13
Giggling Angels—and a Second Chance
Trent Levin’s road to recovery and redemption led through hell.
When Trent Levin’s day began on October 5, 2006, he fully expected his life to change forever. Before noon he would be proved right—he’d never be the same. But not in the way he’d imagined. Not by a long shot.
Trent was first to admit there was little room left in his life for things to get worse. Yet in his mind that’s exactly what lay ahead that day.
At eighteen he’d given his life to God. Since then he’d wandered far from that commitment. Now, at forty-three, he was a drug addict and petty criminal with so many minor offenses on his record they’d finally added up to real trouble. He had failed to meet the conditions of his probation by missing drug classes and screenings, skipping meetings, and refusing to pay his fees. That morning he was to appear in court and finally face the consequences—a near-certain sentence of a year in jail in Terra Haute, Indiana.
“I was at the end of my rope,” he said. “Nothing I did ever seemed to work out, and spiritually I didn’t care if I lived or died. So I’d already made up my mind not to show up that day. I was so addicted that I knew I’d get really sick if they put me in jail, and I didn’t want to go through that. I basically decided to say, ‘Catch me if you can.’”
Worse still, Trent was homeless. He’d shared a motel room the night before with several others lacking permanent shelter, among them a young mom and her four-year-old daughter. All the other adults were hardcore users.
Around 10:00 AM he loaded his few belongings into the beat-up green Ford Escape he’d been given a few months earlier. His one objective: try to lay his hands on enough money to pay for another night in the motel. There wasn’t much time, as they had to clear out by 11:00.
“For months I’d been staying alive by selling whatever metal I could salvage—aluminum cans, copper wiring, and other scraps,” he said. “That morning I was going after some heavy-duty wire I’d once seen in an abandoned building. I hoped it would bring in enough cash for another night.”
The building had lain empty for years in a defunct industrial park slated for demolition and redevelopment. On the outside it was no more than a concrete hull with boarded windows. Inside, the floors were strewn with the remains of toxic-looking chemical tanks, twisted piping, and broken glass. There were no lights, no running water. Trent had scoured the place before and found a length of heavy copper wire in an underground utility room, at the bottom of a metal ladder.
Back then he didn’t have the tools to cut the wire free. Today he “borrowed” a pair of cable cutters from an acquaintance. He also stopped by Home Depot and bought a device for testing electrical current. Twice, he made sure it worked—once before leaving the store and again in a McDonald’s bathroom. Both times it made the telltale electronic beep indicating the outlet was “hot.”
When Trent arrived, he discovered two more homeless people, a man and a woman, already there. He offered to share the money in exchange for help getting the wire out. They agreed and watched as he descended into the hole.
“It was exactly as I remembered—about two inches thick, looking shiny and new,” he said. “I didn’t trust it, so I held up the tester. Nothing. No sound at all.”
His newfound partners, growing impatient, urged him to get on with it. He braced his feet, grabbed the wire with the cutters, and squeezed with all his strength. Twelve thousand volts arced through his body in a flash of searing blue “lightning.”
“Picture what happens when a movie projector comes to a stop,” he said. “One second everything’s in motion, and then you see individual frames flashing by between moments of darkness—on/off, on/off. That’s what happened, as if time itself stopped like a film. Flash, flash—then darkness. I knew right away I was dead. I was instantly flooded with intense sorrow and regret about the life I’d been living. I started screaming, ‘Oh no! What a waste!’”
He felt no physical pain. He had the sensation of moving rapidly through a dark tunnel. When he emerged on the other side, he was blinded by brilliant white light, brighter than anything he’d ever seen. He looked down and saw a body on the floor beneath him. At first he didn’t recognize it as his own. He remembers thinking, What is that? Is that a body? Slowly the realization dawned: He was observing himself. Again he was overwhelmed by feelings of shame, regret, and paralyzing fear over what might happen next.
“We’ve all seen people ‘die’ in movies—they get shot and fall to the ground and are just asleep. We think when you die, you go to sleep. That’s not how it is. When you die, you wake up. I was more awake and alert than I’d ever been. And excruciatingly aware of all the rotten, evil things I’d done.”
As Trent looked at his body below, he suddenly saw two angels bent over the crumpled form. They were relatively small—two or three feet tall—and were made of pure golden light, radiant and gleaming. Though they didn’t speak, he knew they were deeply concerned for him.
