One of life's greatest questions is what happens to us after we die?
Is death the end or a new beginning?
Welcome to the Round Trip Death Podcast.
In this show, we listen to first-hand accounts of people who have gone beyond the veil and
return to talk about it.
We are happy to have on the line with us this morning, Kristen Butler.
Kristen, good morning.
Good morning.
Tell us just a little bit about you so all those out there listening can get to know
you and we have listeners all over the world.
So first of all, where do you live?
I live in California, in the Central Valley.
Lived here my whole life.
A little bit about myself.
I recently graduated with my bachelor's of science in psychology.
It's been something that I've always wanted to study.
So I finally went back to school and got it done and I'm planning on going back for my
master's in business administration and with a concentration in human resources.
I want to use my education to help businesses with the psychology of their employees.
I'm a single mother.
I have two special needs kids.
One is autistic and the other has ADHD.
So I always have my hands full.
Always.
There's never a dull moment.
First of all, congratulations on the degree.
You should be very proud of that.
And yeah, that's a handful with a child on the spectrum, etc.
It really is.
So they basically take up all of my time.
I do have some free time because right now I'm on a break from school.
I graduated in June and my son had some medical needs that he needed to have taken care of.
So I took some time off to take care of those medical needs and I'm planning on going back
this year.
And I'm not dealing with all of that or busy, busy in any free time I get.
I do like to read.
I'm a big reader.
I like gardening and planning stuff and but mostly my time is spent with my kids.
My faith is a big part of my life.
Now I'm very involved and active in the church that I attend.
So that takes up any free time.
Do you mind if I ask before we get into your NDE, was your faith the same before?
No.
Your experience, did it change because of the experience?
It changed.
I wouldn't say because of my experience, but it changed in relation to my experience.
So I was led to where I am after my experience through spiritual promptings and spiritual
guidance.
Well, let's go back in time about five years.
Tell me what was going on health-wise that led up to this.
Well, okay.
So I had a couple issues going on.
I had a severe dental infection going on and what actually caused the NDE was a laceration
to my foot.
I accidentally stepped on a drinking glass that was on the ground and I had flip-flops
on.
There was really no protection because the flip-flops slid out from underneath my foot
when I stepped on the glass.
And it wasn't just a regular thin drinking glass.
It was one of those really thick, thick ones.
And so yeah, it lacerated my foot about one or two inches into my foot.
I noticed the blood immediately and I wrapped my foot or tried to wrap my foot and I started,
I was losing blood and I started feeling really woozy.
I was feeling really, really weak and I called 911.
They came out and they would not transport me with my young son.
And I've had a lot of people disagree with that saying they can't deny me care, but they
did.
It's what happened.
They said, we cannot transport you with your two-year-old child.
And I said, well, what am I supposed to do?
I feel really weak.
I feel really weird.
And they said, well, just get to the hospital as soon as possible because you do need to
be seen, but we can't transport you.
I wasn't able to get anybody to help me with my son.
I remember sitting there, they did bandage it, but I was still bleeding through the bandage.
Or I remember sitting there watching the sunset and thinking to myself that it was so beautiful.
And I felt like it was the last time I was ever going to see the sunset.
And I was watching my son play in the dirt.
And because I couldn't do anything, I was just sitting there like really lethargic.
I ended up taking him in to go to bed.
And it was after he had went to sleep, it was sometime in the middle of the night that
I crossed over.
Okay.
So were you, some people would ask, were you asleep?
Did you just dream something?
A lot of people have asked that, but it was way more than any dream I've ever had.
It was way too real.
I remember at first I was hearing almost like spiritual screams of torment.
And I was feeling really scared.
And I felt like my life was like I was right on the cusp.
It's hard to explain the feeling of being so close.
And then I remember calling out to God saying that it was written that I'd never be left
nor forsaken.
And in that moment, if like my soul was just lifted up and like a hand grabbing me by the
collar and like straight up speed of light and the light and love exploded all around
me and through me, no longer in my body.
Before you go on, can you fill in more detail?
What if anything did you see?
Did you hear?
Did you feel what, what more detail, what was going on?
So when I, in the place where I was hearing the spiritual screams and I felt like I was
separated from love and from life and from everything, I felt like this separation, but
it was all dark.
I did not see anything whenever I did call out to God.
And I said what I said, it was a bright flash whenever I felt like my body or not body,
but my spirit was being pulled up.
It was a bright flash of light, almost like a bluish white light.
I don't know if it's really blue.
It's colors are so it was, it was bright.
And it exploded all around me and through me is what it felt like.
It felt like I was being connected to source again.
And in that moment, I was in an all white space.
I mean, it wasn't white, like the color white.
