Day 27 – The Dark Night of the Soul

Yes, I know that sounds rather melodramatic, but it was one of those times that shook me up, a real spiritual awakening…now I am getting really melodramatic.

I will tell you to start out with here, that I am a little nervous…maybe very nervous. This is an intimately personal story and may provoke a lot of questions. I can’t be concerned about that right now, because I’ve committed to revealing my journey and this is part of it. So, I am just going to put it out and it is what it is.

It was the fall of 1968, and I was at East Carolina playing football.

My friend Jim Winslow and I decided to go up to Lake Junaluska for Thanksgiving. The real motivation was to meet some specific girls up there, but that didn’t work out. What did work out, unfortunately, was that we met a local girl that I ended up making out with and weeks later… full-blown mononucleosis.

Thank God it didn’t show up until the first day of winter break, so I didn’t have to miss any football workouts…the coaches didn’t like that back then, no matter how sick you were. Today, however, college coaches can get in trouble for hurting a kid’s feelings…man, have things changed, and I am not so sure for the better.

I went to the school infirmary, and it was confirmed, I had Mono. They give me Tylenol 3 with codeine that I could only take every four hours. Mama still lived in Greenville at the time, so I went home and went to bed.

Mono is no joke! I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t eat, I slept all day and would be awake most of the night. If Mama hadn’t been there to monitor the pills every four hours, I would have been taking them every hour, because after 45 minutes or so the pain killer wore off and I lay there miserable until the next dose.

Remember I said that the TV stations shut down at night? So, when I woke up in the middle of the night, there was nothing to do but gaze at the ceiling. It was tormenting! The pain, the loneliness, and just feeling horrible.

One night, the dark night of the soul, I woke up and next to my bed was a Bible. I’m not sure why it was there because I never read it. Maybe Mama put it there, or I put it there to look good, I don’t have a clue. Anyway, I pick it up perhaps thinking I could read something that would comfort me.

I opened it up to the Gospel of John, perhaps I thought that was a safe bet to read the words of Jesus. I started on John chapter 3 about Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the night to ask questions. Now, let’s back up a minute. Until this time in life, I had a pretty simplistic view of God, heaven and life. Methodist weren’t real sticky on scripture or details for that matter. In my mind it was like school, you do your work, and they pass you on to the next grade. So, I figured if I lived an okay life, I would “graduate” to heaven when the time came.

Back to Nicodemus and Jesus in John 3:1-5, it says…

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

What? What? Hold the phone…what in the name of God just happened here? Born again??? No one ever told me about this!!!

Now, it’s probably 2 or 3 AM and no one is awake, there is no internet to google this, there is no one I could call. I am already exhausted from the Mono, I am alone at night and now someone throws a wrench in my well-planned and totally safe beliefs???

Truly, the dark night of my soul. Finally, I was tired from the Mono and went back to sleep. I tucked the thoughts and worries away in the back of my mind, and it was a full two years before I found an answer, but that’s a story for another day.