The Healing Journey

March 13, 2026

This excerpt from an interview with Dr. Mary Neal appears in “Imagine Heaven Devotional: 100 Reflections to Bring Heaven to Your Life Today” by John and Kathy Burke.

What is your purpose? How do you know what God has you uniquely here to do? Often we make it complicated, but it is really quite simple at the core. In a personal interview, Dr. Mary Neal talks about gaining insight into God’s plan for our lives during her near-death experience:

“I find so many people are either living in regret from yesterday, or they’re focused on tomorrow, [and] they forget about right now, right here, this very moment. [During my experience], I had this absolute sense of understanding, of getting it, of being able to understand the divine nature of everything. Or, not so much the divine nature, but understanding the divine order of everything and how everything is interconnected. . . . I also had this—for me—very profound understanding of how it can be true that God actually knows each and every one of us—all the billions of us on the planet—loves each and every one of us as though we are the only ones, and has a plan for each and every one of our lives that’s one of hope.

And that understanding alone creates even more pressure, every moment of every day, to constantly be questioning and constantly be asking yourself, “Okay, in this very moment, am I following the plan that God would have for me?” Because God’s plans for us are always greater than we can imagine. . . . We need to be about God’s business every moment of every day. One of the things that changed for me very dramatically is—and I believe it can change anyone’s life—is that, if you accept that there’s life after death and then, even more so, if you accept the rest of God’s promises, it changes the way you see today. Because all of a sudden, every day matters, every moment matters, every choice, every decision, it matters. We think about our lifetime as so long, but in reality, it’s a blink of time. And the reality is that we are here for a reason. We are here to learn and grow and change and help others do the same. And we don’t have much time to do it. There is no doubt the only thing that truly matters is loving God and being a window through which God’s light can shine through this world, and loving each other.”

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