Sharon Milliman's Near-Death Experience: Struck by Lightning

The House That Wasn't Hers

Sharon describes the moment after the lightning strike with remarkable clarity: "all of a sudden I'm peeling up out of my body just peeling right up out of myself and I found myself going into the house and at this time I did not know I was dead so I'm walking through my house and I'm in the kitchen."

She was confused. Everything had a burnt gold look to it, and as she looked around, she noticed the curtains by the sink weren't her curtains. The dining room furniture wasn't hers either. She knew how to navigate the rooms, the layout was familiar, but the contents were all wrong. She was starting to panic when something extraordinary happened.

"There was this huge huge loving presence that was with me," Sharon recalls, "and he filled me full of just the deep deep sense of love and compassion and I was no longer afraid."

This presence, she would later understand, was God. And they began to move.

Pink and Gold Clouds

They didn't move up or down. "We went laterally," Sharon explains, "and we started moving very quickly through these beautiful pink and gold clouds."

At the end of the clouds was a magnificent garden. And at the entrance to that garden, two young men stepped forward. At first, Sharon thought they were angels because they were "just literally glowing." Then it hit her: they weren't angels. They were her two brothers who had died when they were babies, and she was only a baby herself when they passed, so she'd never met them. But she knew them instantly.

"It was an instant knowing," she says. "We had this wonderful family reunion with the hugs and the you know the tears and it was I was so happy to see them and I kept telling them that they looked just like Dad and their dad would be so proud of them."

This is one of the most striking features of near-death reunions: the experiencer doesn't need to be told who someone is. Recognition is immediate, complete, beyond words. Sharon had never met these brothers in earthly life, yet she knew them as intimately as if they'd grown up together.

The Garden

As they walked deeper into the garden, Sharon's senses came alive in ways she'd never experienced. She could feel the grass on her feet, soft beneath her. The air was "sweet and crisp," and the colors were impossibly rich and vibrant. And then there were "colors that I didn't even have names for," she says.

This detail appears in NDE accounts with remarkable consistency: colors that don't exist in our spectrum, hues that have no earthly equivalent. It's as if the other side operates on a broader palette, one our physical eyes can't perceive.

People began gathering around her, people from all different time periods. Some women wore beautiful gowns, some men wore fancy suits, others were dressed in clothing from eras Sharon couldn't place. "I knew who they were and they knew me but I didn't know where I knew them from," she recalls.

Everyone was glowing, "literally glowing if sort of from the inside out." And no one appeared older than their late twenties or early thirties. "There were no old people no sick people nobody crying nobody in pain or suffering," Sharon notes.

The Life Review

The huge loving presence moved from beside Sharon to behind her. Her two brothers stood on either side. The crowd gathered close. It was time for her life review.

"It was like a screen had come down," Sharon describes, "and I was watching this old-fashioned movie on an old-fashioned movie reel and it was moving very quickly and it was my life from the time I was a baby until the time I died that day in the backyard."

The review went fast. Too fast, Sharon thought. She watched her entire life play out and thought, "Wow, something's missing. My life must have been really boring because that was over very quick."

But here's what struck her most powerfully: "I had no sense of judgment I had no sense of of anything except I thought it was really short," she says. "I'd always been taught that there was judgment and that did not happen there was no judgment I was just loved so completely and I was so accepted."

Sharon had never experienced anything like this acceptance before. The huge loving presence behind her was God, and God didn't judge her. Her brothers and all those gathered people just loved her. "There wasn't anybody judging me or condemning me or anything like that," she recalls.

The Boomerang Effect

Then she heard a male voice say something that would change the entire trajectory of her life: "What you put out into the universe will come back to you."

Sharon had never heard words like that before. She didn't know what they meant. But then something happened that she describes as being "hooked up to a giant IV bottle of knowledge." "It was like having one aha moment after another," she says. "I was being infused with this Divine wisdom and this knowledge."

She was in shock. She kept saying, "Oh my God oh my God," because God was showing her who he was, what he was, how the universe was put together. And "it was all very simple and we human beings make everything so complicated and it wasn't complicated at all," Sharon explains.

God showed her what those words meant, what you put out into the universe will come back to you, using the image of a boomerang. "What you say and what you think and what you what you do your actions go out into the universe as it spins and gains momentum and gets bigger and stronger and eventually that Boomerang is going to come back and get you," Sharon describes.

"If you put out love and you put out kindness and compassion and acceptance and all of those wonderful things and those are the things that will come back to you but if you put out lying and stealing and cheating and and all of those things that's what's going to come and get you," she says.

This wasn't theoretical. When she came back, she realized, "I need to really become careful what I say and I don't want to hurt anyone ever and so I'm very careful about what I say and what I do."

The Glorious City

Sharon continued looking around. The sky was a beautiful blue, and she noticed a sphere in the sky that looked like the moon or the sun without any light, because "the light wasn't coming from a sun the light was coming from God the heart of God."

