Miles To Go Before I Sleep

by Jackie Nink Pflug

  After that broadcast, I went to get my coat and head over to the hotel with Scott. As I was leaving the station, the receptionist said, “Our phone lines have just been jammed. Everyone wants to talk to you!”

  It was hard for me to believe that so many people wanted to hear what I had to say. It also felt great! It gave me the feeling that I was making a positive contribution, that sharing my story and message could actually inspire and help people.

  When I got back home to Minnesota, interview and speaking requests began to trickle in. I accepted all the offers because I wanted to use my experience to help others if there was any way it could. I never expected money for any of these appearances. I spoke for free during this first year, sharing my story with whoever wanted to listen. In time, people started insisting on paying me. At first it was twenty-five dollars, and then gradually it grew to one hundred dollars.

  One of my early goals as a speaker was to leave the podium. Speakers who didn’t use a podium seemed to be more powerful and have a better grasp of their audiences. There wasn’t a wall between them and the audience.

  Yet the idea of leaving the podium was scary. I felt more exposed. People could see my body and how I moved it. I couldn’t hide my nervousness behind the podium. If my hands shook, I couldn’t put them underneath the podium.

  To accomplish my goal, I’d have to memorize my speech. I read the speech into a tape recorder and listened to it while I was driving, taking a bath, or doing household chores. I also watched videos of my speeches so I could see my gestures.

  There was another problem: I couldn’t see the stage underneath me unless I looked down. At first, I couldn’t take the chance of moving around a lot. I couldn’t see the end of the stage or gaps or cracks in the stage. One time my heel got caught in a gap and I almost fell off the stage. I was able to pull it out in time, but people noticed it.

  I wouldn’t be vulnerable to falling or tripping if I stayed behind the podium or if I kept looking down. But if I looked down, I would lose my contact with the audience. Neither option was acceptable. I wanted to move around on stage and maintain my contact with the audience so that my presentations were smooth and professional.

  It took about a year and a half before I had the courage to leave the podium and trust that I knew my speech well enough to give it without my notes. I found that by keeping the podium on my left, I could center myself on stage and reduce the risk of falling.

  When I first left the podium, I often looked and felt awkward. I leaned forward and made exaggerated gestures with my hands. In time, I gained more confidence as a speaker. I was able to stand up straight and concentrate more on what I was saying.

  There were other challenges to telling my story.

  After one talk show appearance in which I talked about the bitter feelings I had after the hijacking—how I’d felt abandoned by the U.S. government—I got an angry phone call at home.

  “What right do you have to be bitter!” the woman practically screamed in my ear. “You have no right to complain or whine about what happened to you. You knew it was dangerous to be in the Middle East when all that terrorism was going on. And you chose to be there. So stop complaining!”

  My God! I thought. All I’d done was to express my feelings honestly. I explained how owning my own bitter feelings was an important part of my healing process, how getting these painful feelings out and accepting them allowed me to move past them. But the caller couldn’t understand. She hung up in the middle of my sentence.

  I called the phone company and got an unlisted number. From then on, I never discussed my angry feelings in public.

  Sometimes people challenged me when I talked about the lessons I’d learned through the hijacking. “I believe we live forever,” I said in one of my speeches. “I also believe in reincarnation. This is not the only body that I’ve been in. My spirit is learning lessons, and each time that I come back, I come to a higher level of understanding. I get excited about traveling, doing new things, following what my heart needs. That’s something I don’t ignore anymore. I made a commitment that I won’t stuff God anymore. I’ll let God come out in me.”

  I was often challenged when I talked about what I believed—especially when I spoke at some churches. If I didn’t say what they believed, I wasn’t right—or people would think I was in la-la land.

  After the question and answer period, some people would come up and try to push the Bible on me. They quoted different biblical verses to prove that I was wrong about the lessons I’d learned through my own experience! I could tell they were angry about some of the things I said.

  I was very puzzled about how to communicate my beliefs and experiences to people who felt threatened by me. I kept trying to think, How can I convince them that I’m on their side? That we believe the same thing but we’re saying it in different ways? I looked for language that could bring us together.

  I found a wonderful meditation guide called The Daily Word. It contained thoughts such as “I walk in the newness of life for God is my life and I am well” and “Whenever a friend or loved one experiences a health challenge, I continue to hold that dear one in thoughts of wholeness and wellness.” I read that quote at a time when one of my girlfriends was having problems with her child. Each day during my prayer and meditation time, I held her in the light.

  I started reading The Daily Word along with my goals and affirmations every day. I found a lot in the guide that I could read in my speech that would make sense to churchgoers and to me. I also drew strength and inspiration from other readings by many different authors. A whole new world was opening up to me as I searched for answers to help me make sense of my new life—and attempted to share the meaning of my experience with others.