It was a bright, bright, like an, I can't explain exactly the color white, but it wasn't
like the white of the wall.
It was just, it was a bright light white.
And I was then in a place of, okay, so to me, the only way I can describe it, it was
like a waiting area, not a waiting room, not it would didn't have like waiting room across
the top of it.
It wasn't an actual room, but it was like this place of bright white light.
And that's whenever I experienced my life review.
Tell us about the life review.
I was shown in that life review, planning this life with a council of others.
And I was given such understanding, like my understanding of my life and things in my
life completely just, it all made sense.
And like I said, I was shown planning this life.
And then I was shown different areas of my life where I had had angels that had watched
over me or guidance that I had not known was there at that time.
But I was shown in such detailed, a couple other points in my life where I was saved
pretty much from some pretty bad things happening to me because it was, I don't want to say
it was planned out, but there was guidance in those times.
And it blew my understanding of what I was here to do and my life just so completely.
And I didn't get to finish my whole life review.
I got up to about the point where I was at.
And during that time, there was like mediation going on around me about my life between two
beings.
And I did not see the beings per se, but I could hear it.
I could hear the mediation going on about who I was and what I was here to do and the
type of person I was.
And it was decided that it was not my time and to send me back.
And in that moment, I was like, my spirit was slammed back into my body.
And that's the only way I could describe it was slammed into my body.
And I took a breath and I woke up.
This whole process of the spirit getting back in the body, of course, we don't know how
that works.
And I've had it described to me different ways, but some have said that word that you
just use, like it was just slammed back in, almost like it took force and it hit really
hard.
Can you describe that more?
It was more in my, it felt like it was in my chest where it was slammed back in.
Like even whenever I'm describing it now, I could feel it in my heart, in my chest and
almost like, I don't know how to describe it any more than that.
But just like the feeling of being drawn up with such force, I was slammed with such force.
So it was about the same amount of force, either direction.
Okay.
Interesting.
Tell me about the very first thing you said you heard spiritual screams.
Did you see anything and what do you think those screams were?
I'm not really honestly for sure about what that was.
I do know that the understanding that I received on that was before my NDE, I thought that
this life was hell.
I'd been through a lot of trauma, a lot of pain, and I thought for sure this life was
hell that we were walking through hell trying to get to the other side.
And I believe and the understanding that I received was that I was shown that instance
or that stuff or not shown, but I heard it to show me that this life was not hell.
And whenever I went through my life review and I received the understanding of us planning
our life here was that this life is a gift.
It's something that we wanted to come here and experience.
We knew it was not going to be easy, but we wanted to come.
Our souls wanted to come to grow.
To me, the understanding I received was that I was shown that area or the lower depths
or the lower frequencies because that's where I was centered at at the time of my NDE.
I felt like this life was hell.
I felt like this life was not worth living.
And so those negative feelings held me down and was chaining me to that separation of
the love because I felt separated from love here on earth before my NDE.
Hmm, interesting.
And that leads into what you were talking about in your life review that you first you
saw that you had been part of planning your life.
I don't get how that works.
Tell me how that works.
You know, it's hard to explain, but planning different areas or different circumstances
in life, planning who my parents were planning, what I was going to experience here, planning
what I was going to learn through those experiences if I chose to.
And before coming here, we know who we are on a soul level.
And it's like, yeah, I can do it.
This is going to be a great ride.
I know these things are going to be hard, but I can make it.
And we have such a brightness of hope before coming because we know who we are on a soul
level and that this is a place to, I wouldn't say learn and grow, but kind of sorta.
It's like a test of our own spiritual nature and learning that love that we are.
You know, we have to come and say, okay, we are this love that we have inside this brightness
of love and hope and everything because that's who we are on a soul level.
And can we get through all the mud and the muck and come out with the understanding of
what we learn here?
So you were going through some really hard things.
Did you get any insight into, as you planned your life, do we plan in those really hard
things too, or do we just plan on, hey, I need to learn this and this and that's how
it happens?
I do think that some of it is predestined.
Our free will comes into play here because we have the choice of how we're going to react
to those things that are planned.
It's not going to be easy.
And sometimes those things that are planned are not only for our benefit in the long run,
but to help out humanity, to help out others who are going through it or have gone through
it to help our fellow beings because we are all part of one source.
We really are.
And so whenever we can go through those things, we can help others go through those things
and come out on the other side.
But it is a choice.
And sometimes before my NDE, I didn't feel like I had a choice.
I didn't feel like I'd went through a lot of trauma, a lot of abuse.
And I felt like, why?
Why is this happening to me?
What is it teaching me?
Because I had been taught that our hardships are supposed to teach us something.
