This isn't personally about me, but a friend.
A friend of mine. We'll call him Philip.
Philip was an unbeliever most of his life, he drank, he gambled and he lied and cursed and was mostly unpleasant. He had no faith to speak of, nor no manners to carry him. The only spirits he believed in belonged in a bottle. He was a good man, but ultimaely a lost soul.
One night, however, he slipped in the bath and cracked the back of his head on the taps and slipped into the warm water, unconscious. His nose slipping beneath the bubbles. The last thing he saw was water rushing in at him at eye level.
Then darkness.
He didn't know how long he'd been in the bath, but upon awakening he said the water was cold.
A slim shaft of sunlight peeked at him through the bathroom window. And he slowly climbed out of the bath and collapsed to the floor shaking and in tears, crying, naked and vulnerable like a baby.
He was reborn again!
Philip crawled to his feet and recovered his dignity, clothing himself in a clean shirt and pants.
He then went straight to church and confessed his sins. Changing him forever.
Soon after, he started seeing what he described as 'auras' and 'ghosts' out of the corner of his eye and sometimes claimed to hear whispering, he thinks it's perhaps Angels trying to communicate with him. But at the end of the day, Philip doesn't drink or gamble anymore and hasn't said a single curse word in a long time. He is a much more pleasant person to be around since his accident.
In some ways I like to think of Philip's accident as some kind of accidental baptism, a near-drowning, but a positive one. One that turned him from a loud-mouth into a more humble human being.
