Utah State University - » Near-death experience shows author her life’s purpose

Near-death experience shows author her life’s purpose

September 17th, 2013 Posted in Arts and Life

Story and photo by Chelsea Hunter

LOGAN — Sarah Menet moved many in her Cache Valley audience to tears Saturday as she told them of her difficult life, her suicide attempt and how she found God.

At 29 years old, she was pronounced dead. She had never experimented with drugs or alcohol, but after being driven to such misery she overdosed on Tylenol with Codeine. “I was in so much emotional pain, I just didn’t want to live anymore,” she said.

Menet collapsed as her body was failing, but managed to call her sister to tell her she loved her. Her sister sensed something was wrong and notified police. Once on the scene, paramedics and police rushed in. It was as if she was watching the whole thing from the ceiling while her spirit was detached from her lifeless body, she said.

“I could see police and medical people looking through the house to find out what had happened to me,” Menet said. “I heard one say, ‘She has no heartbeat, she has no pulse, she’s gone.’ I remember as they were going to put the electric paddles on my chest to get my heart going again, I was yelling to them, ‘Leave it alone!’ I didn’t want to go back to that. As I was yelling to them not to revive it, within a minute, I was transported into a different world.”

During this near-death experience, Menet visited paradise, a “spirit world,” which she described as beautiful beyond mortal words. There isn’t anything on earth like it, she said. On earth she has an irrational fear of drowning, she said, but when she first passed into the spirit world she was drawn to a lake.

“I was standing next to a beautiful, beautiful lake, and I had no fear of the water whatsoever. I walked around this lake and stood in this lake, and thought it looked like thousands and thousands of diamonds were crushed on the top of the water. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I leaned over and looked down into it, and it was crystal clear, like looking into a small fish bowl. I saw fishes of different colors, and foliage just gently moving in this water.”

She described a cottage near the lake that was perfection in her eyes with its placement, size and design, and she wanted it badly. She realized that in the spirit world, you could have anything you wanted as long as you’d earned it.

She was clinically dead for seven minutes until she came back and her spirit returned to her body. She goes into more extensive detail about what she saw and experienced in the spirit world in the book she wrote about the experience, called “There is No Death.”

Menet spoke at the Logan Tabernacle Saturday in conjunction with the North Logan Emergency Preparedness Fair, set to take place Sept. 21.

Her father repeatedly abused her when she was a child, until she ran away at age 10. She lived in seven foster homes until she got married at 18. She later divorced her first husband and married a man whom she thought had real potential. However, he became her nightmare relived.

“It turned out I had married my father,” she said.

Three sons later she divorced her second husband and moved to Los Angeles to pursue some small acting jobs, where she continued to run into misfortunes one after another.

“My mother tried to teach me about God,” she said. “But after these terrible, disastrous things would happen in my life, I finally got to the point where I just didn’t believe there was a God. I couldn’t understand why so many bad things could happen to a person if there was a God.”

While on the other side, she said, she learned a lot about forgiveness. Before her father died she wanted to see him suffer the way he made her suffer, and even on his deathbed she refused to forgive him. Now she has learned the importance of forgiveness and encourages everyone to forgive all people. If we don’t forgive, in the long run it will end up hurting us more than the one who did the wrong.

“You’ll wish you had been the better person, and forgiven them,” she said. “Life is a challenge, and it’s going to get harder as more and more people in the world turn from God. But God requires you to forgive all people. It is such an important principle, and when someone has wronged you, start praying for them. It will take that sword of hate from you.”

Throughout her life Menet has had many medical conditions that have caused her hardship. Twenty years ago she was so sick with kidney failure and congestive heart failure that a clergyman gave her a blessing. In that blessing he said that the Lord would spare her life so that people could hear her voice. That was when she knew she was supposed to share her story with others, and started giving public talks and lectures. Now 63, Menet lives in Manti where she does a lot of grief counseling and continues to lecture wherever she can.

“I’m thankful that God has sustained my life,” she said. “So that I might be an instrument in his hands to help others and give them hope, and give them faith. If you’re sick or have been through terrible things, be of good cheer, have faith, it’s going to get better.”

NW

Tags: "There is No Death", forgiveness, near-death experience, North Logan Emergency Preparedness Fair, Sarah Menet