Shortly after waking up on Sunday morning I experienced a very sharp stabbing pain in my left shoulder. It happened while putting on my shirt, right at the point where my arm was almost parallel to my shoulder. The pain was significant enough to make me wince hard, and I couldn't begin to understand what had caused it. My shoulder hadn't been giving me any trouble whatsoever, and in the past I've usually had some kind of a warning sign before getting a pain that severe.
During football season I have a Sunday ritual. I grab my laptop, some snacks and park myself in front of the TV for the day. If it isn't an intensely close game I'll work on one of my writing projects between the plays. My snacks were on the end table to the left side of my chair, and every time I reached over to get a tasty morsel I'd get another shot of pain. If the pain was supposed to curb my snacking … it didn't work, and by the end the day the pain had become extremely intense.
My wife told me to take an Advil or Tylenol, but I'm not big on pharmaceuticals. If I can't get what I need from nature, I usually abstain. I do use a nature product that is a topical analgesic spray called "Stopain," and relief is usually moments away when I use it. But because the pain in my shoulder wasn't like anything I had ever experienced before, the Stopain never entered my mind.
My wife and I went to bed around 9:15 PM, and after my nightly prayers I rolled onto my right side to go to sleep. A few moments later I felt Elaine snuggle up against my back as she reached around with her left arm to give me a goodnight hug. Shortly after that I felt Rudy settle on my left leg, and it wasn't very long before I fell asleep.
Movement on my left leg, plus a sensation on my left shoulder woke me up. When I opened my eyes the clock radio LCD was beaming 9:40 PM. I could feel my left shoulder being massaged, and the first thing that came to mind was that Elaine must really be concerned about me. Then as I transitioned to fully awake I realized her left arm still draped over my chest, and her right arm was wedged between the mattress and me.
The second I came to that realization I began to concentrate on my left shoulder. I could feel warmth and an intense energy force on top of it. But the warmth wasn't like what you feel when you're under a blanket. It was radiated warmth, like the heat one feels coming from the sun. But it wasn't hot, just warm.
I have thought long and hard about the best way to describe what the energy force felt like. Think for a few moments about thousands of tiny pins compacted together that are lightly vibrating out of sync with each other on your shoulder, and then add some radiating warmth. That's about what it felt like to me.
I don't know how far the energy field extended back toward my neck, but I could feel a very defined line about an inch wide that went across my shoulder from front to back, and it was moving very slowly away from my neck. It stopped about two inches from the outer edge of my rotor cup, and then kind of hovered in one place for two or three seconds before the sensation completely disappeared. In addition to all of that I remember being totally at peace, and the last thing that I recall before falling back to sleep was Rudy's movement on my left leg. The next thing I knew it was 4:05 AM, and Rudy was gone.
Elaine woke up as I was getting dressed, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to share my experience. While putting on my shirt I discovered that my shoulder didn't hurt anymore. I couldn't believe it! I put it through some vigorous gyrations to give it a good test. The pain was gone! But my wife got a little concerned that I'd hurt it again and asked me to leave well enough alone.
Monday through Thursday each week I workout on a Total Gym, and it requires lots of arm and shoulder movement. I have to say that I had a few trepidations when I started out, mostly because the severe pain that I had the day before was still fresh in my mind. But I went through my entire regimen, which was quite strenuous, without a twinge. As mysteriously as the pain had appeared, it was gone. There wasn't one tiny bit of residual evidence that it had ever been there!
At this point I think it's important to share some other information that I feel is very relevant. God has blessed me with many spiritual experiences throughout my life, and they have increased significantly over the past two years. When I say my prayers each night I thank Him for blessing me with those experiences, and I ask that they continue. I tell Him that I am ready to learn more, and that I will continue to record and share my experiences.
Through my research I have discovered that I am far from being alone when it comes to spiritual experiences. There are many who have had the same or similar encounters, and like me, the frequency of them seems to be on the rise. I am convinced that this experience has a deeper meaning than I have been able to comprehend. I also feel that in some way it ties to many of the other spiritual encounters that I've had since April of 2003, and when the time is right, God will reveal the answer.
One thought keeps coming back to me since I began writing this article. My encounter at 9:40 PM on December 5, 2004 brought home the fact that through your faith in God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit, all things are possible.
I previously mentioned that many individuals are having similar spiritual encounters. I encourage those people to write about them, if for no other reason than to share them with their family and friends. But I would also encourage them to email their story to me. Don't worry about writing skills. We'll work together to polish the story before posting it on the Rod C. Davis.com Experiencers Page. For reasons unknown to me, I am positive that sharing is very important, and perhaps … expected.
