I believe. Everyone who believes has a story about how they knew they believed. About a half dozen years ago, I wrote about mine for my personal website. I fully admit with no shame or embarrassment that Marvin Gaye is more responsible for my belief in God than anyone else (with apologies to my wife and Billy Graham who finish second and third).
But I digress…I’ve experienced two other “Hand of God Stories” since Marvin’s anthem:
Did you ever have the dream where you look down at yourself asleep?
I did.
I was in High School and one warm day, I decided to take a nap. I fell asleep and one of the weird things about this entire experience was that I never remember my dreams…except this one.
The level of detail that I remember of that dream almost 30 years later is pretty outstanding:
• As a stomach sleeper, I witnessed myself sleeping on my stomach.
• I was wearing a white golf shirt as I slept.
• The clock on the dresser said 2:12 PM when I viewed it from above.
My bedroom had a very high ceiling and I got most of the way to the top before realizing my predicament and panicking. I began to fall down towards the floor. In the middle of my room at the time, I had a brown Schwinn Exercise Bike and the last thing I remember before waking up was “landing” right on top of the bike (between the handles and the seat).
That experience scared the fuck out of me.
I have one other more recent story:
About 5 years ago, my family went on vacation in Coeur D’Alene Idaho (probably the most beautiful locale that I’ve ever visited). I get up far earlier than everyone else and one morning, I woke up and went for a long walk near the hotel. There was a nature trail that consisted of a walk up a reasonably densely forested hill which I decided to climb up.
Thanks to Google Earth, I can even show you where this all happened:
I was walking up a reasonably steep and narrow path, getting towards the top of the hill when all of a sudden, I hear a very loud noise. I looked up and I saw an extremely large deer tearing down the hill right towards me at absolutely full speed. I froze. Unlike me, the deer wasn’t respecting the boundaries of the path and it was tearing right through the brush. It got literally within 6 inches of me…I could have patted it on the head like a dog…before slowing down for a split second, veering ever so slightly away from me to avoid a collision, and continued tearing down the hill. Had the deer hit me, it would have been like being hit by an automobile and I would have had a pretty ugly fall into some pretty deep brush (not to mention that I was by myself and perhaps in an area where my cell phone wouldn’t have worked).
I never found out what spooked the deer. I didn’t venture any further up the hill…I think the deer’s behavior was God’s way of telling me I needed to head back down the hill (among other things).
