Transcription
In this episode of the Living God's Light podcast. And all of a sudden, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck started going up and started feeling really strange in my body. And I got hit by lightning and I got knocked off the green and it was a total white out. And the first thing that came to my mind was, I got it. I got it. This isn't going to happen again. I got it. I am. I am. I am I am I am living God's light.
It has taken me a long time to process what I saw and what I needed to learn. In fact, 10 years after I had my experience, I was starting to go back into the same ways that I was before I I had my experience. And I think a lot of that was because I could not process what I had seen and what I felt.
I called a friend of mine, his uh wife, on the 14th of June. And I'll never forget that I had a baby boy and and uh my birthday was on the 15th. And so I called him and talked him into going golfing with me and he says, "Well, I need really need to be there with my wife." And I said, "But it's my birthday tomorrow." And so I talked him into going golfing with me and he says, "Well, I think she could probably wait for a couple hours."
We were up on the golf course and we were on the third hole and we looked over the valley and and saw a storm coming in over the lake and and uh we both looked at each other and went, "Ah, we can make it. We're invincible. We can make it." And unfortunately, playing golf is not always fast if if if h you're not golfing very well. But we were on the eighth hole and and I had just suck a putt and it was about a 40-footer and I was just excited that I made this putt and I said that's the best birthday present I've ever had and and all of a sudden the hair on my arms and the back of my neck started going up and started feeling really strange in my body and I got hit by lightning. My friend Frank got hit by lightning and I got knocked off the green and it was a total white out. And the first thing that came to my mind was, I got it. I got it. This isn't going to happen again. I got it.
And I never got checked out after that. But my friend Frank did not fare as well as I did. He uh his L4 L5 melted together from the heat from the uh from the lightning strike that hit us both. I went down to the car and Frank is uh weighs 300 lb and and he played lineman for the University of Florida and about 6'4. So he was not a small guy. went down to the car and brought the car up on the green and loaded him up and took him to the hospital and Frank was up in the ICU and his wife was down on the third floor in maternity and I had to go down and explain to his wife um what happened to her husband. And I'll never forget the emotions that I felt in telling his wife that uh I talked him in to go golfing with me and what happened to him. Now Frank went through about five surgeries on his back and was never the same after. Never was able to play golf again after that.
About three years after I started developing hemoplegic migraines. And I'm not sure if you know what that is, but it's where your veins in your head uh collapse. And when they collapse, it acts as if it's a stroke. And then you lose your right arm, your left, your left leg, I'm sorry, your left arm, your left leg, and your face starts to droop, and you lose your eyesight, and you lose your speech and your hearing. And this went on for four years after that. I had one a year and it would take me a year to get out of a wheelchair and go through rehabilitation.
I haven't talked much about this, but I know that I know the reason why it happened was to teach me a lesson. And the lessons I had to learn was patience. I had to learn how to love. I needed to learn how to to be kind to others and also be aware of other people's emotions. Not sure why I'm talking about this right now, but I it's not something I've really spent a lot of time talking about, but I I know that we all have things that we've got to learn in our lives. And I also, it was very loud and very clear that I was not to look back and that I was to learn from that day on what would what needed to be learned.