So I always had that mindset of, okay, what is this supposed to teach me?
But at some point, it all became a little bit too much.
And I didn't understand what it was supposed to teach me.
And I felt like my choice, I didn't have a choice.
After my NDE, I realized that we do have the choice.
We have the choice to grow and become more even through our trials.
We are not just stuck in, you know, this is just who I am and this is what I've been through
and it's created who I am.
We do have the choice to learn and grow through those trials that we go through.
And you mentioned the term predestined, were those things that came up through that planning
that you're talking about planning your life?
And if so, how does that relate to this free agency you're talking about?
Even though things are predestined, we still have the choice, like I said, on how we react
to it.
We have the choice on how we if we let it crumble us, or if we take a path higher than
what we feel we should, you know, a lot of people feel chained down by their trauma by
their abuse by things that have happened in their past.
And we really can break free if we change our mindset, change the way we think about
those experiences and let it change us for the better.
We either get bitter or we get better.
So we can either reminisce and go over and be like, well, I'm this way because this trauma
happened to me.
I'm this way because my parents did this.
I'm this way because this happened to me, instead of taking on the responsibility of
ourselves to get better.
There are tools, there are things, there's faith, there's things that can help us grow
and that help us help other people as well.
That's interesting.
You said that you also in the Life Review saw how angels had watched over you and helped
you in different things.
Was that sort of a, I don't know, that sort of became clear to your mind or did you actually
see it like watching a movie?
I saw it.
It's like a it's like watching a movie, but it's like telepathic images, you know, and
it happens really quick.
Yes, I did see that.
And I remember there was an instant instance where I was in this, I was at this house,
there was, it was not a good place.
You know, there was drug activity going on and I had heard them talking about doing some
not so good things to me.
And but I didn't really think I thought, okay, maybe I'm just tripping.
You know what I mean?
But at this one point, I heard a loud voice in my head tell me get out and get out now.
I mean, there was nobody in the house.
There was, you know, it wasn't anybody.
It was a spiritual get out.
And I remember grabbing my stuff and running out of the house.
And there was three people that was still there on the outside.
And so after I'd left, I'd heard from other people that yeah, they had been planning on
doing not good things to me, hurting me really badly.
And they were surprised that they thought that somehow I knew and because I took off.
And to me, I knew that that had happened.
But at that point in time, I thought maybe I was just tripping.
You know what I mean?
Also before that, okay, now I got to back up a little bit.
I had been electrocuted by a big door outdoor generator, I had touched a live nail.
And I remember my vision going black, like one of those old time photographs, you know,
whenever the person would stand behind the curtain and push a button and it would go,
you know, and everything would go black and there'd be black suit everywhere.
And that had happened.
And then after that is whenever, like, I seem like the spiritual portion seemed to open
up within me more so.
And it was only like a few days or maybe a week after that happened.
And I thought that I had died for three days and was transported to an alternate universe
after I was electrocuted.
So whenever I had heard the voice telling me to get out, or hearing things, I thought
that I was that something had like happened in my mind, I'd went crazy or something.
And in my life review, I was showing that instant that whole part and that it was that
I was spiritually protected, you know, that I did have angels watching over me to protect
me and to get me out of things that wasn't meant for me that wasn't part of my, my life
planning.
From time to time, I'll be on the freeway or stopping in a red light or something.
And there's a really close call with another car almost hitting me.
I mean, we've all been through those kinds of things.
How do we know when those are just a, who boy, that was a lucky scrape with death or
an angel actually helped us?
Do you have any idea how we can know that?
Because I wish I knew.
I think it varies on person to person.
Sometimes you can feel like, oh, man, that was a close call.
And sometimes you can feel like, oh, man, someone, something had to have been protecting
me from that, you know, or maybe it wasn't in the timeline, it wasn't planned.
And so that's why it didn't actually hit.
That's why it was a close call, because it wasn't something that you had planned throughout
your life, you know.
And sometimes those angels are there to protect you because it wasn't something that's planned
for your life, you know.
But we get those close calls and it makes us like, we knew that we were close to it,
you know, because you can feel the spiritual nature of it, I would say.
I have a feeling there's a lot of those.
And if I look back over my life, I can think of so many close calls I've had from the time
that I was a child on up, and I have a feeling if I someday go through that kind of a life
review like you did, it's going to take me hours to say thank you to all those that helped
in those times.
You know, a lot of my life I felt alone.
And through my experience, I realized that I'm not.
And so that has been very life changing for me, even through a lot of the pain, a lot
of the trauma, a lot of the abuse that I went through, or that I went through to know that
if I was to just reach out and ask for that spiritual guidance and spiritual help, that
I could be guided and I can be protected, because we do have angels that watch over
us.
