Candice Sanderson

Before that August morning, I epitomized normalcy—others might have called my life boring. I went to work each day, came home, read a book, and talked on the phone or sat in front of some sort of electronic screen. My life revolved around my work and my children. In 1987, at the age of thirty-five, my husband died, and I was left to raise my son and daughter by myself. Both are now married with children of their own. Phillip works in the music industry and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and Cassie lives just a few miles away from me in Naples, Florida. As I look back on my life then, nothing appeared out of the ordinary—not in the way I dressed and spoke, or in my habits, work, friendships, or thoughts. As a psychologist, I differentiated normal from abnormal, and my life represented nothing but the commonplace.

On August 28, 2013, a brief experience changed everything. The foundation of my belief system cracked. I had to suspend my assumptions about the world to make room for different truths. As a result, I careened off life’s comfortable, and perhaps mundane, path. I now view the universe quite differently. Looking back, my life before that ten-minute experience seems as if it belonged to someone else.