Mary Jo Rapini: "Have You Ever Loved Anyone the Way You've Been Loved Here?"

Medical Details

On Holy Saturday, April 19, while lifting weights at a gym in Lubbock, Texas, she felt a sharp stabbing pain in the back of her neck, then convulsing on her right side and heavy sweating. Scans showed a brain bleed with so much blood that doctors were unsure she would survive the night. She was flown to Dallas, had a drain placed in her forehead, and early on a Tuesday was moved back to the ICU as her oxygen levels dropped and doctors believed she was becoming septic. Neurosurgeons found a ruptured aneurysm and opened her skull to clip the vessel.

The Experience

Mary Jo Rapini, a licensed therapist and former nurse, led a psycho-oncology program in Lubbock, Texas, supporting cancer patients, including children. Watching so much suffering, she says, had left her feeling estranged from a loving God.

On Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, she was lifting weights when she felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her neck. Soon her right side was convulsing. At the hospital, doctors found her head full of blood. As she was flown to Dallas, alone because her husband Ron could not ride along, the pain over every bump was unbearable. She told God she couldn't handle it, that she was grateful for her life, and that if it was His will for her to go, she accepted it. In that moment, she says, she truly let go and felt everything was in His hands. A normally anxious person, she felt deeply calm.

A few days later, as her condition worsened and surgeons prepared to open her skull, she saw a white light in the upper right corner of the room. Though she had spent years in ICUs, she had never seen light like this: soft, luminescent, almost like a small tunnel. Suddenly she was moving into it, upright, able to see behind her. She saw her body on the bed and Ron with his head in his hands, crying over a surgical consent form.

She came into a soft, light-pink space without walls, and felt other people passing through as well. It felt familiar, as if she had been there before. Then, without seeing how, she was being held by God. He told her, "It's not your time." She was deeply disappointed. The love she felt, she says, was not human; next to it, human love seemed like plastic.

She began listing all the good she had done: free cancer care, sitting with the dying at night, praying for people, trying to be a good mother, wife and worker. God asked her one thing: "Have you ever loved anyone the way you've been loved here?" She answered that it was impossible, that she was only human. She felt Him hold her closer, and He said, "You can do better."

She woke to Ron shaking her, explaining the risks of surgery and asking her blessing. She told him it was okay; she had just talked to God, and it wasn't her time. After surgery, she felt depressed to be back for several months.

How It Changed Their Life

She says she asks herself every day whether she is loving others the way she was told to, and that she has become a better therapist because she judges less. She came away believing compassion is the most important gift we give each other, that we are all connected, and she now looks at everything wondering how she can help.