20

 “You Will Not Die”

It took around seventeen months for Willie Beeson to lose everything. It took a few moments in heaven to get it all back.

In March 2005, on Palm Sunday in Southern California, Willie Beeson grimaced in pain as he transferred from car to wheelchair in the Diamond Bar Community Center parking lot. He’d come at his brother’s invitation for prayer from the pastors of Father’s House Church, a brand-new congregation.

For over a year his family had watched Willie descend from the prime of his life—active, healthy, successful as a heating and air-conditioning contractor—into a ghost of his former self. If Job’s story were written as a contemporary account of hardship, pain, and loss, it might tell Willie’s tale.

Inexplicably, five back surgeries since December 2003 each had left him worse off than before. He languished in a dense fog of hopeless despair.

His first reaction to his brother’s invitation had been anger. “I was very frustrated with Harry and told him I wouldn’t go,” he recalled. “Why did he think this praying and laying-hands-on stuff worked? I’d heard of many people getting their hopes up only to still be in pain or dead after the excitement wore off.”

Besides, Willie had already decided to die. What was the point of prayer?

Then, however, he reconsidered. He reasoned that it might provide some comfort and closure to his family to gather and pray for him. His wife, Darla, and their three children had suffered all these months, too. She deserved a “real” husband, not a “lump of meat.” His kids deserved a dad who could care for them suitably. Suddenly a prayer service seemed appropriate—it could serve as a sort of emotional dress rehearsal for his long-overdue funeral.

Pastors laid hands on Willie and asked God to heal him of his injuries, to restore him to health, and to give back all he had lost. Everyone in the room prayed along in agreement—everyone except Willie, whose own prayer remained unchanged: “Please, let me die.”

Instantly a bright light filled the room, and he heard a voice say, “You will not die.” Then the light faded and was gone. It was obvious nobody else had seen or heard anything. Now he felt angry. Like Job, he wondered why he’d ever been born.

On Father’s Day 2002, Willie injured his back in a four-wheeler accident in the California desert. The damage was serious but didn’t require surgery, just plenty of rest. Progress was slow and frustrating, yet in February 2003, he started the right regimen of physical therapy and worked with a personal trainer. By the end of the year, he’d completed a series of treatments with a specialized chiropractic machine designed to strengthen his injured lower back region. He’d lost fifty pounds and regained much of his strength and flexibility.

Then, as one doctor would put it, Willie “stepped out of a disaster into a catastrophe.” On the last day of treatment with the machine, during one final exercise, the spinal disc between the L4 and L5 vertebrae ruptured.

In a flash his reality rapidly spiraled into escalating and blinding pain.

Here’s a compressed timeline of what happened next. . . .

December 23, 2003. After surgery to repair the rupture, his doctor calls it “the biggest I’ve ever seen.” The surgeon says they must wait at least three weeks for another MRI to allow swelling to subside. But Willie’s pain level is so great he changes his mind, ordering the scan on December 30. Shocked to discover that another rupture has occurred, he schedules another surgery.

January 2, 2004. After the four-hour second procedure, his left leg is numb; he describes his pain level as 9+ out of 10. Morphine has little effect.

January 5, 2004. A new MRI reveals that formation of a hematoma—a large “blood balloon”—in the spinal canal is causing the severe pain, pressing on the L4 nerve root. The doctor, visibly worried, schedules emergency surgery for the following day and advises Willie and Darla there’s a good chance the procedure will leave his leg paralyzed.

January 6, 2004. The surgery is a “success,” but after three operations in two weeks, Willie’s pain is so severe he has trouble breathing. Maximum medication levels provide little relief. His leg is still numb.

January 9, 2004. Willie is released from the hospital. Severe pain has subsided somewhat but massive med doses continue. The doctor is hopeful that the worst is over.

Throughout January and February, though, his pain level continues to worsen. He’s become completely addicted to morphine and other drugs. In his journal he writes, “I am a tough guy, but with my stamina low and my nerves shot, the pain just hits with such intensity. If it weren’t for the pain med, I would be thinking suicide, I’m sure.”

August 3, 2004. Willie and Darla travel to Germany for an “artificial disc replacement,” a procedure not yet approved in the United States. After much research, Willie is certain this will bring relief at last.

August 7, 2004. The surgery is successful. For the first time in months, he can walk easily. What’s more, he’s virtually pain-free. In post-op he progresses quickly and is released to go home, two days ahead of schedule.

One evening, in the hotel restaurant, he bends over and is struck by pain. It passes; doctors conclude the replacement disc is undergoing “subsidence,” a common occurrence and no cause for alarm. Willie and Darla head home.

When they land in LA, Willie goes straight to the hospital. His abdomen is severely bloated due to a surgery-related condition called seroma—dangerous fluid leakage putting pressure on his organs. Upon examination, domestic doctors decide that the artificial disc is too small for him and the “subsidence” is unlikely to improve. By late September, still waiting for FDA approval to remove the disc, doctors declare it’s too late to do so safely.