  Along the way, I felt affirmed many times by the books I read and by the many people in my life who loved and supported me unconditionally. Slowly, I gained more confidence in my ability to talk about my journey in a way that was both meaningful to me and to the audiences I wanted to reach.

  I felt honored when a friend asked me to be a reader at his wedding. Not only that, but he trusted me to select the reading myself. I chose this beautiful passage from Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet, an inspiring collection of poems that meant a lot to me.

  Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master?

  And he answered, saying:

  You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

  You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

  Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

  But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

  And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

  Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

  Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

  Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

  Give one another your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

  Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

  Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

  Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

  For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

  And stand together yet not too near together:

  For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

  And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

  CHAPTER 13

  ON A MISSION

  THOUGH I WAS CONSTANTLY BEING INVITED to share my story with large and small groups across the country, I still hadn’t quit teaching. Mostly, I spoke during my time off—on weekends or evenings during the week.

  As more and more speaking requests continued to pour in, however, I began to seriously think about becoming a full-time speaker. The tremendous response I received after appearing on the television show in Philadelphia gave me hope that I could do it.

  Scott
supported the idea. “I think you can do this,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. We can get by.” His early encouragement and reassurance were so important to me. I knew that, even if things didn’t work out with my speaking career, he would be there to back me up. Though our marriage wasn’t going well, I never even considered that we wouldn’t work things out.

  Still, I was worried about whether I could make enough for us to live on. I was making twenty-seven thousand dollars a year as a teacher, and it would be tough to give up my steady paycheck.

  I’d also have to give up the medical benefits I received as a full-time teacher. I called several private insurance companies to ask about individual coverage for Scott and me. I was eventually turned down by every single one: none would cover me due to my “preexisting condition”—the gunshot wound in my head from the hijacking.

  Finally, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota agreed to write a policy for me, if I agreed to two major conditions: 1. None of my treatments relating to wounds suffered in the hijacking (neurological exams, x-rays, physical or emotional therapy, seizure medication, and so on) would be covered—I’d have to pay all of these expenses out of pocket; and 2. My policy would have a thousand dollar deductible.

  I wrestled with other fears about my future too. I’d spent a lot of time and money earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in education. Though the link seems obvious to me now, I asked myself, What does public speaking have to do with my training as a teacher? If I quit teaching, wasn’t I throwing all that hard work away?

  Yet my Inner Voice kept talking to me. I heard, Trust and it will be okay. And I also heard, I have taken you this far—share your story.

  One morning. I shared my goal of speaking full time with my teaching partner, Marcia Behring. Marcia was very supportive. She said she would talk to her husband, Bill, about my idea. He was a director of marketing and sales for a local corporation and might give me some support. He eventually offered to help me polish my existing speech, and both he and Marcia acted as my agents in booking speaking engagements.

  In March 1988, I went in and talked to Louis Benko, the principal at Greenwood Elementary School, the man who had taken a chance in hiring me. I told him that I was interested in taking a two-year leave of absence. I didn’t want to quit my job outright because it seemed smarter to give myself some flexibility. I still didn’t totally trust the messages I’d been hearing.

  I had one or two speaking contracts lined up, paying about one hundred dollars each. It wasn’t much. And I had three more months of pay coming in from my teaching job.

  Not long after I went on the show in Philadelphia, while I was still teaching, I got a phone call from the producers of the Donahue show. Phil Donahue was planning a show about people with near death experiences (NDE) and wanted me to share my story with his audience of three million viewers. Impressed with the uniqueness of my story, Donahue asked me to be the lead guest on the program.

  A few years earlier I would have been reluctant to appear. For more than a year after the hijacking, I was afraid to tell people what happened to me on the tarmac. I was afraid they’d think I was crazy, making up the story, or hallucinating. I waited several years before going public with my story, telling only a few close friends about my near death experience.

  People often asked, “Are you sure that really happened? Could you have been dreaming?”

  It happened.

  I was excited—and a bit scared—to appear on the show.

  “May I bring a companion?” I asked the producer.

  “Yes. Uh, who did you have in mind?” he inquired.

  “My mother,” I said.

  I asked my mother because she had always wanted to meet Donahue. She flew from Houston and I from Minneapolis, and we met in New York City. We stayed at a hotel in the city. In the morning, Donahue sent a limousine to pick us up.

  Unfortunately, Mom wasn’t allowed to be in the audience of the show. Donahue has a policy of not allowing relatives of guests to sit in the audience; it can be too distracting. So Mom watched the show on a television screen backstage. She was so disappointed.