Now, it's been 30 years since getting hit by lightning. I've had to do a lot of changing. My wife and I at that time before the lightning strike, I was offered a a high position in place back in Washington DC to work. And after that experience, we went back and we started looking at housing and we decided that wasn't what was important. And I came back uh to Utah and took a little postmaster job down in Filillmore, Utah, and decided that I needed to learn how to be uh learn a little bit about what I needed to do with the rest of my life. And from that time on, I've been trying to learn. It's I'm not perfect. I'm a guy. Guys make a lot of mistakes along the way. But my wife reminds me that I can do better. So I keep trying to do just a little bit better, even if it's just this much. And that's probably why every morning I wake up, I apologize to her for everything that I'm going to do bad that day. And she just laughs and and we kind of make a joke out of it. But we uh I found out that life is precious. You know, we we're here for a reason. We're here to learn. And I know why I was sent back. I I had to learn more. And it was a gift. A gift I feel like to come back and to learn the right way. I I know that I came from somewhere. I know I'm here to learn and I know that where I'm going, I'm going to be even learning more. And I'm going My intelligence when I was standing up there was opened. I I saw things that that was unescribable and I still don't know how to describe it other than I look forward to going back and feeling that again. Um, I love my wife. I love my kids. And thank you for having me on your show.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing. I can feel your love. It's beautiful. Yes, Scott, that's incredible. Thank you. And thank you for sharing the extra bit that you felt moved to do also. So, um, Vinnie, what uh what was that like for you? I could see you re reliving your experiences. I love, you know, I love listening to any experience I can. Um, I I really connect to the individual's experience of something I know as well. And I can see how it affects someone to go through that and to feel that. and and each time I hear it, no matter what the experience is, I can feel the emotion um of that and and and the love coming through the experience is is palpable. It's it's physical and I could feel that as you were sharing it today. And and Scott, I love how you're just so authentic. I love that you're you're not trying to dress up this experience to be something more than it is, but also recognizing it's otherworldly. It is such a beautiful sacred thing. And I'm I'm so very grateful that you are willing to share that with us and our audience today. And and I'd love to ask you um I love asking kind of some different questions about the experience. Maybe something you haven't ever had asked to you before, but what what do you think your your favorite after effect and your least favorite after effect are because you're definitely a different guy afterwards obviously, right? and not just um the great Scott that you are. I feel like you've always been a great Scott, but you've but you've you've gone through these many evolutions through all these experiences and now all of your energies point towards what's really important to you, which is people, family, and love. And that's something common I find with everyone that has been through these experiences.
Well, Benny, you know it's real. I mean, you can't deny it. You see it every day. I see it every day. And I know that if I deny that little voice that comes to me to do things, that that little voice is going to be taken away from me. And I I can't let that happen because that's what keeps us alive. That's what keeps us going. Mhm. you know, the the best and the worst. I I think I had to learn both of them. I I saw the the good, the bad, the black, the white. And I I think it's important that we all learn those because we are sent here to we have a gift to be make our own choices, but we have to live by those choices. If they're good choices, you feel good about them. If they're bad choices, you go, "Uhoh, I'm in trouble." Because, but you have to learn from the good and the bad. We have failures in life. We have successes in life. And those are things that we just have to learn from.
You know, Benny, I've you have written a book and I I I fought writing the book. And in fact, I even had a ghostriter write it for me. And it just about drove her crazy because she says, "I'm a I'm a woman. You're a guy. I can't think like you." and she was she was from Forks, Washington and we communicated long distance and finally she had to come down from Forks and we had to set up a camera and she had to interview me and then take it back and then when she wrote it, she wrote it in third person because she's a woman and I'm a guy and but Simon and Schuster said, "Oh no, this got to be in first person and it's got to be 50,000 word count." And I said, "You're not going to get that big of a word count because I'm only going to give you the truth. This is this is non-fiction. It's not fantasy." And we walked away from that. She did end up doing it in first person. And she did a very good job. She said that she had never prayed so much in her life when she was writing that book to try to understand what I wanted to have put into that book. Again, the book was not on my bucket list. To tell my story was way outside of my bucket list because I had planned on taking that one to my grave. And now because of the book came out in August of 23 and in January of 24, we signed a a contract with two producers to do the movie, but I did not sell them the rights to the story. Uh they wanted to buy my story and then make it the way they wanted it. And I said, "Well, I'm not selling you the rights." They said, they said, "What do you mean you don't want to sell the rights?" He said, 'I'm not selling my rights to my story because then I won't be able to talk about it because whatever you put in that movie is not going to be what I said. And about two weeks later, they came back and made me a co-producer and made and my responsibility is to review the script and make it make sure that it follows my story, which uh the script is done now. And you know, they came to me and said, "What do you want to call this book or call this movie?" And I said, "Don't look back." And they said, "Where did you get that?" I said, "Read my story. You'll know. Don't look back." And they said, "Well, wonder if it's been used before." I said, "It won't be." And it wasn't. And so that's what the name of the movie is going to be is Don't Look Back. it. Uh, awesome. They're working with investors right now and uh to get the contracts done, but it's not about the book. It's not about the movie. I get more enjoyment out of the foundation that we started. Our foundation is for children with special needs. We get more joy from the books giving the money to kids that need to have special programs. It is it is a joy to be able to help kids go to camps and to be involved in ABA programs. Um, we're finding though that it just doesn't just affect the child, it affects the whole family. And so we are we have kind of changed our focus a little bit to help the entire family because the child is going to the camps. But what we were finding is the rest of the family suffered because of the amount of time that the parents had to put into the kid, the child that had special needs to get them to to all these different programs. And so we're trying to include not only just the child that needs the help, but the entire family. And you know, we're we're not rich. We're uh we're retired and so we are on a fixed income. But whatever comes into this foundation has just been so humbling to see what we can give away to kids that need the help.