October 23, 2004. Willie returns to Germany for “two weeks of hell.” The bottom line: During disc replacement surgery, Willie suffers a collapsed femoral artery in his left leg. The pain is beyond anything he’s experienced so far.

November 5, 2004. Within hours of arriving back in California, pain is so severe that his blood pressure rockets to 225/100. After five surgeries and two trips to Germany, Willie is readmitted with no remaining viable options and a most uncertain future. On top of all else, he has developed gallstones and is scheduled for yet another operation to remove them.

March 2005. Willie’s business partners invoke an obscure clause in the corporate agreement, declare him “incapacitated,” and seize his shares in the company. The move also puts his health insurance in jeopardy.

“The last thing I had left was ownership in that business,” he said. “I was now stripped as naked as the day I was born, no use to anyone. I truly was an emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually broken man.”

The night of the prayer service just a few days earlier, when Willie heard a voice declaring that he would not die, he’d picked up Darla’s Bible off the bed to move it out of the way. As he tossed it aside, the pages flipped open to Psalm 143. His eyes were drawn to verse 8: “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.” He read on for a few more lines, still angry and confused. He set the book down.

Later he picked it up again. Again it opened to that page. In the following days he read the same psalm over and over. But he saw no reason to change what he’d prayed while others asked for healing. “Please, let me die.”

April 26, 2005, 3:00 AM. Willie heads to bed after several hours of writing in his journal and reading in another room, giving Darla a chance to sleep. As he sits on the edge of the bed, he feels a “pressure” in his consciousness, “like wind blowing.” Suddenly he’s no longer in his room. Surrounded by darkness, he sees a radiant golden gate in the distance and is being drawn rapidly toward it. Two pillars like giant elephant tusks rise high in the air, arching toward each other in the center but without touching. Two glimmering gates hang beneath them without any visible support. The gates are open.

He observes that he’s been “traveling” on a road leading up to the gates and beyond. It’s at least a quarter mile wide and made of “liquid, translucent gold,” the purest, most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. The road is strewn with precious jewels in every imaginable color: rubies, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds.

He becomes aware of music. Many voices sing a melody that fills him with an “unbelievable sense of peace and serenity.” Then he sees that the road is lined on each side by thousands upon thousands of people: a diverse crowd of men, women, and children dressed in brilliant garments made of light. Some play long golden trumpets and other instruments. The rest sing.

“It’s like the music was coming through me,” he recalled. “I was hearing it, but telepathically, through every fiber of my being. Nothing on earth compares to the perfection of that sound.”

Beyond the gates he sees a dazzling white city, filled with radiant buildings and bustling people and other creatures. He can’t look directly at it; the light is too bright and overpowering. But he senses a force flowing from the center of the city, the source of everything he sees. It is the most powerful love conceivable.

“In this life, we can never quite put our finger on who we are and where we’re supposed to be,” he said. “Seeing the city and feeling the infinite power of that love, I knew: This is where we’re supposed to be. It literally felt like the final puzzle piece was inserted into my mind, like everything lacking was downloaded all at once.”

Then he asks himself: Is this heaven? Am I dead? He experiences a sudden, rushing replay of his entire life and a preview of things yet to come.

“No, you are not dead,” says a voice beside him. “Your destiny is beginning now. Satan’s work is done.”

Willie turns and sees a “beautiful, radiant man” standing beside him. Pure, powerful love emanates from him, “like he has been my very, very best friend for my whole life.”

“Willie Beeson,” the being says, “God is blessing you. You will be completely healed, strong, vigorous, and young.”

Then Willie is back in his bedroom. He wakes Darla to tell her what he’s just experienced. She thinks it’s another morphine-induced hallucination and goes back to sleep.

Willie himself is bewildered and confused. The vision seemed so real. He records the details in his journal and lies down to sleep.

Willie wakes after Darla has left for work. He stands. Immediately he knows that something is different.

First, he has no pain. Second, his left leg is no longer numb. He touches the skin that long has been cold and lifeless. It’s warm. He feels blood flowing again. The muscles are firm and healthy. He straightens his back and stands fully erect for the first time in seventeen months.

Excitement and wonder are building as he walks downstairs and out the front door without cane or wheelchair.

“Then I started screaming at the top of my lungs. I took off and ran, jumping and shouting and praising God. I ran for at least a mile through the neighborhood in my pajamas. I’d never felt anything like this. It was way beyond ecstasy.”

One could say Willie hasn’t stopped running since. God kept his promise and healed Willie completely:

“To this day I wonder, Why me? I’m not a pastor, not a theologian, just a common person with an uncommon journey,” said Willie, whose book, The Impossible Miracle, fully details his experience. “I only know that today I’m a different person with a perspective that few achieve in this life. I give thanks to God for his being an unfailing source of freedom from worry and fear of the things of this world. If God could do this for me, he can do it for anyone.”