Spirit Daily

Brilliant Light Seen At Death Returns To Help Woman Heal Critically Ill Child  

By Michael H. Brown

We have been describing the near-death experience of a Syosset, New York, woman who "died" in June of 1991 (see original story). We explained how the Lord showed her a review of her life -- call it a "judgment" -- and allegedly appeared to her as a vision (in her mind's eye, as opposed to an apparition) every day for nine months after the incredible experience. 

When it was time for the Lord to go, He told the woman, Barbara Marie (we're protecting aspects of her privacy), He would be sending His mother.

At first, Barbara wanted nothing to do with that. She couldn't imagine being without the Lord. 

"For three months the Lord tried to get me to go His Mother," she told Spirit Daily. "I never had had any devotion to the Blessed Mother -- not any whatsoever. I did not have a rosary. I did not know anything about the Blessed Mother, other than she was supposed to be the Mother of God. That's how low I was in my spirituality. 

"I spent from May until August literally fighting, sobbing, and at the Lord's feet begging Him in the same way I had begged Him at the entrance of that tunnel," she continued, referring to her first vision of Christ in a passageway or "tunnel" when she had her brush with death and didn't want to come back to earth (see second story). "It was my sorrow because every day that Jesus came, He kept saying, 'I want to send you to My mother.' I didn't understand why He was leaving me. I was shown a pair of rosary beads, and they were a pair of black rosary beads, and I understood -- I don't know how -- that they were my deceased grandmother's rosary beads -- and I then went crazy for days tearing my house apart [looking for them]. I was very close to my grandmother. She had lived with us for 13 years. She had died when I was pregnant with my daughter. 

In the absence of the Lord, the search for the rosary beads turned into an obsession.

"I tore my house apart for days, days, days searching," said Barbara. "It was the only thing I could think about day and night -- that I had to find these rosary beads. The Lord was no longer with me and I was just trying to find these rosary beads and I couldn't find them anywhere! 

"Finally my husband [John] called me from work one day and he said, 'What is it? What is it that's been driving you crazy for the last couple days?'

"And I finally said to him, 'The Lord showed me these rosary beads and they're Grandma's and I don't know where they are.' 

"And he said clear as anything, 'I know exactly where they are -- your grandmother gave them to me before she died!'"

John, said the rosaries were in his bedroom dresser, which led to a frantic search of the drawers -- actually, Barbara had already searched the drawers a couple times but looked again. They weren't there. "I  began to take the drawers apart, which I had already taken apart numerous times before in the last five days. For the next three days, the two of us now continued to search for the rosary beads."

On the third day, the rosary beads just appeared on the dresser. And that wasn't all: "When my husband went to hand me the rosary beads, it was like fire had pierced through my right hand," said Barbara. "I didn't understand why I would  experience such excruciating pain. For the next couple of days this happened to me every time I tried to pick up the rosary beads. I was really in turmoil about this. It was about two or three weeks later that I tried to pick them up again, and it still happened. Then it was the beginning of September and I was sleeping and I was awakened at exactly 3 a.m. in the morning to the Lord standing at the foot of my bed and I got up and went prostrate before him and He said to me, 'I have a gift for you.' I said I didn't deserve a gift, and He said, 'The gift is in your hands.'

Again, we submit this for your discernment. There are great intricacies in mysticism, and often a mixture. An authentic experience can later be mixed with subconscious or other elements. Was this a mix? Or was it straightforward, the pain the same sort of "fire" mystics have felt in the past? And what is it about 3 a.m.? There was supposedly a "gift," and the Lord, allegedly, also had a favor to ask: He wanted Barbara to lay hands on a niece, Paige, who was three months old -- and so lethargic that she'd been hospitalized. She had gone through a series of testing and doctors suspected viral meningitis. Barbara said she told the Lord she wasn't capable of healing, but after much conversation, He allegedly said it was "the desire of His Heart" that she do so. 

"I saw Him with my eyes open," claimed Barbara, "and I spent the rest of the night on my knees, sobbing."

The next day, claimed Barbara, she was on Montauk Highway doing errands when suddenly she found her car headed in the opposite direction. It was now pointed towards her home -- and towards Stony Brook Hospital, where her niece was. She went to the hospital, got to the girl's bedside (despite restrictions because meningitis is contagious), and as instructed put her hands on the girl's head. 

"I don't know how to explain this, because part of it is like a blur, but the best way is to say that the minute I lay my hands on Paige's forehead, the whole room became enveloped in this bright, bright white Light -- the same Light that was in the near-death experience, the same white Light that Jesus always came in," Barbara says. "It was difficult for me to see the doctors and technicians. All I could focus on was the white Light and the love and the peace and the healing that was coming out of this white Light. All I could do was pray for a healing and God's intercession because it was made known to me that I was in the Presence of God, the presence of angels, and that this baby was going to be healed.

"I was in there for a good twenty minutes, half an hour, forty minutes, I don't know -- they did several series of x-rays. Her large intestine was backing up into her small intestine. There was some medical term for it. We had left after the x-rays and gone over to my sister's house to pray the Rosary and I was beside myself hysterically crying. 

"All we could do was pray, pray, pray. My sister said, 'let's do the Rosary,' and I said okay, but I didn't know how to say the Rosary and I explained that I couldn't touch rosary beads. I took my sister in the bedroom and privately told her what was going on: the whole story with my grandmother's rosary beads and how I couldn't touch them because my hands went on fire. 

"My sister said she understood it and that I could just stand there with them. She asked why I didn't  just take a pair of rosaries I had bought [another girl] for Communion. I said 'okay' and the fire was there but not to the extent that I couldn't hold onto them." 

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, her baby niece was rushed in for emergency surgery.

"They were going to take out part of her intestines and her appendix, because it was bursting her appendix, but that didn't happen," explained Barbara. "They didn't take out any of her intestine. They didn't take out her appendix. Miraculously, when they did the surgery -- when they opened her up -- right before their eyes, the intestines went right back into place."

A healing had occurred. A baby was saved.

And that wasn't the end of it. 

By June 5, 1993, a series of six apparitions of the Virgin Mary began for Barbara -- allegedly. These were not "visions"; they were "corporeal'; they were seen with eyes wide open. 

As always, we submit this for your discernment. We must always be careful. Even though a person has a near-death episode, that doesn't mean other forces can't come in. We discern constantly. 

But especially in our times, it is a noteworthy account.

"It was about the future state of the world and other things," Barbara told Spirit Daily about the Virgin's alleged message. "She spoke about souls, she spoke about the souls that are going to hell, she spoke about purgatory. The one time that she spoke about the state of the world, she showed me two scales. She said there was a balance to everything and explained how there was a period of time, like at the beginning of time, when one scale represented God and one mankind and how the scale was higher on the side of God and then how things went the opposite way. The point we're at now is that God is at the lowest point the scales are allowed to go -- that's how cast aside God is -- and as high as the side with humanity could go, that's where it was, that was us. 

"We had elevated ourselves," said Barbara. "But the Virgin told me there was hope. She showed me the scales starting to move and how the power of prayer would rebalance these scales -- that there was this wave of prayer that was beginning to balance the scales, that there would be a turnaround. 

"I can tell you: there's a great chastisement coming, a purification. That was very, very, very much made known to me. It was also made known to me that no matter what we did to change the balance, that at this point we were so far past a point that we could never omit the chastisement -- that the only thing we could do was lessen it. But that there would be a lessening of it greatly because of the power of prayer."