The older I get, the more interesting I find the fact that a relatively small number of brief events are, for many of us, our defining moments. These moments, in many cases, determine the trajectory of our lives, the people we become, the lessons we hold dear, and the cornerstones of how we view the world. There have been a handful of such events in my life—moments when I have gotten a very tangible sense that the physical world in which we live is not the totality of the universe we inhabit. I know that the story I’m about to share will sound insane to many people, but I’ve got to share it anyway.

To bring you quickly up to speed… In 1975 I embarked on a drug and alcohol fueled bender that lasted until 1983. I was running away from one nightmare, but by so doing, I created another. In 1982 I was twenty-five and still in graduate school when I married my long-term girlfriend. The wedding was a mistake that never should have happened. Our marriage started to fail within weeks, and it disintegrated in a fireball over the course of the next year. The fault was every bit as much mine as it was hers, perhaps more so. On top of my marital troubles, my temper and arrogance caused me to leave a doctoral program in the middle of the second worst recession since the Great Depression. So I was unemployed, clueless about my future, and headed for divorce. I was a train wreck of a human being and hopelessly lost. I didn’t know it then, but I was rapidly approaching rock bottom.

There was a great benefit to this catastrophe. It served to make me painfully aware of just how screwed up I was. An uncommonly wise therapist to whom my soon-to-be-ex-wife and I had been going for marriage counseling, and who happened to be a pastor, graciously—but in no uncertain terms—pointed out to me the errors and hypocrisy of my behavior. Over the course of that year, it became evident to me how desperately I needed to change and how much I had to work on. It was overwhelming.

Though vital to my growth, these realizations were deeply agonizing and depressing. I felt tremendous regret for the mistakes I’d made, but I was also grieving the loss of what I thought was my entire future. I was heartbroken at the thought that I would never recover, never find the right girl, and never have a family. I wasn’t just grieving the loss of the one relationship that I thought I might be able to trust (trust didn’t come easily for me); I was grieving what I thought was the loss of all hope, and that was devastating. The months after we split up were the hardest of my life. My despair was total. My fear was in full bloom.

Against this backdrop, about two months after my first wife left, very late on the night of November 9, 1983 (actually, in the early morning of November 10—ironically the exact date and very near the exact time of day when, six years later, I would experience the great high of my daughter being born), I was at my all-time low. I was twenty-six and experiencing the darkest moment of my life. After hours of a one-man pity party—the likes of which I have never come close to replicating—I found myself prostrate on the floor, sobbing, in tears, and begging (really challenging) Jesus, if He really exists and if He really is God, for proof of His existence. I pleaded for help, guidance, and some assurance about my future. I got a response I hadn’t expected.

A male voice spoke to me out of thin air. I still don’t know if the voice was actually audible or if I just heard it in my head, but it was as clear as if someone were speaking to me face-to-face. An “Invisible Man” was in my living room! To this day I’m not 100 percent certain who spoke to me—He never identified Himself. What I do know is this: at the crescendo of my grief, I begged Jesus Christ for help, and I got a response in seconds. If it wasn’t Jesus, it was somebody He sent.

I also know that I was not talking to myself. In fact, I wasn’t talking at all. He was talking, and I was listening. This was not a conversation between peers. This Being carried a force of authority you would not think to disobey. He wasn’t threatening in any way. He was more like a patient but powerful mentor who had just put His hand on my shoulder to calm me down and was now about to lead me through something that He knew I couldn’t possibly understand. He had a weight and gravitas that by His very presence commanded respect.

Presence was an important aspect of this encounter: Someone was there. I could not see Him, but it was as if He were standing behind an invisible curtain speaking to me. I could hear His voice, and I could feel His presence in the room with me. It was unequivocally clear to me that whoever He was, He was superior to me—in fact, He was vastly superior—and I needed to listen to Him. Although He did nothing to provoke this response (other than speak), I felt overwhelmed and overpowered. I’ve had two medical emergencies in my life where I’ve physically gone into shock. This event was a lot like that, but this time my shock was emotional.

His opening words were “Write this down!” The statement was both an order and an assurance of a solution. It was spoken with total confidence, as if an expert were about to tell me, “Here’s how we’re going to fix this mess.” The force and sensitivity of the statement were enough to make me stop crying. I got up, grabbed the first pen and piece of paper I saw, and started to write.

What came next was rapid-fire and cryptic, but very specific. A scan of my original notes appears below.

The message had started coming before I could start writing, and I couldn’t write as fast as the Invisible Man was speaking. Further complicating things was the fact that the first pen I grabbed was old, dry, and nearly out of ink. I had to run around the apartment looking for another pen while trying to take notes on the fly—a word or two to capture one idea and then on to the next point or back to get an earlier one that I had missed before I forgot it. I remember thinking that this felt like taking lecture notes in college. You can probably see in the scan where I changed pens at the start of the second-to-last line.

