Now I Believe You

by Rebecca Gordon, Darlene Kinson

Overview

A true story of two women Best Friend's for 46 years describe an amazingly vivid description of Darlene's near death experience in Heaven at age of 20 years old. Nobody believed her for most of her life until her best friend Becki, whom has been experiencing a spiritual awakening, began to believe her story and felt the real need to tell it for the rest of the world to hear. It will make your hair stand up at her descriptions that have changed their life and knowing, that life goes on after the physical body dies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504371544
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	12/14/2016
Pages:	108
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.22(d)

Read an Excerpt

Now I Believe You

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By Rebecca Gordon, Darlene Kinson

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2016 Rebecca Gordon, Darlene Kinson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-7154-4

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CHAPTER 1

Us Growing Up

Becki

As typical teenagers growing up in a small city in New Hampshire, and being the only girls in our families, Darlene and I were starved for female companionship. Our souls met in 1969, at the age of twelve when we were in eighth grade. We sat one seat apart and one row over from each other, and we became soul sisters by the end of that year. We were oblivious to the world, and we were full of life and ready for adventure. We grew up attending separate churches with our families, participated in Sunday school and catechism, and we knew the Bible and about Jesus and such, like our ancestors had taught us. We rebelled against going to church in our teenage years, as it sure wasn't on our minds as being fun or interesting at the time. I volunteered at our church suppers with my mom and Darlene, and I went to church on the holidays as a tradition.

We spent all our weekends together, always on a mission to have as much fun as possible, no matter how much sneaking around our parents we had to do. We vacationed together with each other's families in the summers, camping and beaching in Maine and New Hampshire. We were boy-crazy as hell and a little on the wild side, to say the least! We created and starred in our own 8mm movies using Darlene's family camera at her house. This gave us hours of entertainment, laughs, and giggles, and we were full of innocent fun. We still enjoy these movies time and again and still laugh at all the captured antics we were more than ready to perform in front of the camera.

Living life as teenage girls during the early 1970s — when smoking cigarettes and pot was considered cool and our life motto of Got Party? was our goal — we fully capitalized on that motto. We didn't think we were wild and crazy at the time, but looking back now, we sure were. If there were a party around, we would find it, and the parents never knew about it. We were very good at finding an excuse to get out of the house. Darlene and I were joined at the hip. We both were good cheerleaders for the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) basketball team and our high school varsity football team. We played together on our high school's JV and varsity tennis teams, and we were both good athletes to boot. I was head cheerleader for the CYO boys' basketball team. We enjoyed each other's company immensely. We were always cheerful and willing to help others. Neither of us considered ourselves beautiful, just believing that we had average looks — but we had no trouble attracting good-looking boys! Darlene was a strawberry blond with freckles and brown eyes, and I had brown hair and blue eyes. We were both slim and five feet five inches tall, so wearing the same size shoes and clothes was convenient.

There was never a dull moment! We were always having fun and laughing our heads off. We spent our high school open lunch out on the town and would giggle so hard I would pee in my pants on a regular basis because I didn't take the time to relieve my bladder beforehand. One time during the winter, when out on lunch, we were laughing so hard at some crazy thing one of us had just said or done, and I ended up wetting my pants. My jeans froze to my legs within minutes, causing a bad rash to appear. This one particular incident sent us walking back to Darlene's house so I could change into some dry jeans. Usually, we would end up missing the afternoon session of school. (We really hated when that happened!) Darlene's mom couldn't get mad, as she was so humored by us — most of the time. To this day, Darlene never forgets to tell those stories when we are out with friends. I am so embarrassed, and she will never let me live that one down.

Back then, in the early '70s, the fashion style was bell-bottom hip-hugger pants, with the bells so huge that they would wrap around your ankles and trip you up when walking. Shitkicker light tan lace-up-past-your-ankle work boots, and bibbed farmer jeans overalls were all staples in every middle class student's wardrobe — or so it seemed. Everyone, boys and girls alike, wore long hair, and most of the girls wore the same perfume, Charlie.

Our generation of no worries — of feeling like free birds, of living in the moment, and experimenting with smoking cigarettes, pot, and drinking alcohol — was pretty much the norm, and you weren't considered cool if you didn't at least try the lifestyle. Peer pressure was high. In our later teens we were frequent visitors at the bars in Vermont even before we were the drinking age of eighteen, as we lived on the border of it and because nobody knew us there. We were never carded at the door. Many classmates and friends our age were doing the same thing, and most times our parents never knew. Things were so different back then. The laws weren't as strict. Cops took away our beer many times when we were out driving around with boys. They told us to just go home, and our parents were never called. We are not proud to admit that we drove home drunk all the time on the curvy back roads of Vermont, and I even crashed my Mother's car one time. These are just a few experiences we shared together. We had angels watching over us, even then.

