“I Was Called The Christmas Miracle”

December, 2011 - Dawn Cypret had just come home from Christmas shopping, when she got the call from her doctor’s office.

Dawn remembers, “And she says, ‘Are you sitting down?’  And I said, ‘Mmm, no.  Why?  Should I be?’  She says, ‘Yes.’”

She had seen her doctor earlier because of a burning pain in her throat. Blood test results revealed it was far more serious.

Dawn recalls, “She says, ‘As soon as you hang this phone up you are to call 911 and tell them you are having a heart attack.’”

Dawn did as instructed and told her husband Mike. On the way to the hospital both prayed desperately.

Mike remembers, “My prayers to God was ‘Please don't let nothing happen to my wife.’”

Dawn shares, “And I said, ‘Lord, I just can't leave these kids of mine yet.  I can't leave my husband, I can't leave my grandson. I said, ‘Lord, please, please just give me a little more time down here on earth.’”

At the hospital doctors discovered four of her arteries were almost completely blocked, and she would need quadruple bypass surgery.

Mike says, “So when the doctors told me about the open heart surgery iit really bothered me.  I was really upset over it.  And I worried about it. At that time, we'd been married 39 years, and I didn't want to lose her.”

Christmas was just a week away when dawn went in for surgery. Friends and family including dawn’s grandson Ethan prayed.

Ethan shares, “I just went to my knees and started praying for my grandma to be safe and whatever is going on just please keep her with us.”

Surgery went as planned and Dawn was taken to recovery. But five hours later, she flat lined and was rushed back into surgery where she died on the table.”

Mike recalls, “And then wasn't ten minutes later here come a pastor, they'd called in a preacher. And uh I said ‘Oh man.’ I didn't think that was good.”

Doctors said Dawn had been dead for 20 minutes when without explanation, her heart started beating. She was taken to ICU, but doctors cautioned mike she had a 50/50 chance of living.

Mike remembers, “We’re standing out in the hallway and here she come down the hall and she just had a sheet over her, and like covering her up to bring her back to the room, intensive care room, and she was so swollen that you couldn't I mean, it was just unbelievable.”

Two days later, Dawn came out of her induced coma. At the time, Mike was in the waiting room.

Mike says, “Two of my daughters went in and was talking to her and she opened her eyes.  And that's the first time they saw her eyes in a long time. They come running for me because she had opened her eyes.”

By Christmas eve, Dawn was alert and talking. It was then she told everyone what she experienced those twenty minutes she was dead.

Mike remembers, “She told me that she had been to heaven, she saw Jesus.  And she started telling everything.”

Dawn recalls, “I remember actually leaving that body. And the very next thing I knew, I went from that to I was right on the shores of heaven. It wasn't too long that all of a sudden we start hearing people calling out ‘Jehovah!  Jehovah!’  And as He walks through He just radiates. So Jesus and I were walking side-by-side, and I could see that He had the nail scars in his hands. And the minute I saw that, it was just beautiful, you know?  This was the man that died for the world.  And I'm standing right next to him. I said, ‘Lord, if you take me now, for one thing it's going to break Mike's heart. We've been married so long that I just don't know how he'll get by without me.’”

 When she was in heaven, she says saw her surgical team and her grandson.

Dawn remembers, “I knew Ethan was begging for his grandma. Broke my heart even in heaven.”

Ethan remembers, “She told me she saw me praying in front to the nativity scene and she told me she told God that she needed to go back for us.”

Dawn says, “I could see what my husband was doing. I could see what my girls were doing, I could see everything all at once. And then all of a sudden I'm at – back in this traumatic situation, back in this body.”

 As Dawn recovered, word spread about her story.

Mike says, “And all these nurses and stuff come from different areas and they come in and they want to listen to her.  And she would say, ‘I know you.’ She says, ‘You do?’  And she says, ‘Yeah, you're the lady, you're the nurse that rode my chest on the gurney when I died.’”

Dawn shares, “I was being called The Christmas Miracle. I was so touch and go that they just never dreamed that I would be alive to leave that hospital.”

Doctors told Dawn she would probably never walk again due to the surgical trauma she withstood. But Dawn believed God for a miracle and after a year of re-hab, she had gone from using a wheelchair to a walker.

Dawn says, “I say that there's nothing. There is nothing God can't do.”

Ethan shares, “ I think my Grandma is just a miracle. Your prayers are heard by Jesus and God and they will help you as they did with me with my grandma in bringing her back to me. God can truly heal anybody. “

Over five years later, Dawn says she’s getting stronger everyday. She and Mike visit with church groups sharing their miraculous story that is written in their book, Heaven Is Closer Than You Think.

Dawn shares, “During this Christmas season, when you see what represents that baby in the manger, I want you to know that baby in the manger grew to be a man that was placed upon a cross, that died for you. He died for you so that someday you are going to be able to spend all of eternity with him in that glorious place that I've told you about. And I just can't tell you enough, ‘Get ready, because He's coming.  Get ready!  You don't know, it could be today, it could be tomorrow, but He is coming and He's coming soon.’”