Gathering Wool: Fall 1979-85, Touch of the Master's Hand ...
It was fall in the Appalachians and I was standing on the road above our house at Ripshin Lake.
It appeared to be one of our annual fish fries.
I looked down the hill and there stood old Tom Morgan with my stepdad at the front door. Startled, I trotted down and called to Tom.
“But Tom ... YOU’RE DEAD!”
Tom nodded, and pointed toward the sky.
I looked up and what appeared to be an angel in white came down, took me in its arms and started floating upward. I thought, “Well, I, too, must be dead,” and felt at peace.
We traveled upward, but then … THE ANGEL DROPPED ME!
I woke up screaming … sweating profusely … terrified beyond words.
It was fall 1979, and Donna and I had only been together for a short time. And while she loved me, she hated my involvement with drugs.
One night — I think it was not long after the dream — I was shooting up cocaine with some friends.
I did way too much and was feeling strange; sweating, but freezing and shaking at the same time. I went into the bathroom and wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or die ... or maybe even both.
They put cold towels on my neck, and I recovered sometime later. Nonetheless, I was scared out of my wits.
I managed to go to sleep, but sometime during the night I awakened with a start, sat straight up in bed and saw this haggish apparition drifting away from me, grinning wickedly until it passed from the room through the wall.
Shooting up drugs, I declared, was going to be a thing of the past. I had become acutely aware of my own mortality.
Those events plagued me for some time. In retrospect, I am sure they were spiritual messages. For I believe God speaks to us in a number of ways – through His Word; through servants; through circumstances; through that still small voice; and, yes, sometimes even dreams.
Though, I’m not sure the hag was a dream.
But that’s another story.
I didn’t know this, but God was using my dream life to woo me into His loving arms. God was courting me through His prevenient grace.
In 1979, I believe Satan was having his way with me, much like when Jesus told Peter, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”
I had spent my life running to and from God:
My parents divorced when I was 9 — smack dab in the midst of the Sixties. But I don’t consider that an excuse for my lifestyle choice; I’m a victim of no one other than myself.
After the summer of ’69, I began attending my Uncle Russell’s Baptist Church and, at his urging, was baptized at 13 years old. Looking back, I’m not sure whether I understood the significance of that public confession; however, God’s grace never fails.
I joined the youth group and took part in some of the activities, but single-parent households were not nearly as common as today and I felt out of place.
I dropped out of church and started drinking the following fall at 14 years old, suffering my first blackout not long afterward.
The prevenient grace of God, through His Holy Spirit living within the person of my uncle and through the sacrament of baptism, had reached down to embrace me, but I would not fully extend my hand, my heart, mind and soul to reach up to Him.
And I suffered the consequences of my rejection:
At 16, I began smoking marijuana and hashish.
By the time I turned 17, LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates and intravenous drugs had entered my life.
At 18, there were few drugs I hadn’t done. There were near overdoses and car wrecks. I’m somewhat surprised I lived through it all – and I wasn’t done. My only explanation: God had a plan for me that Satan and I were unable thwart. You could say that His Prevenient Grace pursued me like the Hound of Heaven.
Not long after I turned the ripe old age of 19, a Navy doctor told me that drugs and alcohol had taken their toll on my body. He said I was in the worst shape he had ever seen for someone my age. I was placed in a substance abuse unit in Jacksonville, Fla., to dry out.
While in the rehab unit, I went to a revival; spent a few moments in counseling with a young man and repeated what is commonly called the “sinner’s prayer.”
Back on base, I couldn’t wait to call my mom and tell her the news. But it wasn’t long before I stumbled and the devil was there with his words of discouragement: “See, you couldn’t do it. And God doesn’t want you unless you’re clean.”
Knowing the sinner that I was, I bought the lie and went back TO the drugs and alcohol and AWAY from God.
Again, the Prevenient Grace of God reached down to me through His Holy Spirit in the person of his servants, but I failed to trust Him to do that which I was unable to do in my own power. When I reached up to take His hand, it was only for a brief moment; my insincerity became rejection and I paid the consequences.
