It seemed like I was in slow motion for days. The explosion, the bullets, everything flashed before me in my mind every time I became conscious. I observed constant activity around me. I didn’t know if it was day or night. I was at the 95th Field Evacuation Hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam.

It seemed like a dream when I opened my eyes and saw Staff Sgt. Mike Smith standing by my bed. He leaned over me with tears streaming down his face and kept saying, “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.” I was confused. Mike had been my mentor as a new Criminal Investigation Division (CID) investigator in the Marine Corps. He trained me before being transferred. Then he was gone.

I woke up one day and the entire ward appeared to be filled with a fog. An Army Nurse was standing by my bed, holding my hand and looking down at me with the saddest expression on her face. I kept asking why the room was filled with a cloud, but she didn’t answer. I kept raising my voice, but still, she did not respond. Then I realized I was above her looking down. I rarely share that story, but later I realized how closely I was clinging to life.

My brother Ron came on the sixth day after I was wounded. I remember hearing the doctor tell him I was going to die. Then a 22-year-old Marine begged a God he didn’t know to spare his life. For some reason, unknown to me at the time, God heard that prayer. Years would pass before I recalled it in the most desperate point of my life. Vietnam was my constant companion for over four years, until I hit rock bottom.

I had a “vision,” or what seemed to be a vision. I was looking down again at a bloody and bleeding Marine crying out for God to spare him. Then I was back in the room filled with people, shaken to my soul. Even with that event, it took me another six months to finally surrender my entire being to the One who heard my desperate prayer years earlier.

In 1996, we were visiting my brother at Camp Pendelton California. One evening Ron asked me, “Who was the CID investigator who trained you?” When I told him Mike Smith, he said, “There’s a Major Mike Smith on base who is the Base Provost Marshal.” The next day, I went to that office. He was out at the time, but after waiting a short while, he came in the door.

I stood and faced him and asked if this was where I could enlist. Mike nearly went white, and he’s African-American. We had quite a reunion in that office. Later, he took me to lunch at the Officer’s Club. I asked if it was real or if I was dreaming that he was by my hospital bed in Vietnam.

He said, “Rog, when I got there, they had rolled you out of surgery on a gurney and left you in the hallway with a body bag draped over the end of the gurney. They did not expect you to live, and I didn’t want to watch you die!” Then everything made sense. The cloud, the nurse, my looking down from above the room, the “vision” years later. There was no doubt that, for reasons beyond my understanding, God spared my life.

The good news is, you don’t have to be on your deathbed to receive the free gift of God, salvation through Jesus Christ. He didn’t spare my life because I was good, but because He is good! Don’t wait until you’re desperate; invite Him into your life today.

“For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.” —I Corinthians 13:12

Semper Fidelis