Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [119]
I dropped to my knees and for the first time in my life truly humbled myself before the Lord. I asked Him to forgive me for not having kept the promises I’d made during the war, and for my sinful life. I made no excuses. I did not rationalize, I did not blame. He had said, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” so I took Him at His word, begged for His pardon, and asked Jesus to come into my life.
I waited. And then, true to His promise, He came into my heart and my life. The moment was more than remarkable; it was the most realistic experience I’d ever had. I’m not sure what I expected; perhaps my life or my sins or a great white light would flash before my eyes; perhaps I’d feel a shock like being hit by a bolt of lightning. Instead, I felt no tremendous sensation, just a weightlessness and an enveloping calm that let me know that Christ had come into my heart.
WHEN I FINALLY opened my eyes and looked up, my counselor said, “Do you know you’re saved?”
“I know it,” I said.
“How do you know it?”
“You said that ‘whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ I called upon his name, and I’m saved.”
“Do you really believe it?” he asked.
“I don’t have to believe it,” I said. “I know it.”
He held up a pencil and said, “Now that you’re a Christian, that’s you. If you try to stand alone, you’re going to fall. The Lord says, ‘Cast all your cares upon me’—in other words, lean your entire weight on me—‘and I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.’ Always remember, that pencil is you, and once you get away from the Lord, you’re going to fall.”
I prayed for another fifteen or twenty minutes, and the counselor walked me back out front. “I’ll be praying for you,” he said.
“Thank you so much,” I said.
I found Cynthia waiting in the audience, and she threw her arms around me. I looked at her and knew in my heart, as if it had always been so, that I was through drinking, through smoking, through with everything. My lifelong desire for revenge had disappeared, including my need to get even with the Japanese and the Bird. I didn’t know what the future held—would I be rich, poor, whatever?—but that didn’t matter. “I’m through with my past life,” I told Cynthia. “I’m through.”
She smiled, lit with the light of the miracle she knew had occurred.
THE BIBLE SPEAKS of the Word of God as a seed. Sometimes it’s planted by the wayside, and nothing grows there. Sometimes it’s sown among the thorns and represents the person who makes the decision and then goes back to his old life of bars and chasing women or whatever. A third seed is sown among the rocks. There’s sand and dirt between the rocks, and when it rains you’ll see a stalk of green coming up. But on the first day with sunshine it wilts because there is no room for roots.
The fourth seed is planted on fertile soil, and finally it takes hold and has a chance to grow and live. That’s what happened to me.
I had a lot of liquor at home. My father-in-law was an importer, and once he’d accepted my marriage to Cynthia he’d given me a three-hundred-year-old bottle of cognac. A collector’s item. Also Clicquot champagne. Pommery wine. I poured it all down the drain—except the cognac, which I returned. (I still had my senses!) I threw my cigarettes in the trash. Cynthia and I talked and prayed. When she saw me emptying the bottles into the sink, she was on cloud nine. She knew I’d undergone a real conversion.
“Now I’m not going to get a divorce,” she said.
THE NEXT MORNING I woke up and realized I hadn’t had a nightmare about the Bird. And to this day I’ve never had another. It was as if a doctor had cut out that hating part of my brain. I remember the facts, but the violent emotions are gone. I never even had