What is the name of the foundation? The name of the foundation is Gracie Scott.org foundation. And the Gracie comes from our granddaughter who was born at 23 weeks and weighed one pound and lived in Primary Children's Hospital for 6 months. She had three brain bleeds. She had a heart worked on and she is 12 years old now and she is perfect to me. Wow. She has some problems. She is brilliant in some areas and other areas don't quite click. But to me, she's perfect.
That's beautiful. Well, it's great that you recognize the interconnectedness of not just the the child that you're helping, but the family and how many more lives like and how much more rich and fulfilling that's going to be, how much it can enhance their experience. uh because I think many times we focus on if we see somebody in need or somebody hurting, we often forget the network that they're a part of that web of interconnectedness. And it's great that you're reaching out and helping not just the the obvious the center focal point of that, but the larger network that is a part of that kid's life. That's that's brilliant. you know, we we've been blessed that we've been able to travel a lot and we uh went down to San Antonio and I don't know if you've ever heard of Morgan's World. Morgan's World is a park for kids that have special needs and we've been working with them and we would we would love to bring something like this into Utah and there I've had the feeling that if we did it would be in the benefit of the Olympics that are coming to Utah because of the parolympics that follow behind them and to be able to share something like this uh to the world would be just amazing. Amazing. And the people that Morgan's Wonderland have been in contact with them. They have a program set up to where they could come up here and train the people here to set up a program like the one that they have. They just finished doing one in Kansas City and they are so excited to get one back there that they're just grasping on to it. And I'm uh with with everything that's going on with the book and the foundation and the movie right now, I have been working with a few people in Salt Lake, but I need to I feel like it's not going to be done in my time. It it's in God's time. I I have learned that anytime I try to force something, it's wrong because it's man doing it. But when I do it in the Lord's time, I feel like that's the way it's supposed to be. And I'm just hoping for my for me. I'm hoping that it happens. But if it's not supposed to happen, I'm still okay.
Yeah. I know sometimes when you've got these the visions and you can see kind of like when you were talking about at the beginning seeing the plant grow sometimes it feels like you're trying to you'd like to make the plant grow faster like whatever the project is but like you said it's it's in God's time it goes as it goes.
Yeah. So Scott, I've got a a big question for you. A little bit of a change attack. Um, if you had one one message, like one thing that you wanted to share with the world, if you had the chance to just have a microphone and talk to everybody on planet Earth, what would you tell them?
Don't look back at what you've done. Take where you are right now and step forward. You You have the ability to make changes. You may have to change your lifestyle and you may have changed the friends that you're running around with. But from that day, from this time on, you find a way to make things better. And life is precious. We are It's precious. And I I know how precious it is, but yet I also know how natural it is to go into the next life and not to be afraid. What I love is is when you look at the automobile industry, I know that's a jump right now, but with the automobile industry, the rearview mirror on average is 40 times smaller than the front windscreen. But in life, sometimes what we're doing is we're taking that rearview mirror and we're stretching it wide and that's all we're looking at and we cut a little hole in it and we look through that to see the future or see forward. But but that message don't look back. I love that so much. If we can allow the past to stay behind us, we embrace that principle of creating our own reality and creating our own future. and and what a powerful statement. So, thank you so much for that.
