My out-of-body experience happened at 1:30 AM November 11, 2008, 3 weeks after my wife died. I was not on any meds and I made a conscious decision not to drink alcohol after she died. I woke up with a question on my mind that I needed to ask her so I cried out, "Lord send her back this one time so I can ask her this."

It was if all of heaven yelled back: "Nooooo! You can't ask for that." I did not believe that we are able to communicate with the dead, so I'm not sure why I asked to speak to her. I rolled over in bed and tried to go back to sleep, but I was fully awake and my throat was really dry, so I got dressed and went downstairs to get a glass of water.

As I passed through the family room, I heard a soft-spoken whisper telling me to sit down. I filled my glass with water and sat down at the kitchen table, long enough (a few minutes) to drink the water. I was thinking about the whisper I had heard and wondered if I was supposed to go to the back bedroom where my wife had died and sit there (she had a 2.5-year battle with colon cancer).

I passed through the family room again and the voice again told me to sit down, this time at normal volume, so I went and sat in the bedroom. I didn't understand what was going on, so soon I went back to the kitchen for something to eat.

As I passed the same spot in the family room, I heard the same voice commanding me in a loud voice to sit down. I sat down immediately in the middle of the room on the floor in the yoga position. A white wispy figure appeared and I asked (all communication was telepathic), “Who are you?” I thought it might be Gabriel or another angel or even Jesus himself and the figure must have read my thoughts and it replied, “I am merely God's messenger," with a bit of a grin or laughter. He was being humble on purpose, I thought. He asked if I wanted to see my wife and I was embarrassed to say, “Yes.”

At that moment I felt my body go numb. I became elevated above my body. I saw myself pounding my chest to check if I was alive. I asked the messenger if I was dying. She said I was not dying and I would be back. She said to follow her and to focus on the light ahead of us.

We traveled at a high rate of speed in what I thought was a tunnel. As the trip was taking some time, I began to look for the walls of the tunnel. There were no walls, only darkness, until I looked back and saw demons chasing us. The messenger grabbed me, told me to focus on the light ahead, and we sped off.

The light to follow was a speck of light in the distance. We traveled for some time. The light stayed the same size until it suddenly started to get larger and we burst through the "opening" and into an area of light so bright that it took a few seconds to get eyes adjusted to see.

In the distance I saw what looked like the foot hills of a mountain range, but as my eyes got fully adjusted, it was clearly a layer of fog roughly a mile away. Half-way to the fog was a barren tree that I recognized to be the Tree of Life.

At that moment a 10-year-old girl in a sun dress came skipping into the scene from our right. Yellow and white butterflies were landing on her raised arms. She was playing and having fun. She did not know we were there. I asked the messenger if her family was here. She said they were but I would not get to see them.

I asked if there were pets here and got the same answer: there are pets but you will not get to see them.

The messenger then asked if I was ready to go back, I said yes and I was instantly back in my body. I was told to not tell anyone of this event by the messenger.

I tried to talk to my pastor about it and he thought I should seek counseling. I told my second wife this story and she wasn't impressed either. Over the years I have concluded that this event happened, so I would not cry out (a form of desperation prayer, I later learned) to speak to my wife again. The trip through the chasm is too dangerous and she is happy where she is.

It was 9 months later that I learned that the term "messenger" is another name for angel. In 2017 I was traveling from Port Angeles, WA to northern CA when we stopped for lunch in Forks, WA. There was some local artwork hanging on the walls of the diner. One of the paintings was on old barn wood. It was a painting of the same heavenly scene I had seen years previously. I have tried to find out who painted it, but have not been able to.