One memorable time, Darlene's dad grounded her for a month after we had jump-started my mom's car and decided to make an evening of it out with my boyfriend. Darlene was spending the night at my house on Easter Eve, 1974. We were both seventeen at the time. My boyfriend got out of work at 11:00 p.m., and that night after he called me, we went to pick him up with my mom's car. We certainly made a night of it!

I surrendered the driving to my boyfriend for the rest of the night. Our first stop was at the local store for a case of beer, then on to a house on the other side of town for a pound of weed. Our final leg of the night found us out on dirt back roads that surrounded our little town. We missed a left-hand turn, and so naturally the car was slapped into reverse and gunned. We came to a very sudden and abrupt halt. We had backed into a telephone pole at breakneck speed, causing a perfectly-shaped butt crack in the rear of my mom's car!

The three of us then continued onward, going down yet another dirt road to find ourselves watching two best friends, starters on our CYO boys' basketball team, slugging it out in the headlights of their parked car. The fight ended, they climbed in, and we all continued to party. As we were heading home, we wound up completely sideways in a ditch. We were not stuck, but we were racing along the ditch watching the dirt rush past us from the car door windows. Yep ... the paint was completely gone the whole length of that side of my mom's car. It was at this time that I decided my boyfriend needed to go home — and so did we — as the skies were starting to lighten. When we got to my house, Darlene and I opted to push my mom's car backward into the garage. This way my mom wouldn't see the naked side of her car right off. (Like that was going to make a difference.)

Mom and my little brother were planning on going to Sunrise Service at Mom's church. Just as we sneaked into the living room and assumed our positions in bed, Mom's alarm went off and church prep was in gear. Whew! That was close! Darlene and I snuggled down deeper into our covers to look like we were in a deep sleep. Mom and my little brother were trying to be quiet and not wake us up. My little brother went out to the garage to get into the car, and he spied the naked side of the car. He ran inside, yelling for my mom, and she followed him out to the garage. Within seconds, we heard the first scream of disbelief, soon to be followed by a second scream as she discovered the new butt crack on the back of her car.

My full name was erupting from Mom's mouth as she came bursting into the living room, grabbed the cot where Darlene was lying, and flung it over. Darlene was on the floor as my mom continued to scream and yell while punching, hitting, and kicking her. Mom thought I was one on the cot. When Mom realized it was Darlene she was beating the hell out of, she just yelled, "Well, you deserve it too!" Darlene's parents were called, and her Dad was not pleased at all. Darlene had to pay my mother $1,300 for her share of the expense of Mom's car to be fixed. We were separated for more than a month. I felt pretty bad. We were so upset, and a lesson was kind of learned.

My mom was easygoing and allowed me a lot of freedom. She was raising my brother, who was ten years younger, and she worked a lot of overtime as a secretary to support us. Therefore, she didn't have time for my issues as a teenager. My parents were divorced, so my strict dad wasn't around, and I got away with everything. Poor Darlene got the punishment every time. We were always getting caught with boys at places we weren't supposed to be, mostly skipping out of the dances to go drinking in old St. Mary's cemetery. When we skipped school we would show up to party at Darlene's brother's house, which was only walking distance away from the high school.

Darlene often spoke of her intuition and was able to predict our destiny — things that happened to us that she already knew were coming. She knew when her dad was after us, when I thought we were perfectly safe, and sure enough he was right there! She would also hear and see things, so I thought she was crazy for sure. I never believed her when she would say odd things, like when she would say she saw her grandmother or another person who had passed come to visit her. I thought she was dreaming or making it up. I would hear it but would ignore it, thinking it was a figment of her imagination.

Any chance to party in those days was the goal. We were not bad girls; we just liked to have fun and were willing to take risks to do so. It was worth getting in trouble for, I guess. My mother always wrote absence notes for me and Darlene, so we didn't get into trouble for missing school. She was so easy; I'm lucky I turned out okay! My grades surely showed it. They were terrible, except for English class, which I loved. I loved writing even then. We weren't going to church anymore at that age, as it wasn't important to us, and our parents had given up trying to make us go.

We never missed our CYO dances with Aerosmith and other great bands playing, paying only one dollar to get in and they would play from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. (Who would have known the local boys from our area would be so famous one day?) The boyfriends were coming and going like the wind. Usually we would take off in a car with boys, drinking during the dances and sometimes getting caught by Darlene's dad. He caught on to us when we got a little older. The duo of trouble! We didn't make the popular clique in school. We liked it better that way. We could be ourselves.