  Before going on the show, I got a chance to talk with the show’s six other guests. I felt a strong connection with several of the people. Their stories sounded a lot like mine. I felt a bit nervous as the makeup people primped my hair and face before we went out on stage. But I really got a kick out of being inside the glamorous world of big-time television.

  One of the show’s producers showed us where to sit and gave us a brief idea of what the broadcast would be like.

  I had a good feeling about Phil Donahue, the man. He seemed to have a genuine personal interest in the show’s topic and was well-prepared to ask questions about our near death experiences.

  Phil opened up the show by talking to me about my experience. I was impressed that he’d read up on my story and had good questions to ask. After briefly going through the hijacking, I gave a detailed description of what I thought and felt during the precious moments I spent with my grandmother in the light.

  I was fascinated by the stories of the other guests and the many similarities between their stories of being in the light and my own.

  Melissa, one of three women on the show, “died” on an operating table during surgery to remove a diseased kidney. Her heart stopped beating for twenty minutes, and the doctors declared her legally dead. During her twenty-minute trip to the other side, Melissa had the wonderful experience of being in the light. In the white light, she saw several relatives who had died, including a brother. “That part didn’t make sense,” Melissa reported. “I didn’t have a baby brother on earth. Yet I had seen him.”

  Melissa eventually returned to her body and made a full recovery. She started telling people about the experience, including the encounter with a baby brother. She got a lot of flak from family members and friends. “But you don’t have a baby brother,” they challenged.

  One day, Melissa’s father took her aside. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your mother and I never told you this, but she had a baby boy who died during a miscarriage.”

  Melissa had a baby brother after all!

  I felt especially close to the man who followed my story, a man named Tom Sawyer (yes, his real name!). A heavy equipment operator and mechanic by trade, Tom had been pinned underneath a two-ton truck for over fifteen minutes when the ground underneath him shifted. The pressure of the truck lying on his chest forced all the air out of his body, and he was unable to breathe during that entire time. His heart stopped. Miraculously, rescuers managed to lift the truck and pull Tom to safety.

  Though he couldn’t communicate by sound during the ordeal, Tom was totally aware of all that was happening around him. “I have all of the conversations that took place around me memorized,” he said. “There were about thirty-two people who gathered around within just a minute or so—the neighbors. This happened at my house.”

  Tom’s and Melissa’s stories were very similar to mine and others who have had NDEs. Tom told the Donahue audience that he, too, felt tremendous peace, joy, and love as he drifted towards a shining white light, which he later called Christ. There was something else he said that really caught my attention.

  “I actually think it’s a little comical,” Tom said, “because I fervently believe that if I didn’t get pinned under that truck, something else like that would have happened to me. Because I believe that at that time in my life, I needed to have a thing called a near death experience. I feel as though it was necessary….”

  When I heard that, I thought, Wow! This guy is great! Tom felt the same way I did, that in some mysterious way, my spirit needed the same thing.

  It was obvious that the NDE had dramatically changed Tom’s perspective on life and death, as it had mine. “I had a very profound, direct communication with this light,” Tom continued. “And, of course, what I’m talking about is the essence of God; it was heaven. I communicated with that in a telepathic way. And I coined a phrase that�
�s very accurate—superluminal telepathic communication. It was a communication, telepathic, that functions at the speed of light, conceivably faster.”

  Tom was thirty-three years old when the incident occurred. “I would have to describe myself as an agnostic at the time,” he said. “I thought religion was fine for the religious-type people—it did more good than harm—but as far as I was concerned, it just had nothing at all to do with me. I didn’t totally dismiss the possibility of God, but I certainly didn’t believe in it. I do now. I know that there’s not only God, but that there is a Christ.”

  Like many people who have NDEs, Tom was at first reluctant to share his story with others. “As a result of my experience, I started realizing things that were above and beyond my comprehension scholastically,” he said. “I started talking about quantum physics, wave functions, religious matters. I just barely have a high school education, but from that experience I instantly came to know many, many things that are extraordinary—people have told me they are extraordinary.”

  I was amazed by the many positive reactions of people who saw us on Donahue. Many told me about similar experiences they’d had and kept to themselves for fear of being misunderstood, ridiculed, or called crazy.

  After the show, I talked to Raymond Moody, best-selling author of Life After Life and the nation’s leading expert and author on near death experiences. I said I wanted to read his book about near death experiences and learn more about them.

  “You don’t need to read it,” Moody said. “You already know more about near death experiences than I do. You’ve had one.”

  In the next few months, I was on numerous local and national television talk shows, including Oprah! In addition to being on talk shows, People magazine did a profile of me, as did Redbook, Family Circle, Woman’s World, the Chicago Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and numerous other publications.