“They cared for me so much,” he said. “They knew me. I could feel their love, caring for me and lifting me up. But I was so ashamed and afraid that I started screaming at them to get away and leave me alone. So they did.”
Immediately the angels were gone and he was plunged into utter darkness. Terror rose up inside as the weight of his solitude and separation from God came crashing down. The knowledge that his life had come to such a dreadful end was more than he could bear.
“I cried out to God with everything in me,” he said. “You have to understand, the words I uttered haven’t even been written yet. It wasn’t about words. It was about a deep cry to God for help.”
Instantly the light returned, and he felt transformed by it. This time it emanated from the other side of a transparent veil. There he again saw the two angels, kneeling before a third angelic being, also made of pure dazzling light. At least seven feet tall, this one wore a flowing robe and held a staff or sword in his hand. He exuded tremendous power and authority. Trent knew the small angels were interceding for him, asking for mercy.
“The answer must have been yes, because that scene quickly vanished,” he said. “Suddenly the two were very close to me. I was overwhelmed with remorse over how I’d treated them, and I started apologizing. But they were really happy now, giggling as they pushed me backward, back into my body.”
The projector started up again—flash, flash, then he was back in the flow of time. When he came to, he was out of the hole and “running around in shock.” He looked at his arms and saw burned, blackened flesh, like he’d “blown up.” All that remained of his sweatshirt was the reinforced collar, now hot and smoldering. He ripped it from his neck and tossed it aside.
He felt no pain. The other two people had been struck by the electrical discharge and were screaming in shock and agony, even though their injuries were comparatively minor. The man said something about calling an ambulance. Trent knew that meant the police would find him.
“I said, ‘If you want to live, get in the car.’ We ran outside and I got behind the wheel, but the woman had to turn the key because my hands couldn’t grip it. I was so ugly and scorched that I couldn’t look at my face in the mirror. Even so, it didn’t hurt at all.”
He drove to a nearby hospital that happened to house a top-notch burn center. His passengers were in such pain and distress that he let them out at the ER door. Then he parked and calmly walked back.
“The triage nurse took one look at me and literally dropped everything she was doing,” he recalls. “I was starting to feel some heat in my hands and face, and some swelling, but I wasn’t in pain or upset. I answered all their questions and gave them my dad’s phone number when they asked if there was someone they should call. I wanted to wait for him, but the doctor told me bluntly that I could easily die. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to die. I saw angels.’”
Even so, he was rushed into surgery with less than a 50/50 chance to live.
Three and a half weeks later, Trent Levin woke from a coma. Burns covered 35 percent of his body; he had suffered a pulmonary embolism and a stroke in the area of his optical nerve. He saw a colorful clown and a male nurse wearing a huge blond wig. All the staff wore Halloween costumes.
“It took me a minute to figure out where I was,” he recalled.
But he knew where he wasn’t. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t alone with his regrets or surrounded by darkness. Against all odds he was alive again in more ways than one. He asked for a Bible and, passionately, purposefully, he began reading about God. His dad came, and a relationship that had been “beyond hope” began to heal.
The miracles kept coming. Upon waking, he experienced persistent double vision. Just before he was to undergo an exam to determine the cause, a man he’d never seen before entered his room. “I’m from Jubilee Church,” said the visitor, “and I’m here to pray for your eyes.” Trent agreed, and as the prayer was finished his vision returned to normal.
The test found no trace of damage. He never saw the man again.
After forty-eight days in the hospital, he went to live with his sister and recovered faster than the medical staff expected. He also went back to the church where he’d become a believer twenty-five years earlier.
Today some scars remain, but otherwise his health is completely restored.
When the time finally came to take legal responsibility for the wreck Trent’s life had become, another miracle occurred: He’d had his court date wrong. He hadn’t been slated to appear until October 6—the day after his accident—and so hadn’t been in contempt of court after all. Hearing his story, the judge gave him a second chance. When he completed all probation requirements, his record was expunged of the offenses.
“But the real miracle,” he said, “is that God gave me my life back. I love him so much! He restored my relationships with my dad and my kids. All my addictions were just gone, and I could start over.
“Trust me when I say I really wasn’t worth saving. I was despicable, yet God pulled me out of all that garbage anyway. If he did that for me, there is hope for anyone. Every day is a new day.”