Emphasis Preaching Journal

As a young child I was extremely afraid of the dark. In my head, being in the darkness was the same as dying. One night, I was having a bath before going to bed when the lights went out. I screamed in terror, and sobbed over and over again, "I don't want to die. I don't want to die." It felt like forever before my mother helped me out of the tub and wrapped me in a towel. She held me tightly in her arms and then we talked about death. I remember saying, "It will be dark when I die and no one will know me." It was then that she told me that I had had a brother who had died.