Dear Doves:
Thank you for your comments about my poem "Golden Clouds in a Silver Sky." Let me give you a little background.
In 1981, I was at a prayer meeting at a friend's house. There were probably about 20 people there and we were praying for another friend who was going through a real crisis.  We were all standing around in a large circle praying and praising God and seeking His face. I had turned on a small tape recorder in case someone had a prophetic word for my friend and had just left it on. The Spirit of God was really sweet and encompassing and we were just basking in His presence and I have to say that I was not thinking about myself at all or asking anything of God for myself but for my friend when it happened.
All of a sudden I just "knew" that Jesus was literally in the room. I had only been saved a little over a year and was not knowledgeable about spiritual things, really. A feeling like a tidal wave of power and love just hit me and my bones turned to jelly. All I could say was  "My Lord and My God!" and then I saw Him. He just walked into the room out of thin air. I collapsed upon the floor at His feet. All I could do was worship Him. My entire life just seemed to vanish, the room I was in vanished, there were no people there, no fears, no nothing. Just me and Jesus. Nothing else mattered. I wish I could describe for you the feelings I felt lying there but I cannot. There are no feelings, no emotions that could even come close to conveying what it was like. It was like living and dying, groaning and crying, Ecstasy and agony, unspeakable joy and knowing that I was totally unworthy to even kiss His feet. (Does that make any sense?) Jesus stood over me and He spoke to me. He reached His hand down to me and said "Come with Me."
If anyone on earth knows what the Apostle Paul meant when he said..:"Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know..." it is me. Looking back, I realized that my body stayed on that floor on my knees and totally collapsed forward but I didn't know that at the time. All I knew is that I got up and took Jesus's hand and went with Him. When I first sensed the presence of God in the room, I think everyone else did too because everyone in the room just fell on the floor praising God at that moment that I said "My Lord and My God." But to my knowledge, no one else saw Him or spoke to Him. Why I have never known. I guess it was just my appointed time for a visitation. Two years before that I had been taken in a vision to Hell and maybe God wanted to balance out my experiences. Hell certainly was real to me and now Heaven was going to soon be. I remember going "up" with Jesus and I looked back down on the room at the people all lying there on the floor and I wondered why they weren't going too. I even asked Him if they could come too and He said no but very lovingly so I asked if I could tell them what I was seeing and hearing and He said yes. It was like I was existing in two different dimensions or realms at the same time. I know my physical mouth began to tell what I was experiencing because it was recorded on the tape recorder but I had no sense of being in my body at all. It felt incredible! Totally weightless and carefree and well, Free! Jesus went on up ahead of me and I followed up! up! up! Through glorious colors and galaxy like places and places I could not describe if I had to. I was laughing and exclaiming in pure joy. It was like every wonderful dream you ever had in your life about flying and sailing through the clouds and being Superman and an angel and forgetting what it was ever like to ever hurt or cry or grieve about anything. I seemed to fly upward for days, weeks. There was no sense of time at all, no memory of time, even. Later, I was amazed to find that the entire experience took less than 30 or 40 minutes and I could have sworn in court that I had been gone for at least 3 months! I kept going up until I became aware of a place coming into view and before I knew it, I was standing in a beautiful Garden. Like the scenes out of the movie The Secret Garden or What Dreams May Come but so much more that those things seemed almost ugly. The sky was silver and the grass was so green it would hurt our eyes here. There were flowers everywhere and the smell of roses and honeysuckle. Music was everywhere. Indescribable music and I realized that the grass and the flowers and trees were ALIVE and the music was coming from them. Joy was so tangible, it was like liquid rain falling on me. I wasn't actually walking but kind of floating just above the ground. There were ponds and lakes and lush vegetation and things you used to read about in children's books. In a word, it was Paradise. The Garden of Eden. I don't know how long I stayed there. It seemed like years and I couldn't begin to see everything. Somehow I was made to know that what I was experiencing was my own custom made special Paradise all of my own, made just for me and that each of God's children have their own special place waiting for them too. I looked and there came my little dog running that had died years before. Running in absolute joy toward me, loving me with pure love. The closest thing I can come up with to describe this place was the Holodeck on the old Star Trek series where you could go to and program any way you like and then go visit the place that you created for however long you wanted to. A pale imitation but that will give you an idea. Heaven is the place of the Dream Come True, I guess you could say but this is only one tiny little portion of Heaven. One sliver of the onion. I stayed in the Garden for a long time. I don't remember seeing another person but I was not lonely or worried. I felt like I was Home.
And then, somehow, I began to leave that wonderful place and travel upwards again to another level.  and with that, I will have to sign off because this is getting too long....
(This is the first time that I have shared this publicly in my life so please bear with me)