Her brothers told her she had died. Sharon looked down and could see her hair, her clothes, her feet. She had a body, "but it was a light body it wasn't heavy or weighed down by the trauma of the world or gravity or anything like that it was it was very light and very bright and I was glowing just like everybody else was glowing."

But she was still herself. "I was still me I thought like me I felt like me I looked like me only a better version," she says.

They kept walking, and Sharon saw what she calls "the Glorious City." It was off in the distance to the left, surrounded by a golden wall. She saw buildings made of "the most beautiful Alabaster this white marble and you very intricately carved and there were archways and columns."

She saw a place where babies and children go when they die. "There where I saw children and there were various ages and stages and they were running around laughing and playing," Sharon describes. They "are cared for by people who have passed on before them you know relatives."

She saw another building that looked like a spiritual hospital with healing pools outside, "pools of of what looked like living water." These were "for people who had died traumatic deaths or victims or you know people who died very quickly," Sharon explains.

And she saw a magnificent library, "full of books from the ceiling to the floor just a bazillion books on every subject you could possibly want to know." The inside had "deep rich mahogany bookshelves and ladders that you could move around that you could climb up to get the books on the top." Sharon calls it the Hall of Knowledge, though she's not sure if that's its real name.

These details matter. Near-death experiencers consistently report that the other side is not some vague, ethereal cloud realm. It's a place with structure, purpose, activity. There are places for healing, places for learning, places for children. It's organized around love and growth, not punishment and judgment.

Meeting Jesus

Sharon and her brothers continued walking until they reached a grove of trees in the corner. She saw Jesus coming out of the grove, and when he walked up to her, her two brothers disappeared.

Jesus smiled at her. Sharon was in awe. "He was so beautiful," she recalls. And he said to her: "I love you I'm with you don't be afraid."

This was her first clue that she was going to be sent back, though it went over her head at the time.

Jesus walked with her to a beautiful wooded glen where there was a stream and a log lying on the ground. Sharon could see the pine cones, the pine needles, little blue flowers popping up through the pine needles. She sat down on the log. Jesus walked away.

And then there was a man sitting on the other end of the log. Sharon knew that man was God. He had a stick and was "kind of you know playing with the pine needles or doodling in the grass or ground or dirt or whatever," she describes.

Two Questions

God looked over at Sharon and asked her a question that would become the centerpiece of her entire experience: "What would you do if it was just me and you?"

Sharon didn't understand. God smiled and asked again: "What would you do if it was just me and you?"

She still didn't get it. God smiled again, stood up, and said, "Come with me."

They walked to a clearing, and God waved his hand. The sky opened up, and Sharon could see the vastness of the universe: "the rainbow colored gases and the spinning planets and the sparkling stars but there weren't any people there were no trees no cars no houses nothing it was just all of that."

Sharon looked at God and said: "No because if it's all of that and me and you you would be tired of me after the first 10 minutes and you wouldn't like me anymore because of all of my questions in my chatter."

God threw his head back, his eyes sparkled like diamonds, and his laugh was very infectious. Sharon started laughing at herself, thinking, "Oh my word well I want a thing to say to God you didn't tell God no."

They went back to the log. God asked again: "What would you do if it was just me and you no parents no husband no children no friends nobody just me and you?"

Sharon still didn't know how to answer properly. But then she looked at a beautiful oak tree in front of her, probably a bazillion years old. She noticed the detail of the bark. And then something extraordinary happened: she could see the roots beneath the ground, see the root pulling the nutrients out of the soil, see the nutrients go up through the tree and into the leaves. She could see "the veins and the life-giving veins and the leaves and the nutrients and the light provide food for the leaves and the leaves clean the air and we breathe the air."

"Everything is connected to and very dependent upon everything else," Sharon realized. "It doesn't matter how tiny God's creation is it's very very important to all of creation."

And then Sharon said something she can't explain, because she's never read the Quran in her life: "God your hundredth name in the Quran as God is everywhere God is nowhere and God is in me."

God said, "Yes that's right."

Sharon continued: "God you made this tree you are in this tree so when I see this tree I see you."

"Yes that's right," God said.

Then Sharon thought about her parents: "God you made my parents you are in my parents so when I see my parents I see you."

"Yes that's right," God said.

She said the same thing about her children. And then Sharon started thinking about certain people who had been very cruel and had hurt her in life. "I said God there are people in this world that are very cruel and they hurt other people I said but you made those people you were in those people so when I see those people I see you."

God said, "Yeah that's right."

And then God had a question for Sharon.

The Mirror

"When you look in the mirror what do you see?" God asked.

Sharon put her hands in her lap and looked down. Her answer, she knew, was not the right answer to give God. Normally she would have said, "Just me nobody else just me that's it," she admits.

But she didn't think that was proper. So she said: "God you made me you are in me so when I look in the mirror I see you."

God was so happy. "Yeah that's right that's that's right," he said, and his eyes just sparkled, "they were the bluest blue I had ever seen and they just sparkled like diamonds when he smiled."