Eventually, an accident onboard an aircraft carrier led the Navy to recommend I take medical retirement. Back in the civilian world, I entered college, briefly married and divorce, and my life grew progressively engrossed in drugs.
In the summer of 1979, I sold books door to door in Ohio. The truth is I did very little selling, spending most of my time getting high and drinking Canadian whiskey and yankee beer.
One night, while hitchhiking back to the boarding house where I was living, God gave me a a glimpse of my depravity. In my heart, I wanted to be clean and threw what pot I had into a field in the dark of night. I was tired of the life I was living and wanted out. I prayed for God’s help and made a vow. But within days, I was back where I started. For in my own power, I had no hope.
Somehow, in the darkness of night, God reached down to me through His Holy Spirit, but I was blinded by sin, my flesh was weak, and my hand barely reached up to Him. Again, my failure to surrender had its consequences: I remained controlled by the very sin I sought to throw off.
I returned to college that fall and went right back to where I left off. The days became a whirlwind of going to class, getting bombed, going to bed, waking up and starting all over – all the while living a desperately lonely life.
Late one night, in a drunken state of self-pity, I drove my Triumph TR7 for an hour through the mountains to my parents’ house on Ripshin Lake and awakened my mother about 1 a.m. She was surprised and thought something terrible had happened. For me to make such a late-night trip, surely something catastrophic had occurred.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
On the verge of tears, I sat down on the couch.
“I’m ... lonely, Momma. I’m lonely.” And then I broke down. A crying drunk. There is little else so pathetic; yet my declaration could not have been more true. Despite a multitude of drinking and drugging “friends,” I was devastatingly lonely.
Not long after that, I met Donna. I fell incredibly in love with her and a little over a year and a half later we were married.
I guess she felt she could change me, and with God’s help she eventually did – but not before some crises.
I believe it was around our second anniversary that I saw the writing on the wall: I was about to lose my wife and my life. For when it came right down to it, without Donna helping to pull me to center, death from substance abuse would likely not be far behind.
It was in spring 1983 that I began to truly face my spiritual condition, but it started in an odd way.
I came home from work around 1 a.m. and, being a news junkie, turned on Linda Ellerby’s NBC News Overnight. She reported that someone in Germany told police they picked up a hitchhiker with long hair, dressed in jeans and carrying a backpack. During the ride, the hitchhiker told the driver he was the archangel Gabriel and the world was going to end in 1984.
The hitchhiker then disappeared from the vehicle. No kidding; that was the story and it wasn’t in the Enquirer.
As if that wasn’t enough, she said a person in Great Britain reported a similar event, except the driver could not recall ever stopping to pick anyone up; the fellow just appeared, said his words, and disappeared.
I was nearly shaking and questions flooded over me in a wave of emotion: I knew the hitchhikers were part of some crazy hoax, but what if, I thought, the world did end in 1984? What would happen to me and my family? I thought, “Well, Donna would probably go to heaven. David, just a baby, would go, too. But what about me?” No, I decided, I was not likely to be heaven-bound. Not the boozing druggie that I was.
Now, it’s obvious my works-oriented theology was fairly flawed, but I was certain of one thing: I was living far from God.
So, I resorted to the only thinking I knew of: I wanted a relationship with God, but I had to clean my life up first. I know now that I was only setting the same trap as before.
Nonetheless, I prayed that God would help me overcome the need to use alcohol. He answered and would lead me away in many different ways whenever the desire came.
But the drug use continued and I substituted that for the alcohol.
In October 1983, we moved to Port Arthur, Texas, where I joined the staff of the Port Arthur News as a copy editor. I had decided that a change in scenery might help me get away from drugs.
The problem was, if I was trying to escape the drug scene, it didn’t work. There were staffers there who got high, too.
Still, God found ways to keep speaking to me.
I would occasionally have to borrow the company car and the radio was invariably tuned to a Christian station. I found myself tuning in at lunch time to a Christian talk show. I can still remember the name: “Darren’s Coffee Shop.” As I listened, I found that many of the people calling in sounded much like me.
