You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over. Psalms 23:5
Prior to November 1982, I was trying to make my way in a world that was simply too big for me. Having been raised in an ancient denomination, I still held to the Christian version of the truth but was really just a lonely, ill-equipped, and thoroughly lost lamb desperately trying to be a lion. Fortunately, through my wife’s relentless witnessing and prayer, I finally sought God one night, all alone, kneeling on a wooden pallet in the basement of an upstate New York print shop. I was a twenty six year old working man; a husband, father, and had been raised as one of seven siblings with loving parents—in other words I was always surrounded by lots of people. But I was completely alone inside myself, trapped with my own distorted version of self and reality.

My prayer that night was simple—it was something like this: “God… Jesus… will you please baptize me in the Holy Spirit and give me the gift of tongues?” I prayed this way because as a sideline spectator of the charismatic movement for several years prior, I had heard my wife and others pray in tongues and felt it was a sign of God’s acceptance. What happened in that next instant is the single most defining event in my life. Well, that is not exactly true. The first time, as soon as the words of my simple prayer were out of my mouth I began to feel a tingling sensation on top of my head. Instinctively, out of fear I jumped up in knee-jerk reaction and bolted to the other side of the room. Nothing had ever happened before when I prayed!

Within a minute or two I went back to try it again, this time determined to see it through. Same pallet, same position, same prayer and right away—BOOM—a warm, wonderful, tingling presence like invisible liquid ecstasy, poured over my head and swept down my body animating every cell and filling my heart with God’s acceptance, belonging, and love. ‘You anoint my head with oil.’ At the same time from down in my diaphragm, I began to feel a physical sensation pushing up and I knew it must be the spiritual tongues. I just spontaneously yielded myself as this building energy erupted out of my mouth and I began to pray in a language I did not know. I jumped around in childlike joy as wave after wave of sheer ecstasy swept over me and the new God language gushed uncontrollably like a Bronx fire hydrant on a summer’s day. ‘My cup runs over.’