Vanessa Joy Lancellotti was a newlywed preparing to get her life moving when the unthinkable happened — a February 2016 near-death experience that was absolutely terrifying.
“I had a ruptured arteriovenous malformation of the brain … and it’s something that I wasn’t aware I had that you can actually develop … in the womb … before birth,” Lancellotti told CBN News. “And, so, it just ruptured out of nowhere when I was having tea with my two sisters, Amanda and Melissa.”
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The sisters were having a good time when Lancellotti started experiencing sharp pain in the back of her head — an ache so strong she collapsed to her knees in discomfort.
Lancellotti, who tells her story in the new book, “Miracles Really Do Happen!: Jesus Makes All Things New,” said she was “really scared,” and that her sisters rushed to get her to the hospital.
“I felt [like my head] was wet inside,” she said. “I felt it rupture. I felt the bleed out.”
Lancellotti said she knew what she was experiencing was serious and “life-threatening” and that death might befall her.
“I started preparing myself to meet Jesus because I really felt and believed that, ‘OK, this is it. I think I only have a few minutes left and I better get ready and prepare myself to meet Jesus,’” she said. “And, so, I started to repent the best way that I could and go through kind of my life history.”
She continued to repent while on the way to the hospital, fully prepared to die.
By the time she reached the hospital, she was unable to function. With the hospital ill-equipped to deal with the situation, they prepared to transport her to another facility and loaded her into an ambulance.
“I was preparing to die,” Lancellotti said. “I was not praying like, ‘Oh, Lord, let me be healed,’ because I knew that this was happening quickly. … It was like I was preparing to meet the Lord.”
Suddenly, while in the ambulance, she felt like she had been swept up into a “new place” and all of her pain and fear dissipated.
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“I had no recollection of the past at all whatsoever,” she said. “It’s like sin never existed, pain never existed — no physical, spiritual, emotional pain at all. It was all gone, and it was wiped away immediately, and I was in the presence of the Lord. It was just this bright white, vibrant light around me, like this pure, pure white.”
Lancellotti said it is hard to put the experience into words. Overtaken by peace, she said she was suddenly with Jesus.
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2025 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