So, I do want to ask um Scott and Vinnie the question because there's similarities in your stories that you got to experience nature in heaven. Um so, my question is, you know, what do you feel, Vinnie, when you hear Scott talking about the flower and not being able to even describe the color? And you know, Scott, if you've heard Vinnie's story, like, how did you guys feel in hearing each other's story in that way?
I knew his I knew his story was real. Yeah. I felt it. You can feel it. When when you're when you're an experiencer like Benny and I and you're around people and you hear their stories, you know whether it's true or not because you can actually look into their heart and feel what it is, can't you? V. It's like a It's like a heart handshake. You just you can feel it on someone who's been there. I'll never forget in 2023, we went to the Salt Lake Islands and we were setting up in the bookstore and I saw this big picture and it was on an easel and there was no reference to you anywhere and I walked up and I said, "Whoever painted that or had it painted, they've been to heaven." And I just knew it. And wouldn't you know it, minutes later, you came walking through and I I met I met a brother from another mother. You know, I got to meet this man who I felt such a camaraderie with and and and wouldn't you know what uh uh you know, life or or heaven put us right next to each other for three days at the conference. It was it was just such a a beautiful experience for me. And man, yeah, the flowers, as Scott was talking about the flowers, I could feel how it's it's so funny that here on Earth, some flowers will follow the sun because that's what gives them life. And when you're there, because light comes from inside everything, including you, you react to each other. And as you walk near those flowers, you're loving those flowers and those flowers are loving you. And to me, that is our our source, our creator. that it's just this this tremendous love for all for the flowers to us, us to the flowers and the trees. Just the the great respect and wisdom that you can feel just being near them, let alone getting to experience them. And yeah, thank you so much for for describing that for me. I love it because I get to do a little um flashback and I always I always keep my tissue right here because when I get those flashbacks sometimes it just floods out of me. Um because once you've been there you you're you're not counting the days but you're looking forward to when you get to go back and no matter which way you end up going back.
You know, Benny, it was interesting you say that because I felt like for for the last four years that now that I have been asked to tell my story that my time was near. And my wife, I told her that just didn't in conversation and she got mad at me because it's not time. She says, "You still got more things yet to do." And but I've always had that comforting and calming feeling that now that I have said my story and and put it out there that was there any more for me to do because many I've been retired 20 years. you know, we were we've we've traveled since I was 52 years old and we have seen a lot of things, but to have this happen in the last four years has just been again something that wasn't on my bucket list. But to be able to talk to people like you have all over the world and be able to share with them what your feelings are and to hear their stories of doing an interview with a a reporter from Israel and he was in a bunker and you know I could hear the bombs going off in the background and and asking him what what was that noise? He says, "Oh, we're safe. we're in a bunker. Those are just bombs that are going off above. And I said, "What are we doing this interview for?" And he said, "Because the people in Gaza and Israel need hope right now, and you can help give us hope." And I you know those are the most humbling experiences to it just you know God will use us as helpers because he can't do it himself. He's got to use us to help him. And I think a lot of that is probably his is the laws of God. You know we were sent down here to make choices. And so, you know, we have the ability to call upon our father in heaven and ask him for help and open that door and invite the angels to come down here to help us. And what a joy it is when they do come and whisper in your ear what you're supposed to do. You know, we've talking to people in China just about melts my heart because they're they're they're atheists. They believe their god is their prime minister and but yet they know that their their parents and grandparents have gone somewhere and they don't know where they've gone. But they but they I think in I think in man and woman we have that in our heart that we came from somebody you know somewhere we did we it's just a normal I think feeling that we know we came from somewhere we know we're here we don't know why but I think we're supposed to make good decisions and then in the next life we're going to continue to learn and I think in the next life and I don't know about you Vinnie but I noticed that my intelligent level went out of this out of it was it about