All right, let's talk about how this changed you, if at all.
Okay.
You mentioned earlier about religion and spirituality a little bit.
And on this program, we're certainly not pushing any particular religion at all, and rarely
do we even mention names of religions.
But tell me how this changed your path or your projectory in life, your projectory.
What is the word I'm looking for?
Your trajectory in life?
How did things change after this?
Okay, so I know that after I came back, I did feel connected to everything, everyone
and everything.
It was very confusing for me to be back in my body.
It felt very weird.
I know that in my younger years, I had been part of a religion, I was a Baptist, I did
not go with my parents, I went on my own and I was baptized at 16.
And I only was in that religion for maybe three years, but I did have a lot of, I guess,
learning on Scripture, Scripture learning.
But I had went through something that I had the pastor telling me that my walk with God
was not right.
And I remember telling him that, hey, it's my walk with God, who are you to tell me that
my walk is not right?
You know what I mean?
Let me walk it, let God be the judge.
And so I really disconnected from any form of religion because of that experience.
And I would always tell people I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, which I hear that a lot from
people now.
And it's like, hey, I remember feeling the same way.
I remember feeling, you know, I do believe in God, I do believe in Jesus Christ, but
I don't believe in organized religion, manmade religion.
I don't, you know, that's not my thing.
And so before my experience, I had been, not directly before, but maybe six months before
I had been, I felt God call me back to Him, just, you know, wanting me to be more spiritually
inclined.
And so I started reading my scriptures more.
But it happened, and I fell back out of that.
But I had been meeting with missionaries from a certain religion.
And I remember I was so contentious with them because I'm like, you know, I know Jesus Christ
and who are you to say who He is?
And do you really know?
And I told them that they were nothing but kids and, you know, they wouldn't know what
my life was like.
I hadn't taken it seriously.
And even in that time, I remember I had, I wouldn't say reprimanded, but I know God was
telling me, okay, if you think these kids are just kids, why are you arguing with them?
Why are you trying to prove them wrong?
And it was so funny.
So it was like, okay, I understand God, you know what I mean?
But I still, I wasn't in it with my whole heart whenever I was meeting with them.
After my experience, I felt like I was between worlds.
I was still halfway here and I was halfway in the spiritual realm.
I felt very off balance and off centered and I remember having a spiritual prompting telling
me that I needed to get somewhere safe because the place I was at where I had to cut my foot
was not safe.
Get somewhere safe and I needed to get a hold of the missionaries.
And I didn't know why at first, all I knew is that I was going to listen to that prompting
because it was so strong within me.
And when I did, then I received the prompting of I needed a blessing.
And so I was anointed and they gave me a blessing.
And within three days to a week, I got better, like immensely better.
At that time, whenever I'd asked for it, I was having vertigo.
I was dizzy.
I couldn't really think straight.
And I remember I had been praying and praying and praying about it because, you know, I
had my young son I was trying to care for and I was telling God, I can't do this.
I can't take care of my son when I'm like this.
And that's whenever I was receiving the spiritual promptings to get a hold of those missionaries.
And I needed to.
And so I did.
And I'm so glad that I did because the healing that I received through that blessing is why
I was like, okay, this is where God wants me to be.
It was so weird feeling in between realms pretty much.
And I knew that I couldn't keep feeling that way and take care of my son adequately.
And so I feel like God made a way for me to get better and whether whatever happened,
you know, and that blessing happened.
And so I've now been a part of that religion for almost five years since because my experience
happened in October of 2017.
And I became a member or I started going back.
I asked for that blessing in January of 2018.
And I became a member in March of 2018.
Sounds like you were healed more than just physically only.
Yeah, it was a spiritual healing.
It really was.
So where do you go from here?
You know, not every not everybody.
In fact, most people have not had an experience like this.
What what kind of advice or message do you have for everybody out there to live in love,
to reconnect with that love that is within us and to share that love with others?
You know, there's so much division in life in this world.
I mean, we can find everything to be divided over.
And really, we need to be working towards unity and towards love for each other.
I was I've always been really empathic.
But after my experience, I feel more love for people, for even people in my past that
have harmed me.
I understand more and I know that we're all here on this journey together and that if
we can just find a way to band together and get rid of the differences and focus more
on what connects us, then we can live a more fulfilled and happy and loving life.
Good advice.
Thank you very much, Kristen.
Appreciate having you on today.
Thank you.
If you have had a round trip death experience, we would love to hear about it.
Send an email to eric at roundtripdeath.com.
And lastly, if you found this program uplifting, if it's given you just a little more hope
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Until next time, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and
the next.