I grew up in a lower middle class family in a urban city in the Midwest. From being a devout Roman Catholic in parochial grade school, I started drifting away from the Roman Catholic Church in parochial high school. By the time I started college, I had serious doubts of faith, and only a vague understanding of God. I had never felt the presence of the Holy Spirit as a Roman Catholic.
My first perception of the Holy Spirit or one of God's angels was when I drowned in a Midwest state park. I can't swim but my fiancé in 1971 encouraged me to wade in the river. While she was swimming, some people in a canoe came rowing down the river. A wave hit the shore and swept me out to the middle of the river. I fought to get my head above water but only briefly could. I tried not to inhale river water but my inability to get my head above water made that a hopeless endeavor. After my second lungful of river water, I stopped struggling and settled to the bottom of the river, spread-eagled face down in water roughly 10 to 12 foot deep on the river bottom. I can only speculate. I remember that breathing the river water hurt, so I tried to prolong it as long as I could. I found out later that my fiancé was hung-up on a dead tree somewhere upstream of me, struggling to break free also. As I laid and waited in the bottom of Big River (name of the river), spread-eagle position, a peace came over me as I accepted my inevitable death.
I believe the following was the work of the Holy Spirit or one God's angels, my arms and legs started to move in a crawling fashion, like a baby would, under a power not my own. I marveled at what was happening, but I still didn't expect to live. I took in another lungful of river water, my third or fourth, I had lost count. I inwardly marveled at what was happening even though I still expected to die, and accepted my inevitable death. After crawling about 20 feet or so, my head broke the surface of the river. I laid on the sandy shore and coughed up river water from my lungs for some period of time.
After some indeterminate period of time, my fiancé showed up saying she was caught in a tree. She could see I was in trouble but couldn't free herself from it to help me. I tried to explain to her what happened. That God or an angel had saved me after I gave up and she just hit me. She couldn't deal with what I told her. The funny part about this is that I saved her from suicide some time later. She spent about three weeks in the psychiatric ward at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. We broke up some time after her release. She didn't understand what I went through so I kept in all to myself. I tell few people this story and my wife has insisted I keep some things private.
I had drowning nightmares for years. After the breakup, my college grades plummeted. The stress was unbearable without alcohol. I tried to make sense of why God saved me but couldn't. The answer was not in my Douay-Rheims Bible. I started investigation other religions but found them all wanting. So God took a backseat in my life. I was basically an agnostic.
Fast forward 10 years. I got married to another woman in another state who was a lapse Southern Baptist who had been married twice before. We've been married 37 years, soon to be 38 years, the good Lord willing. A good portion of my family boycotted our wedding because she was not Roman Catholic. During our first year of marriage, she started attending a "full Gospel" church. I did not go to any church.
We were on a long weekend holiday with her sister and her husband (at that time) at Silver Dollar City. Everybody but me decided to go into a shop with a strong odor of potpourri. [Strong odors have always bothered me. Later in life, I have been diagnosed with epilepsy affecting only my olfactory senses. Coincidence or a reminder of what God did for me next.] So instead, I stepped in the shop next door that I thought was a leather shop. It was, but it was also a shop that sold black powder guns. [I had no interest in guns at that time.]
So from a distance of about 20 feet, I heard a customer ask the man behind the counter about the beautiful workmanship on a rifle he was holding. It was the first rifle the former biker had ever built. So the customer asked, how did he (the man behind the counter) get there. He then gave his testimony and I was physically frozen in place while my ears started to burn like they were on fire.
The man behind the counter had been a biker with an outlaw biker gang. He had done so much illegal drugs that his body was breaking down. He was in an ER ready to die. As his heart stopped, he was immediately in Hell. God spoke to him saying repent and live, and he said no and was shocked back to life by the ER staff. He died again and God spoke to him to repent and live. He said no and was instantly in Hell again, but then was shocked back to life. After the third time he was shocked back to life, the ER doctor and nurses told him to do what the voice said. You see, they heard the voice too. He then repented and his life was spared. From then on, he did whatever God led him to do. He became somewhat of a local celebrity and was invited to speak at some denominational churches. They didn't always like what he said because he never strayed from God's word. His testimony has had a lasting affect on me and I've never spoken to him or even know his name.
I knew when I heard him that he had heard from God. He and I never spoke. I don't even know his name, but hope and expect to see again in Heaven. As I left the shop, I asked my wife if my ears looked burnt. She said they looked okay. Eventually, I secretly read her Dake KJV Study Bible and decided to go to church with her. I was soon baptized in that church, fully submerged. My feet went out from under me like drowning but I was not nervous. I was at peace. God brought me home. My drowning reminded me of my baptism, except their would be no nightmares afterwards, only the peace of God's grace.
I have other things that happened before and after what I wrote above that I might add later. The ten years I was agnostic my wife has asked me to keep mostly to myself. I will respect her wishes.
