Mary Jo Rapini is a successful woman on the go — a psychotherapist, wife, mother and avid runner.

Her life took a sudden turn in 2003 while living in Lubbock.

KHOU-TV

Mary Jo Rapini

She had a brain aneurysm. Her head filled with so much blood, she said while in the ambulance she kept asking if she was bleeding because she could smell it.

Rapini nearly died, but doctors saved her with an eight-hour surgery.

One day before the surgery she said she saw a light and had a near-death experience

“I was thinking, ‘what is that, is that the tunnel the cancer patients used to tell me about?’” Rapini said.

She said the light enclosed around her and she felt warm and loved, and she said then God talked to her.

“God said to me, ‘have you ever loved anyone the way you have been loved here in this place?’” she said.

Then she said God told her she could do better, and she is trying to love more. Rapini is one of thousands of people around the world who have near-death experiences, where people say they see themselves outside of their bodies, see angels and hear voices.

Neuroscientists believe these events are physiological, caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain of severely ill patients.

But Rapini disagrees. She calls it a spiritual encounter

“I pray more, I reflect more, I am more honest,” Rapini said.

And she wrote a book about what happened called “Is God pink?: Dying to heal.” Pink is the color of the light she said she saw.

“No I am not an evangelist, in fact I am a little bit shy,” she said. “I tell when asked.”

She said she wrote the book, “because I thought it would be the best way to touch people who were in crisis.”

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Rapini is still an avid runner, but a different person, she said, because of a unique moment in the hospital four years ago.