Beyond the Darkness

by Angie Fenimore

  But how far had I flown? It could have been a long way— many thousands of miles, perhaps, or just the length of a football field—but I could not gauge it. I had no awareness of inertia, no sensation of slowing down as I neared the landing place, which I didn't see until I was upon it. In the final split second before my feet touched down, I got only a lightning glimpse of my destination—of crowds, of what looked like thousands upon thousands of other people massed below.

  I landed on the edge of a shadowy plane, suspended in the darkness, extending to the limits of my sight. Its floor was firm but shrouded in black mist, swirling around my feet, that also formed the thick, waist-high barrier that held me prisoner. The place was charged with a crackling energy that sparked me into hyperalertness, a state of hair-trigger sensitivity. Again, I perceived my surroundings not through physical sensations but through a kind of telepathic intuition. The foglike mist had mass—it seemed to be formed of molecules of intense darkness —and it could be handled and shaped. It had life, this darkness, some kind of intelligence that was purely negative, even evil. It sucked at me, pulling me to react and then swallowing my reaction into fear and dread. In my life I had suffered pain and despair so great that I could barely function, but the twisting anguish of this disconnection was beyond my capacity to conceive.

  What was this place?

  I knew that I was in a state of Hell, but this was not the typical "fire and brimstone" Hell that I had learned about as a young child. The word Purgatory rose, whispered, into my mind.

  There were a few pieces of simple furniture scattered about. An Early American vanity with an oval mirror stood to my right. Its finish was dark in color but worn with time, and it had two small drawers that were closed on each side. Strangely, without opening them, I could see that the drawers were empty. Behind me was a shellacked wooden chair, with its seat and back bolted to a heavy metal frame and legs, like the chairs I had sat on in elementary school. The chair seemed to fade in and out, almost like a ghost that was always present but only partially visible. I wasn't sure whether my ability to see the chair was controlled by the chair or by my own effort. I sensed that the molecular makeup of everything around me—the furniture and the ground—was thinner than the things of the earth, so that here things seemed less solid though they were far more real, indestructible. Everything was placed here for a definite purpose. The chair, I felt, was unrelated to my situation, but the vanity had definitely been put there for me. It was not until years later that I recognized its significance.

  Men and women of all ages, but no children, were standing or squatting or wandering about on the plane. Some were mumbling to themselves. All whom I saw seemed Caucasian, but there was a visible darkness about them that wasn't an exterior element, like skin color. The darkness emanated from deep within and radiated from them in an aura I could feel. They were completely self-absorbed, every one of them too caught up in his or her own misery to engage in any mental or emotional exchange. They had the ability to connect with one another, but they were incapacitated by the darkness.

  I gradually became aware of the sounds of a kaleidoscopic flurry of voices, and I realized that in this realm thoughts were the mode of communication. Around me I could hear the buzz of thoughts, as if I were in a crowded movie theater with lights down low, picking up the sounds of hushed exchanges. It was difficult to distinguish many complete thoughts, but one woman's in particular stood out. Middle-aged, with a bouffant hairdo, she was justifying herself, over and over again, as if she were speaking to the ghosts of her past, trying to fix blame. It seemed to me that she had been there for years, reciting the same dull, pointless words that none of us cared to hear. I got the definite impression that she had committed suicide.

  I sensed that I wasn't entirely female anymore. I was the same individual that I had been before—my morbid sense of humor, my curiosity, my personality, the way I thought and felt remained, and my awareness of being female was also with me —but my form had been somehow reduced, made not smaller but less complicated. I thought that if I were to look down, I would have found that I no longer had breasts. The diminishing of gender seemed to apply to the others around me as well.

  Everyone I saw was wearing dirty white robes. Some people's were heavily soiled, while others' just appeared dingy with a few stains. I am not sure what I was wearing. I sensed that the housecoat I had on when I lay down to die had been replaced by dark clothing, possibly a familiar black sweater that I had worn often that winter. It had become almost a badge of my depression.

  Sitting next to me was a man who appeared to be about sixty years old. His hair was gray, and somehow I knew that his eyes were blue, even though everything here appeared in black and various shades of gray. This man's eyes were totally without comprehension. Pathetically squatting on the ground, draped in filthy white robes, he wasn't radiating anything, not even self-pity. I felt that he had absorbed everything there was to know here and had chosen to stop thinking. He was completely drained, just waiting. I knew that his soul had been rotting here forever.

  Suddenly I realized that adherence to the code of time, attention to clocks and the effort to keep them synchronized, is something that seemed to be confined to the rigid earth world. In this dark prison a day might as well be a thousand days or a thousand years. It struck me that throughout the civilized world, we know to the second what time it is in any given spot on the earth, and yet we allow people to starve to death when we have the means to prevent such suffering. How strange that we care so much about time.

