanda was back.

People at the scene thought they were dead and were hesitant to approach the vehicle.

The paramedics came to rescue them, and people were asking Amanda if she was okay. She had pain in her shoulder, but that was all. To Amanda, everything was more than okay; she’d just checked back home and came back.

“ No matter what happens, it’s our spirit and our awareness that live in the body or out of the body, but it’s still fully us.”

Oh dear: so many of these folks stray into reincarnation. They think the place they were in is where we go between lives.

That much we can leave behind.

A difficult thing, discernment.

Scripture tell us to take what is good, and leave the rest behind.

A few years after the experience, Amanda made big changes in her life. She started volunteering at a hospice. She would chat with people who were at the terminal stage of life. They often were in and out of the other side and would tell her their paranormal experiences. This boosted Amanda’s understanding of what had happened to her since she could relate to what those patients were talking about.

Amanda also lost interest in accumulating material items, comparing herself to others, and the need to be competitive.

She sold her house and most of the belongings in it. Then she bought an RV and decided to go around camping and reconnecting with certain friends she’d lost touch with because of her busy work life.

Before her NDE, she never had much time for anything else that was not work-related. After her NDE, she explored meditation, prayer, and exploring nature.

“I’m still learning, still growing, but holding on to what I learned in that experience about surrendering when something is out of my control, letting go of the outcome as often as possible, and not attaching too tightly to the material world.

“I’m grateful for having my needs met.”