By Susan Bromley

Staff Writer

Atlas Twp.-Roxanne Wermuth remembers the day many years ago when she took off her wig in the grocery store.

Other shoppers offered looks of pity, or averted their eyes. She figured they thought she was dying. Years later, after she actually was dying, she found her way back to life, and her new outlook included a permanent change in her appearance after she had flowers tattooed all over her bald head. Now she gets different looks, but ones she welcomes.

“At least one person asks me about it everytime I leave the house,” she laughs. “I am like a walking billboard and it makes me so happy and joyful to tell my story over and over again. God gave me me a rare gift and now I have revivals in the grocery store.”

Wermuth, 63, a Lapeer resident and author of “Inked for Eternity,” will share her story during an advent tea from 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Dec. 10, at Lakeview Community Church, 10023 S. State Road.

That story, she said, includes her life before June 1994 when she learned she had multiple sclerosis, her life after the diagnosis, and her life since 2006, when she saw heaven.

Her book, an autobiography published in June 2015, is a tale of redemption. In it, she openly shares her faults and how she went from a “bad person” who cheated, both in her work and on her husband, to someone who eventually cheated death and then took a second chance at life to turn hers around. She now speaks at events about the negative consequences of poor life choices, facing impossible life-altering adversities, severe depression and the desire to give up on life, losing everything to gain everything, and her out of body experience that offered a glimpse of heaven, and her life after heaven, in which she now chooses to overcome and find the positives in any negative situation.

After surviving a traumatic childhood with an abusive father, Wermuth thought she had found success in a lucrative career as a salesperson for a medical company. She was the number one representative in the company.

“By 40, I had made it,” she said. “I didn’t finish college— my Dad didn’t think it was important for girls— and I was going to show him I could be successful and I did. I was proud of it and good at it, and then one day out of the blue, I was struck with MS. The docs thought I was having a severe stroke, and I thought, it’s not possible, people who are 40 don’t have strokes.”

It was a rare form of multiple sclerosis that suddenly rendered her unable to walk, talk or see, unlike more common forms of the disease of the central nervous system that come on gradually in stages, she said.

With rehabilitation, Wermuth recovered her faculties, but the disease continued its progression. She underwent a yearlong course of chemotherapy, resulting in the permanent loss of her hair, but her real story begins in May 2006, when she had a severe flare-up and wound up in a coma and at death’s door.

“During that 24 hours, I visited what I call God’s waiting room,” said Wermuth. “I was in the ER, floating above my body. I could see and hear everything, but miraculously, was protected from the pain. I saw them grinding fists into my chest and I saw them putting tubes down my nose, yet I felt warm and comfortable.”

The hours passed and she was taken to intensive care, she recalls, where she was left alone after her family went home. From there, she “went into a tunnel” as her out-of-body experience continued, and she was met by her father and uncle, who had both died two years prior.

“I didn’t think the tunnel had a beginning or end, but I walked closer and closer to bright light and they stepped out first and held their arms out and wanted me to step out, too, but I didn’t feel worthy,” remembers Wermuth. “But I did and I was in God’s waiting room, in the middle of bright yellow flowers and it was breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful. It was the most wonderful feeling of love and belonging and the sky was so blue and the meadow was all bright yellow flowers.”

The experience, she said, lasted only seconds, but inspired her tattooed skull, changed her forever, and left her with a mission from God.

“He charged me with coming back and telling everyone, as many as I could, about that experience and I have to tell them there is a heaven and he is waiting for you,” said Wermuth. “I told everything in the book, things my children didn’t know, things I tried to keep a secret. I needed people to know, this is who I used to be, but after the waiting room, this is who I am now, and your life can change, too.”

Tickets to the Advent tea, which includes brunch, are $5 per person. RSVP by Dec. 5 to 248-425-4216 or lakeviewchurch@lakeviewlife.org.