  I was sure that this man, like the middle-aged woman, had killed himself. His clothing suggested that he might have walked the earth during Jesus Christ's earthly ministry. I wondered if he was Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed the Savior and then hung himself. The feeling that I might be standing next to Judas Iscariot was my own idea and did not come from the man. I felt that I should be embarrassed that I was thinking these things in his presence, where he could "hear" me. Even in the midst of being completely wrapped up in my own problems in life, I had always been considerate of others' feelings. But now I didn't care. I felt no desire to be helpful or even polite to him or to anyone else.

  As my mind reached for more information, I felt tremendous disappointment. I seemed to be using all of my brain capacity. I could feel and completely know about everything around me just by posing a question in my mind or by looking in any direction. The possibilities for learning were endless, but I had no books, no television, no love, no privacy, no sleep, no friends, no light, no growth, no happiness, and no relief—no knowledge to gain and no way to use it.

  But worse was my growing sense of complete aloneness.

  Even hearing the brunt of someone's anger, however unpleasant, is a form of tangible connection. But in this empty world, where no connections could be made, the solitude was terrifying.

  I missed my children and I wanted to run home, but I could see only futility in such thoughts. The darkness had claimed me, and I was rapidly becoming like the others here. And I was going to be here for an incomprehensible length of time. This was the place where hope came to die.

  FOURTEEN

  Then I heard a voice of awesome power, not loud but crashing over me like a booming wave of sound; a voice that encompassed such ferocious anger that with one word it could destroy the universe, and that also encompassed such potent and unwavering love that, like the sun, it could coax life from the earth. I cowered at its force and at its excruciating words: "Is this what you really want?" The great voice emanated from a pinpoint of light that swelled with each thunderous word until it hung like a radiant sun just beyond the black wall of mist that formed my prison. Though far more brilliant than the sun, the light soothed my eyes with its deep and pure white luminescence. I sensed that the light could not (or perhaps would not—I wasn't sure) cross the barrier into the darkness. And I knew with complete certainty that I was in the presence of God.

  Now within the brilliance I could see the for
m of a man draped in billowing robes of breathtaking whiteness. Pearles-cent, magnificent hair flowed back onto His shoulders from a noble, rounded widow's peak. He was a being of light, not just radiating light or illuminated from within, but He almost seemed to be made of the light. It was a light that had substance and dimension, the most beautiful, glorious substance that I have ever beheld.

  From the light I felt love directed toward me as an individual, and I was baffled by it. I had never felt deserving of God's love. Anytime I had an inkling that He had taken a hand in my life, I felt that I had probably benefited as a casual bystander because someone else in my life, someone better, someone more deserving, had received God's blessings; so a little of God's love had accidentally spilled over onto me. I had been taught that God loves all of His children and all of His creations. Naturally, I categorized God's creations and assumed that we each get our little parcel. But having ranked myself with the trees and fish in importance among God's creations, I now saw that I had limited my ability to feel His presence and concern for me. I had grossly underestimated my importance and the nature of my origin—I am literally the spirit offspring of God.

  I even looked like Him. I was surprised that He really had a body with arms and legs and features like mine, and I immediately fixated on His nose. There was a bump on the bridge that tapered into a sharp point, like a nose you might find on a Greek vase painting. An unusual characteristic of mine is that I, too, have a bump on the bridge of my nose, which I inherited from my mother. As I studied the features of God, I marveled to see that what I had learned in church and from the Scriptures, which I had assumed was figurative or symbolic, was apparently literally true. We are actually, physically created in His image. This realization was staggering.

  Probably because of the brilliance of the light, which was white, God looked to me like an old man without wrinkles and with a young, strong body. His shoulders were broad, and His chest was full. His arms were strong, and the muscles well defined. His chiseled facial structure was strong and perfect, softened by a great white beard. But more striking to me than His physical features was the light that emanated from them. All beauty, all love, all goodness were contained in the light that poured forth from this Being.

  I have since caught glimpses of this light in the splendor of nature, and I have felt portions of this intense light in people who love without judgment and who give without pretense. Occasionally I have felt the presence of spirits of light, and it is this kind of light that comes from them. But there is nothing that we are even capable of imagining that comes close to the magnitude of perfect love that this Being poured into me. I was captivated by His beauty. Yet as much as God filled me with wonder and awe, I was certain that I was not meeting Him for the first time. There was a tremendous familiarity about Him. While I was not remembering details of a life before my mortal birth, I was reacquainting myself with the life that I shared with the Father, a spirit life that seemed to extend to the beginning of the universe.

  I could see that none of the others in the plane were aware of God's presence. The man cowering next to me could see that I was focused on something, but it was apparent that he couldn't see anything beyond the barrier. Others continued to babble unaware.

  Then God spoke to me. His words were excruciating: "Is this what you really want?"

  Of course, I didn't want to be separated from my family and from the people who loved me, but I had no choice. I was a failure at everything that was important to me, and I had tried to change the course of my life with disastrous results. I was sure that it wasn't a matter of what I wanted but of what I was capable. I could not succeed and I could not stand the pain of defeat any longer. I felt that this dark place was where I belonged.