Then one day, in 1984, I answered a television advertisement on CNN offering a free book called “Power for Living,” published by the Arthur C. DeMoss Foundation. When it arrived I discovered it was a small book of testimonials from Christian celebrities such as Dr. J. Julius Erving, the basketball player, and other personalities. No hard-sell, just a simple presentation of the Gospel.
I wanted what those people had: peace of mind in a crazy world; a realization that God was there and loved me; and the salvation offered in accepting Jesus Christ as Lord.
In 1985, after moving to Knoxville, Donna became pregnant with Elizabeth, an answer to prayers for a little girl. We began to talk of attending church, but were hung up over “which church” we should attend.
We kept passing a church, Middlebrook Pike United Methodist in Knoxville, and decided to start our search by visiting there. We never left.
After a few Sundays in what was called the Seeker’s Class — yes, there was such a thing in the ’80s — I decided the time had come to take the step and ask Christ into my life.
On Easter weekend in 1985, Donna and I took David to my family’s place on Ripshin Lake near Roan Mountain. On Saturday night, I realized the desire to get high was already slowly leaving me. I had some pot, but smoked little. Repentance was taking over — I was finally ready to turn TO God, and AWAY from sin.
On Easter morning, I got up early and drove to the dam, parking my car at the gate. I turned on the radio and, thank God, found someone preaching somewhere. I listened and sometime during the sermon, he offered the sinner’s prayer. By now, it was familiar to me, and I said it with him. There was a peace in my heart, and this time I knew something was happening to my life.
I walked out to the dock, fishing gear in hand, cast my line into the water and simply wondered what was to come.
I had no idea how different my life would be.
I began to view my job as a journalist different, as a calling — a calling that God has yet to release me from, despite my often fervent prayers.
I began to view my marriage differently: To serve my wife as Christ served the Church, through sacrificial love, and to raise my children in a way that would be an opportunity to break the cycle of divorce and substance abuse, and to honor God and share the Gospel.
God opened the door for me to work with youth, sharing the story of His grace in my life … and the blessing to see some of those youth come of age and share Christ with others.
He opened the door for me to serve others through hunger ministries in Knox and Blount counties … and He has opened the door for me to serve on medical mission teams in Guatemala … and to preach the message of grace and salvation in Estonia, a former Soviet Bloc nation.
In his last message before going home to be with the Lord, Keith Green wrote, “This generation of believers that you and me are a part of, we’re responsible for this generation of souls all over the world.”
I believe that, and God has allowed me the privilege of being a part of that. At a time of great change in United Methodist Churches, he allowed me to be a part of establishing new worship services, of creating an environment that attracts those who might not otherwise darken the door of a house of worship, to hear the Word of God and experience His presence.
And then God opened my own ears to hear His voice, to being “called-out,” “set apart” to serve in pastoral ministry.
No, when I cast that line into the water on Ripshin Lake, when I cast my lot with those who are on this great Christian adventure, I had no idea how different my life would be … and how grace would set me free -- set me free!
What I am saying goes far beyond a woeful tale of how I allowed drugs and alcohol to wreck my life and that of my family for 15 years.
I know now that trying to clean myself up before coming to Christ was a mistake. Isaiah 64:6 says: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”
Even now, as I struggle daily with sin, it is only the righteousness of Jesus Christ and his grace that saves me, nothing of my own.
There is an old hymn, “Just As I Am,” and it means just that – we can come to Jesus just as we are, because he’s in the cleaning business.
In the end — or, should I say, 'In the beginning of my new life with Christ,' — God’s Holy Spirit reached down to me with Prevenient Grace through:
My dream life
Circumstances,
Testimonials in a book from, of all places, Ted Turner’s CNN,
Through a faceless voice on the radio on Easter morning,
and, never to be forgotten, through the Body of Christ.
