In a dark time, this writer is called to return to church — and gets a spiritual visit that changes the course of his life
by Jim Dodson | illustration by Gerry O’Neill

I celebrate April’s return every year because it’s the month in which a divine awakening changed my life. The year was 1980. I was the senior writer of Atlanta Weekly, the Sunday magazine of the Journal-Constitution. Over the previous three years, I’d covered everything from presidential politics to murders. 

One minute I was interviewing a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama, the next riding along with the Repo King of Atlanta through the city’s most dangerous federal housing project, a shotgun on the seat of his truck. 

Looking back, though I didn’t realize it then, I was in search of an answer to a question that had no answer. 

Three years before I snagged that job, Kristin, my girlfriend back home in North Carolina, had been killed in a botched holdup at the Hickory steakhouse where she worked as the weekend hostess. It had been a beautiful October day the last time Kristin and I spoke.

The low point of my Atlanta odyssey came on a hot July night in 1979. I was working on a cover story about Bob Stivers, the city’s famous medical examiner. The week before that Saturday night, I’d watched half a dozen autopsies at his elbow, equally mesmerized and horrified. When Stivers invited me to ride along with the squad that picked up murder victims, I jumped at the chance. I was told to sit tight until Stivers was dispatched to his first crime scene.

By that point, I’d gotten engaged to a woman who was the nighttime weekend anchor at the local television station. We shared an old, brick house near the east-side entrance to Piedmont Park. Our weekend routine was to have a glass of wine and watch Saturday Night Live when she got home from the studio, usually just before midnight.

On that fateful night, as I was waiting for the call from Stivers’ crew, I stood in the darkness of our backyard, waiting for my dog, Magee, to do her business. I saw a car pull up beside our neighbor’s house. We were friendly with the Emory University medical school students who lived there.

As I watched, a man emerged from the backseat of the car and calmly walked to our neighbor’s back door and knocked. A med student still in scrubs opened the door. There was a brief exchange of words, followed by two gunshots. Our neighbor collapsed on the ground and the assailant sped away.

By the time I reached his side, a young woman from the house was screaming hysterically. I asked her to fetch me a couple towels and call 911. 

At that moment, my fiancée arrived home. She took charge and phoned the police as I cradled the wounded man in my lap, attempting to keep him conscious. He died 15 minutes before police arrived. I chose not to follow the victim’s body down to the city morgue. The next morning, as I was walking Magee, I heard a chapel bell in the distance softly chiming “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” one of my favorite hymns since childhood. Tears filled my eyes.

I fetched a cup of coffee, sat on our front steps, taking stock of my life. I suddenly realized what was missing. I hadn’t been to church in five years.

I got dressed and went to services at the historic All Saints’ Episcopal Church downtown, a parish famous for feeding the homeless and never locking its front doors. The rector, a wonderful man named Harry Pritchett, gave a powerful sermon about how God finds us in the darkness when we least expect it.

It felt like he — or maybe God himself — was speaking directly to me.

I began attending All Saints’ regularly. I also made a decision to write stories that enriched life rather than reveal its dark side. I never wrote another crime story again. I even set my mind on attending seminary, until a wise old bishop from Alabama named Bill Stough, the editor of the Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, convinced me to follow a “ministry closer to your heart,” as he put it: “You can serve the Lord better by writing about life than becoming a priest.”

A few months later, while working on a story about youth baseball tryouts, I ventured over to a run-down ball field in my neighborhood, where a league director convinced me to take on the coachless Orioles team. They were a wild bunch, but I made a deal with the players: If they played hard, I would buy them all milkshakes after winning games.

They took the offer to heart. We won the Midtown League Championship in a romp that season. It only cost me 200–300 milkshakes.

Crazy as it sounds, almost a year to the day after joining the Orioles, I woke on an April night to find Kristin standing beside my bed. She looked radiant. I thought I must be dreaming, but she was so lifelike, especially when she smiled and spoke. “Pook,” she said, using her pet name for me, “it’s time for you to leave here and go north. That’s where you’ll find what you are looking for.” 

Days later, I resigned from the magazine and headed for Vermont. 

God, Kristin and my baseball team found me in the darkness when I least expected it. It’s been a wonderful life ever since. 

This article originally appeared in the April 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.