Sharon notes that when she saw Jesus, his eyes were brown. But God's eyes were blue. And in that moment, God was letting her know something profound: "I don't make mistakes I Don't Make Junk and you are not all of the things that the people in this world has told you to believe you are."

Sharon had spent her whole adult life being told she was fat, ugly, stupid. And she was believing it. "God was saying no I didn't make you that way you are not all the things that the world tells you you are," Sharon explains.

"It was such a huge Revelation in my mind that I was not all of those things that God did not see me that way," she says.

The Lake and Future Events

Two angels came over to Sharon. They did not have wings. They wore beautiful ornate dresses. They took her to a very calm lake, "like looking at glass."

Sharon leaned over and looked into the water. She could see the earth below, and she saw future world events. "I saw things happening on the earth in different parts of the earth I saw lots of terrible weather changes volcanoes and and all of that earthquakes and tsunamis and all of that kind of thing," Sharon describes.

She saw "really dark clouds or what looked like clouds over top of different capitals of the governments and different parts of the world and then I saw riots and people overthrowing governments."

She was shown that our money system was going to collapse. In fact, the angel said "that our money is not worth it and was told that eventually we would be going back to the barter system as we did years ago."

Sharon didn't understand why she was being shown these things or what she was supposed to do about them. But the angels told her something crucial: "These things do not have to happen that it is human Collective selfishness that is causing these things to happen and humankind can change and if if we change these things will not happen."

"But so far we haven't changed and the things I saw have happened," Sharon notes.

Sharon has told her story in multiple interviews over the years, including detailed accounts on Love Covered Life Podcast, T&H Afterlife, and Beyond the Veil, each time offering additional details about what she saw and what it means.

The Return

After the vision in the lake, Sharon was sent back to her body.

She woke up next to the stairs. The stairs where she'd been sitting had black char marks on them. The phone she'd been talking on was charred black and was across the yard.

And the pain: "When I got back into my body it was the most painful thing it was horrific just that burning searing agonizing horrible pain that was in my arm and going across my chest," Sharon recalls.

She has medical documentation of the damage. She has a right bundle branch block in her heart and a seizure condition from the lightning strike.

The physical evidence is there. The char marks on the stairs. The melted phone. The heart damage. The seizures. This wasn't a dream or a hallucination. Sharon Milliman was struck by lightning, died, went somewhere else, and came back changed.

What This Experience Reveals

Sharon Milliman's account is remarkable for several reasons, and I want to spend a moment on what makes it significant in the broader context of near-death research.

First, the immediate recognition of her brothers whom she'd never met in earthly life. This is one of the most consistent features of NDE reunions: experiencers don't need introductions. They know, instantly and completely, who they're encountering. The knowing transcends physical appearance or verbal identification. It's direct, intuitive, beyond doubt.

Second, the life review with no judgment. Sharon expected condemnation. She'd been taught there would be judgment. Instead, she found only love and acceptance. This pattern appears in thousands of accounts: the experiencer judges themselves far more harshly than God does. The divine response is not "How could you?" but "I love you. I'm with you. Don't be afraid."

Third, God's two questions cut to the heart of what so many of us struggle with: our inability to see the divine in ourselves and in others, especially in those who hurt us. God didn't lecture Sharon. He walked her through a process of discovery, using a tree to show her how everything is connected, how nothing is separate from the divine source. And then he asked her to apply that same understanding to herself. When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

Most of us would answer the way Sharon almost did: just me. Nobody special. Certainly not God. We've been trained to see ourselves as separate, isolated, fundamentally flawed. But God was showing Sharon, and through her story showing all of us, that this is a lie. We are not separate from the divine. We are expressions of it. And when we look in the mirror and see only our flaws, we're missing the truth: God doesn't make junk.

Fourth, the vision of future events. Sharon saw natural disasters, government upheavals, economic collapse. But the angels told her something crucial: these things don't have to happen. They're the result of human collective selfishness, and if we change, the future changes. This is not predestination. It's a warning and an invitation. We have agency. Our choices matter. Love and compassion can literally reshape the trajectory of human history.

And finally, Sharon's transformation after the experience. She became careful with her words and actions. She stopped wanting to hurt anyone. The boomerang effect wasn't just theoretical knowledge, it became the organizing principle of her life. What you put out comes back. So put out love.

Sharon Milliman's near-death experience, triggered by a random lightning strike on an ordinary rainy day, reveals something extraordinary: we are eternal beings, expressions of infinite love, connected to everything and everyone. Physical life is temporary. The other side is real, structured, purposeful, and organized around growth and healing. And the divine sees us not as we see ourselves, broken and flawed, but as we truly are: light, glowing from the inside out, worthy of unconditional love.

You can learn more about [Sharon Milliman](/experiencer and explore her other interviews, including her detailed accounts of seeing babies and pets in heaven and her multiple conversations with Jesus Christ.