And through the sincere desire of my heart, on that Easter morning, I kept reaching, and reaching, and reaching until I felt …
… the touch
… of the master’s … hand.
It appeared to be one of our annual fish fries.
I looked down the hill and there stood old Tom Morgan with my stepdad at the front door. Startled, I trotted down and called to Tom.
“But Tom ... YOU’RE DEAD!”
Tom nodded, and pointed toward the sky.
I looked up and what appeared to be an angel in white came down, took me in its arms and started floating upward. I thought, “Well, I, too, must be dead,” and felt at peace.
We traveled upward, but then … THE ANGEL DROPPED ME!
I woke up screaming … sweating profusely … terrified beyond words.
It was fall 1979, and Donna and I had only been together for a short time. And while she loved me, she hated my involvement with drugs.
One night — I think it was not long after the dream — I was shooting up cocaine with some friends.
I did way too much and was feeling strange; sweating, but freezing and shaking at the same time. I went into the bathroom and wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or die ... or maybe even both.
They put cold towels on my neck, and I recovered sometime later. Nonetheless, I was scared out of my wits.
I managed to go to sleep, but sometime during the night I awakened with a start, sat straight up in bed and saw this haggish apparition drifting away from me, grinning wickedly until it passed from the room through the wall.
Shooting up drugs, I declared, was going to be a thing of the past. I had become acutely aware of my own mortality.
Those events plagued me for some time. In retrospect, I am sure they were spiritual messages. For I believe God speaks to us in a number of ways – through His Word; through servants; through circumstances; through that still small voice; and, yes, sometimes even dreams.
Though, I’m not sure the hag was a dream.
But that’s another story.
I didn’t know this, but God was using my dream life to woo me into His loving arms. God was courting me through His prevenient grace.
In 1979, I believe Satan was having his way with me, much like when Jesus told Peter, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”
I had spent my life running to and from God:
My parents divorced when I was 9 — smack dab in the midst of the Sixties. But I don’t consider that an excuse for my lifestyle choice; I’m a victim of no one other than myself.
After the summer of ’69, I began attending my Uncle Russell’s Baptist Church and, at his urging, was baptized at 13 years old. Looking back, I’m not sure whether I understood the significance of that public confession; however, God’s grace never fails.
I joined the youth group and took part in some of the activities, but single-parent households were not nearly as common as today and I felt out of place.
I dropped out of church and started drinking the following fall at 14 years old, suffering my first blackout not long afterward.
The prevenient grace of God, through His Holy Spirit living within the person of my uncle and through the sacrament of baptism, had reached down to embrace me, but I would not fully extend my hand, my heart, mind and soul to reach up to Him.
And I suffered the consequences of my rejection:
At 16, I began smoking marijuana and hashish.
By the time I turned 17, LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates and intravenous drugs had entered my life.
At 18, there were few drugs I hadn’t done. There were near overdoses and car wrecks. I’m somewhat surprised I lived through it all – and I wasn’t done. My only explanation: God had a plan for me that Satan and I were unable thwart. You could say that His Prevenient Grace pursued me like the Hound of Heaven.
Not long after I turned the ripe old age of 19, a Navy doctor told me that drugs and alcohol had taken their toll on my body. He said I was in the worst shape he had ever seen for someone my age. I was placed in a substance abuse unit in Jacksonville, Fla., to dry out.
While in the rehab unit, I went to a revival; spent a few moments in counseling with a young man and repeated what is commonly called the “sinner’s prayer.”
Back on base, I couldn’t wait to call my mom and tell her the news. But it wasn’t long before I stumbled and the devil was there with his words of discouragement: “See, you couldn’t do it. And God doesn’t want you unless you’re clean.”
Knowing the sinner that I was, I bought the lie and went back TO the drugs and alcohol and AWAY from God.
Again, the Prevenient Grace of God reached down to me through His Holy Spirit in the person of his servants, but I failed to trust Him to do that which I was unable to do in my own power. When I reached up to take His hand, it was only for a brief moment; my insincerity became rejection and I paid the consequences.