blew my mind what I what I was experiencing because I was using my mind a lot stronger than I do here and it kind of makes sense that we only use just a portion of our mind here but it was opened wide open for me to see everything and to see brilliant just brilliant things. Uh I know it was a gift. I know it was a gift for me to to see it and then to be sent back. And yes, I I I'd have been okay keeping it to myself. My wife knew a little bit about my experience. My kids knew nothing about virtually nothing about what happened to me. But now that they've read the book, they go, "Oh, now we understand the way you are." And because I was so guarded, Benny knows this that probably about 75% of the people that are married that have an experience like this, their marriages don't last because when you're when you get married, you're going parallel. You're just going right down the line together and then all of a sudden you have an experience and you go, "Whoa, you're clear out here and the person over here is trying to draw that person back." And when it doesn't happen, the marriages fall apart. And I'm going to be honest with you, our marriage almost did fall apart because I could not figure out what had happened to me and what direction I was supposed to go. But after I get hit by lightning, I knew exactly what uh where I was supposed to be because that could have been my last day.
So So Scott, in in that case, um you describe the the just like having a a quick turn a whole different direction. Um how did that work with you and your wife? Did did you like not go as hard that direction or she came with you or did you figure out a way to to like rise together? What happened?
Well, because of because of what happened in the hospital um in those three days, I I I tried to tell her a glimpse of what I saw. And it was it was interesting because the last day I was in the hospital, there was a reporter uh from the television studios here in Salt Lake that came down and he wanted to do an interview on me. He'd been doing a story on near-death studies, people that had died and I he wanted to interview me and I said, "No, you in fact I was emphatic. No, because I didn't even understand what I had seen that I was I had so much to learn from what I had seen. My wife uh she's an angel and Vinnie knows this. He's met my wife. Yeah. You know, she I know that it was not by chance that I ran into my wife over in Germany. I I told her I'd show her a good time when she came over. I was playing basketball. I was getting ready to to uh my my goals was to get into the NBA and I was programmed to get into the NBA. And I told her when she came over there, she came over to visit her sister. Her husband was in the army and that I would show her around. We uh after 3 weeks uh one thing led to another and we uh decided we were going to get married after 3 weeks and we came back to the states, got married and shortly after that I broke my ankles in the international championships in Belgium and my basketball career was over. And I knew that I I know that it wasn't by chance that she came into my life to nurture me and to coach me into moving into the next life. And what I'm talking about new next life is getting into college, getting in education and moving forward with our lives together. Uh she came from a very very good family, very very religious family and her faith was strong and she taught me about faith. It was something that I I'd always just depended on myself. But faith is so powerful and prayers are so powerful. uh people that are having problems in their lives that you pray for them, those prayers stack up. And when they stack up, those prayers are answered. I love that Connie is one of the few women out there who's only been married to one man, but she's had two marriages. Really? She has she has Scott pre-experience and then she has Scott post experience. And those are two very different men. And I know like like you, I'm the same way that I'm a very different person after the experience. And like you, it took me more than a decade to un unlock that and unpack that to see what it was and how blessed we are to have uh our angels, you know, Connie and Andrea, myself to to uh stand by our side and and move around wherever we're going because that that experience makes you live a completely different life. It does. Our missions are a lot different now, aren't they? Oh, absolutely.
Scott, speaking with you has been so wonderful today. I'm just so grateful that we were able to hear your story. We have one last question we'd like to ask you, and that is, how is Scott living God's light?
But that that's that's such a humbling question because you we have to get out of our way of ourselves in order to live God's life. We have to depend on his light because that's all there is is that light. When you mix all the colors together that are here on the earth, it turns out white. And that tells me a lot about this earth. It's light. And God is our light. Christ is our light. And we uh what a gift that is to have that light. Thank you for expanding your light today.
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