  Now His voice exploded with energy. "Don't you know that this is the worst thing you could have done?" I could feel His anger and frustration, both because I'd thrown in the towel and because I had cut myself off from Him and from His guidance. I stood there with the same stone face that I had worn as a teenager as I endured lectures by JoAnne over my poor grades, which she and my dad warned me would severely limit my options in later years. At the time I had almost no concept of life after high school, and I suppose a little of that attitude had followed me into adulthood. Certainly I'd had no real concept of suffering the consequences for my actions after I died.

  And I'd felt trapped. I had been able to see no other choice but to die before I could do any more damage in life. So I answered, "But my life is so hard—"

  My thoughts were communicated so fast that they weren't even completed before I absorbed His response: "You think that was hard? It is nothing compared to what awaits you if you take your life."

  When the Father spoke, each of His words exploded into a complex of meanings, like fireworks, tiny balls of light that erupted into a billion bits of information, filling me with streams of vivid truth and pure understanding. "Life's supposed to be hard. You can't skip over parts. We have all done it. You must earn what you receive."

  Suddenly I felt another presence with us, the same presence that had been with me when I first crossed over into death and who had reviewed my life with me. I recognized that He had been with us the whole time, but that I was only now becoming able to perceive Him. Then I'd sensed His powerful, yet gentle personality, but now I could feel Him so strongly that I could even ascertain His shape. What I could see was bits of light coming through the darkness, like tiny laser beams pinpricking a black sheet or like stars peeping through the blackness of a cloudless night. Some stars are stronger than others and some are barely perceptible, and in the same way some of the specks of light penetrating the darkness were not entirely visible to me. I had to exert real effort in order to see them. This light was unmistakably of the same brilliance as the glorious light that emanated from the Father, but my spiritual eyes were incapable of fully beholding it. My ability to see with my eyes was somehow linked to my willingness to believe.

  The rays of light penetrated me with incredible force, with the power of an all-consuming love. This love was as pure and potent as the Father's, but it had an entirely new dimension of pure compassion, of complete and perfect empathy. I felt that He not only understood my life and my pains exactly, as if He had actually lived my life, but that He knew everything about how to guide me through it; how my different choices could produce either more bitterness or new growth. Having thought all my life that no one could possibly understand what I had been through, I was now aware that there was one other person who truly did.

  Through this empathy ran a deep vein of sorrow. He ached, He truly grieved for the pain I had endured, but even more for my failure to seek His comfort. His greatest desire was to help me. He mourned my blindness as a mother would mourn a dead child. Suddenly I knew that I was in the presence of the Redeemer of the world.

  He spoke to me through the veil of darkness, "Don't you understand? I have done this for you." As I was flooded with His love and with the actual pain that He bore for me, my spiritual eyes were opened. In that moment I began to see just exactly what it was that the Savior had done, how He had sacrificed for me. He showed me; He had taken me into himself, subsumed my life in His, embracing my experiences, my sufferings, as His own. And so for a second I was within His body, able to see things from His point of view and to experience His self-awareness. He let me in so I could see for myself how He had taken on my burdens and how much love He bore me.

  And I knew where I had gone wrong. I had doubted His existence. I had questioned the authenticity of the Scriptures because what they claimed seemed too good to be true. I had hoped that there was truth to the idea of a Savior who had given His life for me, but I had been afraid to really believe. To believe without seeing requires a great deal of trust. My trust had been violated so many times in my life that I had very little to spare. And so I had clung to my pain so tightly that I was willing to end my life rather than unburden myself and act on the chance that a Savior existed. He wanted to com
fort me and to hold me, but we were separated by my responses to the lessons of life. He had been there for me all through my life, but I had not trusted Him.

  Now I understood the Savior's complete understanding of me and of how the events of my life had unfolded to create so much suffering. Not only did I feel that He knew my life and my pain exactly, as if He had actually lived my life, but He understood everything about me. He knew how to guide me through the treacherous course. He knew my future, and He knew how my different choices could produce either more bitterness or growth, depending upon my willingness, my desire. Having thought all my life that no one could possibly understand what I had been through, I now knew that there was one other person who truly understood. His love surrounded me, melting me, and flushing out all residual feelings of worthless-ness.

  As I watched from the Savior's perspective, His unique comprehension of my predicament was transferred to the Father. From my new perspective I saw God in profile as He was looking at my form. The Father and His Son's communication was so rapid, so perfect, that they seemed to think each other's thoughts in unison. Jesus was "pleading my case." There was no conflict or argument here; Jesus' understanding was accepted without dispute because He had all the facts. He was the perfect judge. He knew precisely where I stood in relation to my need for mercy and the universe's need for justice. Now I could see that all the suffering in my mortal life would be temporary, and that it was actually for my good. Our sufferings on earth need not be futile. Out of the most tragic of circumstances springs human growth.