For those who can’t read my writing and in order to clarify my shorthand, let me explain what I was told. This is from memory, so it may not be precisely verbatim. However, since the message was seared into my mind, what follows is pretty close to an exact quote, and the specific details of the prediction are in the actual sequence in which the message was delivered:

You will casually brush into your next, your “real,” wife in mid-to-late September next year [1984]. The encounter will be very brief and completely inconsequential. It will be nothing more than enough to make the two of you aware of each other. You will not actually meet her and truly get introduced until October 9, a few weeks later. [This date—October 9, 1984—was something He strongly emphasized.] Physically, she will be a bit larger—both taller and more muscular—than your soon-to-be-ex-wife. [He actually used my ex-wife’s full first name, but I recorded it as her nickname; that is the rectangle blacked out in the scan of my notes.] She will have brown hair and brown eyes. She will be right under your nose for months, but you will have no idea that she is the one. She will be aware of you that entire time as well. You’ll be right under her nose, but she won’t make any connection. And she will go by her middle name.

Notice I originally counted only eight items on my notes. Initially, I counted coloring (hair and eyes) as one item and body type (height and musculature) as another. I separated the two pairs later because they were actually four individual traits. With my revised numbering, the message had ten components. There was a qualitative difference in the way the first nine items and the tenth and final item were conveyed. The first nine were communicated very precisely and meticulously. The last seemed to be almost casually included—as if He were throwing it in like an afterthought: “Oh yes, by the way, she will go by her middle name.” I should also mention that I was not instructed to date my notes. After so many years in school, it was just force of habit.

Although the entire encounter was strange, it was the first and last items on my list that really got to me. October 9, 1984 was a very specific date, and the idea that she would go by her middle name seemed so odd. But even aside from those details, the tone of the entire message was puzzling. This really wasn’t a prediction, per se, or a command for me to do something; it was more a statement of fact. It was what I would do. A retelling of what would happen, because as I listened to Him speak, it was as if these events had already happened. It seemed more like a news report than a prediction.

And that was it. There were no good-byes. As fast as the conversation had started, it ended. It just stopped. The Invisible Man was gone. The whole episode probably didn’t last more than a minute. It was the quintessential WTF moment. The experience has haunted me ever since, and I’m sure it will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life. The encounter was bizarre, totally outside of anything I had experienced. There was no way I could ignore it or forget about it. If God was trying to get my attention, He succeeded!

I begged for help, and He actually showed up! How do you deal with that? Had I been drinking, I think I would have assumed it was a hallucination. And I’m sure it would have scared me so badly that I would have sworn off alcohol forever. Unfortunately, I was dead sober, so I couldn’t attribute this experience to one drink too many. At any rate, when the Invisible Man left, I was done crying. I sat there in a dazed state of shock.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to make of what had happened. I was intrigued by the possibility that what I had just experienced was real, but I certainly didn’t trust that this was the case. I mean, really, if Jesus were willing to talk to me, why didn’t He say something coherent? Is it possible that His preferred means of communication is to act like a guy who jumps into a cab, barks cryptic instructions to the driver, then immediately slides across the backseat, and gets out the other door, never to be seen again? This experience made no sense at all, and it genuinely made me fear for my sanity. Still, I hung onto my notes—just in case. And boy, am I glad I did!

I never dreamed I would guard that scrap of paper for the rest of my life. I never imagined how many times I would dig it out and stare at it to reassure myself that this event really happened. I never dreamed how often that note would give me hope or the courage to keep going. I also never dreamed I would share it one day.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had just lived through the most important minute of my life. I also didn’t realize that everything would be different after that.

In those first few minutes, I only grasped three things: First, there were the words of the message itself, which is what I focused on. Second, should the message prove true, I would have to confront the question, “How could this happen?” It was either a completely improbable, random fluke, or somebody was behind it. Third, whether the message proved true or false, there were implications either way.

If the message were false, I had experienced some form of psychotic event. Best case, this was simply an elaborate auditory hallucination. Worst case, I was exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia. I was not only hearing voices, I was following their instructions. Not a comforting realization!

If, on the other hand, the message were true, I needed to consider the message behind the message—which was profound. I was vaguely aware of this fact immediately, but I didn’t spend any time thinking about it. Truthfully, I tried to put it out of my mind.

The next morning I had to talk to somebody, so I confided in my mother and stepfather. I told them everything about what had happened. They didn’t know what to think either, but neither suggested that I had gone over the deep end. My mother even circled October 9, 1984, on her calendar.

Later that day, I also called my best friend. He responded with all the reassurance and understanding that I‘d come to expect from my college roommate and a guy I’d known since we were ten years old: “Yep, that settles it! You’re crazy as hell!” Actually, that was just his initial response. We talked awhile longer, and he had a chance to absorb and reflect on the story I was telling him. He then came back with an interesting observation that could only have been made by someone who knew me as well as he did. He said, “You know, I don’t think you were hallucinating.” He paused for a moment, and then, with a laugh building in his voice, he added, “Because I’ve seen you when you were so stoned that you were hallucinating, and that’s not how you hallucinate.”

He made an interesting point, but the idea that some of the most debauched moments of my life could be used to authenticate the most sublime was ironic to say the least. It was also tragic. We both laughed at the absurdity of the logic, but even at twenty-six we knew our nervous laughter was covering a great deal of remorse. We ended the conversation agreeing that all I could do was to wait and see what happened. We hung up, and then life—as it always does—moved on.