There were a couple of weekend trips we took with the CYO called the Search. Darlene explains it more in another chapter, but that was a little window of spiritual awakening for both of us when we realized there was something more than just church in the spirit world. We came back from these weekends different teenagers, with a high on life that eventually would wear off. We never forgot sharing that experience together, and we talk about it to this day.

We still cheriesh memories of lying in the front seat of my mother's car on vacation at the Sea Latch Motel in York Beach, Maine. My mom loved to take Darlene, my little brother, and me to the ocean for two weeks each year, where we would laugh and giggle for hours. This was a highlight of our lives. After a long day on the beach, biking, and swimming in the pool, we would recline on the front seats back of Mom's Toyota, listening to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album with our favorite song "A Day in the Life" blasting from the eight-track player. We would sing our lungs out for the entire album and then play it over and over again for hours. We had my mom's car just a-rocking during those hours of listening pleasure. Those were the good ol' days! We had much more freedom than kids do today. (We turned out just fine, by the way.)

We both had jobs during and after graduating high school in 1975. I worked at the local grocery store for $3.25 an hour, which wasn't too bad a salary at that time. Darlene had already secured a job at McDonald's her sophomore year of high school at the age of fifteen, (due to her father's insistence that you learn to "make your way as soon as possible"). We moved in together for a short time after high school, and that was an experience. Even as best friends, we had our differences. For example, she was a clean freak, and I wasn't! We always had a house full of animals. Soon our interests separated us. I went off to Florida for two years to earn an associate's degree in business management in Fort Lauderdale. I felt the need to make a big change and see the world a bit, and I took a big scary step all by myself. It was more fun than studying but I did graduate. Darlene continued to work at McDonald's, keeping in touch by letters, infrequent phone calls, and when I came home for visits.

In May of 1978, just as I graduated from college and came home from Florida, Darlene had thought she found her soul mate, Tom. He was a tall, dark- haired, handsome guy who seemed nice enough to me. She and Tom were into partying, drinking, smoking pot, and were also doing other drugs of choice for entertainment, as most our age group was doing in the late '70s. I got most of the partying out of my system in Fort Lauderdale while attending college and was ready to settle down at home by that time. I found a bunch of friends I'd just met since coming home and took a new job at a manufacturing company in payroll. My mom had worked there for thirty-five years and got me the job, and it paid pretty well. I hadn't seen much of Darlene. She was running with a crowd of people I didn't know and was into the partying lifestyle hardcore. She was smoking a lot of pot and using cocaine and speed on a daily basis. We drifted apart. I met a tall, dark, and handsome boyfriend at work who was older, and I had a new life with my new friends. Parties were still on the agenda on the weekends — disco dancing to Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, and KC and the Sunshine Band, just to name a few bands that were popular at the local bar/restaurant in town. My new friends gathered three nights a week to socialize and dance. We had great times, dressing up in high heels and dresses. I had my own apartment, and life was good.

Darlene and I were still besties though, no matter what. We talked at least once a week, and then our lives changed with a bang! In late May of 1978 right after Memorial Day, I received a phone call from our mutual friend, Donnalee, who had also been very close with us in high school. She's the one who told me the sad news that Darlene and Tom had been in a very bad accident and that they didn't think she was going to make it. We would never forget this day for the rest of our lives. The shock of hearing news of my best friend being in a possible fatal car accident put me in a state of absolute disbelief. How could this be?

She was in a coma, had IVs and tubes running into and all over her body, was intubated to breath, and had three closed head injuries — grim, to say the least. She was being kept alive by a ventilator, and her parents were receiving half-hourly reports of her condition for the first three days. I was in shock and disbelief. I thought she was going to die, not knowing she already had and had come back. My heart was empty, and I prayed so hard. I hadn't been very spiritual or close to God over the past several years, but I needed him now, I knew. I wasn't allowed at the hospital to see her because she was in intensive care. I wanted to go so badly! I called her mom and dad as soon as I received the news, and they told me what they knew. Her Parents were beside themselves with grief and were terrified by the thought of losing their daughter. She suffered several broken ribs, and two of these ribs were broken, so if she moved around at all they would spear one of her lungs and she would most likely suffocate and die. She had extensive lung damage due to drowning, major head trauma, and was in a coma. It didn't look good. All I could do was pray for God to save her. It was at least two weeks before anyone other than family could see her. I couldn't see her for almost a month after the accident. When she was finally out of the intensive care unit and moved to another room, I was able to visit her for the first time. It was truly a miracle that she survived.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Now I Believe You by Rebecca Gordon, Darlene Kinson. Copyright © 2016 Rebecca Gordon, Darlene Kinson. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
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