Eventually, an accident onboard an aircraft carrier led the Navy to recommend I take medical retirement. Back in the civilian world, I entered college, briefly married and divorce, and my life grew progressively engrossed in drugs.
In the summer of 1979, I sold books door to door in Ohio. The truth is I did very little selling, spending most of my time getting high and drinking Canadian whiskey and yankee beer.
One night, while hitchhiking back to the boarding house where I was living, God gave me a a glimpse of my depravity. In my heart, I wanted to be clean and threw what pot I had into a field in the dark of night. I was tired of the life I was living and wanted out. I prayed for God’s help and made a vow. But within days, I was back where I started. For in my own power, I had no hope.
Somehow, in the darkness of night, God reached down to me through His Holy Spirit, but I was blinded by sin, my flesh was weak, and my hand barely reached up to Him. Again, my failure to surrender had its consequences: I remained controlled by the very sin I sought to throw off.
I returned to college that fall and went right back to where I left off. The days became a whirlwind of going to class, getting bombed, going to bed, waking up and starting all over – all the while living a desperately lonely life.
Late one night, in a drunken state of self-pity, I drove my Triumph TR7 for an hour through the mountains to my parents’ house on Ripshin Lake and awakened my mother about 1 a.m. She was surprised and thought something terrible had happened. For me to make such a late-night trip, surely something catastrophic had occurred.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
On the verge of tears, I sat down on the couch.
“I’m ... lonely, Momma. I’m lonely.” And then I broke down. A crying drunk. There is little else so pathetic; yet my declaration could not have been more true. Despite a multitude of drinking and drugging “friends,” I was devastatingly lonely.
Not long after that, I met Donna. I fell incredibly in love with her and a little over a year and a half later we were married.
I guess she felt she could change me, and with God’s help she eventually did – but not before some crises.
I believe it was around our second anniversary that I saw the writing on the wall: I was about to lose my wife and my life. For when it came right down to it, without Donna helping to pull me to center, death from substance abuse would likely not be far behind.
It was in spring 1983 that I began to truly face my spiritual condition, but it started in an odd way.
I came home from work around 1 a.m. and, being a news junkie, turned on Linda Ellerby’s NBC News Overnight. She reported that someone in Germany told police they picked up a hitchhiker with long hair, dressed in jeans and carrying a backpack. During the ride, the hitchhiker told the driver he was the archangel Gabriel and the world was going to end in 1984.
The hitchhiker then disappeared from the vehicle. No kidding; that was the story and it wasn’t in the Enquirer.
As if that wasn’t enough, she said a person in Great Britain reported a similar event, except the driver could not recall ever stopping to pick anyone up; the fellow just appeared, said his words, and disappeared.
I was nearly shaking and questions flooded over me in a wave of emotion: I knew the hitchhikers were part of some crazy hoax, but what if, I thought, the world did end in 1984? What would happen to me and my family? I thought, “Well, Donna would probably go to heaven. David, just a baby, would go, too. But what about me?” No, I decided, I was not likely to be heaven-bound. Not the boozing druggie that I was.
Now, it’s obvious my works-oriented theology was fairly flawed, but I was certain of one thing: I was living far from God.
So, I resorted to the only thinking I knew of: I wanted a relationship with God, but I had to clean my life up first. I know now that I was only setting the same trap as before.
Nonetheless, I prayed that God would help me overcome the need to use alcohol. He answered and would lead me away in many different ways whenever the desire came.
But the drug use continued and I substituted that for the alcohol.
In October 1983, we moved to Port Arthur, Texas, where I joined the staff of the Port Arthur News as a copy editor. I had decided that a change in scenery might help me get away from drugs.
The problem was, if I was trying to escape the drug scene, it didn’t work. There were staffers there who got high, too.
Still, God found ways to keep speaking to me.
I would occasionally have to borrow the company car and the radio was invariably tuned to a Christian station. I found myself tuning in at lunch time to a Christian talk show. I can still remember the name: “Darren’s Coffee Shop.” As I listened, I found that many of the people calling in sounded much like me.
Then one day, in 1984, I answered a television advertisement on CNN offering a free book called “Power for Living,” published by the Arthur C. DeMoss Foundation. When it arrived I discovered it was a small book of testimonials from Christian celebrities such as Dr. J. Julius Erving, the basketball player, and other personalities. No hard-sell, just a simple presentation of the Gospel.
I wanted what those people had: peace of mind in a crazy world; a realization that God was there and loved me; and the salvation offered in accepting Jesus Christ as Lord.
In 1985, after moving to Knoxville, Donna became pregnant with Elizabeth, an answer to prayers for a little girl. We began to talk of attending church, but were hung up over “which church” we should attend.
We kept passing a church, Middlebrook Pike United Methodist in Knoxville, and decided to start our search by visiting there. We never left.
After a few Sundays in what was called the Seeker’s Class — yes, there was such a thing in the ’80s — I decided the time had come to take the step and ask Christ into my life.
On Easter weekend in 1985, Donna and I took David to my family’s place on Ripshin Lake near Roan Mountain. On Saturday night, I realized the desire to get high was already slowly leaving me. I had some pot, but smoked little. Repentance was taking over — I was finally ready to turn TO God, and AWAY from sin.
On Easter morning, I got up early and drove to the dam, parking my car at the gate. I turned on the radio and, thank God, found someone preaching somewhere. I listened and sometime during the sermon, he offered the sinner’s prayer. By now, it was familiar to me, and I said it with him. There was a peace in my heart, and this time I knew something was happening to my life.
I walked out to the dock, fishing gear in hand, cast my line into the water and simply wondered what was to come.
I had no idea how different my life would be.
I began to view my job as a journalist different, as a calling — a calling that God has yet to release me from, despite my often fervent prayers.
I began to view my marriage differently: To serve my wife as Christ served the Church, through sacrificial love, and to raise my children in a way that would be an opportunity to break the cycle of divorce and substance abuse, and to honor God and share the Gospel.
God opened the door for me to work with youth, sharing the story of His grace in my life … and the blessing to see some of those youth come of age and share Christ with others.
He opened the door for me to serve others through hunger ministries in Knox and Blount counties … and He has opened the door for me to serve on medical mission teams in Guatemala … and to preach the message of grace and salvation in Estonia, a former Soviet Bloc nation.
In his last message before going home to be with the Lord, Keith Green wrote, “This generation of believers that you and me are a part of, we’re responsible for this generation of souls all over the world.”
I believe that, and God has allowed me the privilege of being a part of that. At a time of great change in United Methodist Churches, he allowed me to be a part of establishing new worship services, of creating an environment that attracts those who might not otherwise darken the door of a house of worship, to hear the Word of God and experience His presence.
And then God opened my own ears to hear His voice, to being “called-out,” “set apart” to serve in pastoral ministry.
No, when I cast that line into the water on Ripshin Lake, when I cast my lot with those who are on this great Christian adventure, I had no idea how different my life would be … and how grace would set me free -- set me free!
What I am saying goes far beyond a woeful tale of how I allowed drugs and alcohol to wreck my life and that of my family for 15 years.
I know now that trying to clean myself up before coming to Christ was a mistake. Isaiah 64:6 says: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”
Even now, as I struggle daily with sin, it is only the righteousness of Jesus Christ and his grace that saves me, nothing of my own.
There is an old hymn, “Just As I Am,” and it means just that – we can come to Jesus just as we are, because he’s in the cleaning business.
In the end — or, should I say, 'In the beginning of my new life with Christ,' — God’s Holy Spirit reached down to me with Prevenient Grace through:
My dream life
Circumstances,
Testimonials in a book from, of all places, Ted Turner’s CNN,
Through a faceless voice on the radio on Easter morning,
and, never to be forgotten, through the Body of Christ.
And through the sincere desire of my heart, on that Easter morning, I kept reaching, and reaching, and reaching until I felt …
… the touch
… of the master’s … hand.
