My Testimony - 1998
My story is a little long and involved but now I wouldn't trade it for the world. I have never really put down my entire testimony in a document so perhaps now is a good time to do it. Let's see, I was born and raised a Catholic. Growing up in the 40's and 50's as a Catholic was quite an experience. I never went to a Catholic school but our family did attend church there and so I received instructions in the faith, had my first communion and confirmation as a Catholic. In those days God was presented as someone to be feared who was ready to zap you for your sins, especially the big ones. So it was no surprise as I became older I gave up on it entirely. All that aside even as a youngster I had a deep desire to know and love God. It just took a long time to find the right channel of expression.
For many years in my adult life I tried to live as a practicing Catholic however the there was one problem that interfered with that. I was also living as a practicing alcoholic. For the first ten years of our marriage I drank and things gradually became worse. Our marriage was failing, I had given up on God and blamed Him for a lot of problems in my life that were really my own fault. We finally quit going to church all together. Short ly after our son was born I was out drinking with my father and received a DUI on the way home. That was the turning point at least for my drinking. God won't show up for several more years yet. As a result of my DUI I entered a rehab program and went to AA meetings. Gradually things got much better and I quite drinking completely. Our marriage got back to normal, however there was one big thing missing. GOD !! I had fought the spiritual aspect of the AA program for years. Then something very special happened to me that changed me forever. By all the information that is available today, I had an angelic visitation. My mother had passed away early in my life when I was 17, and my father had died in 1984 of a heart attack in his sleep about five years prior to this angelic encounter. There is no doubt in my mind that dad, mom, or someone had come back one final time to insure I would be sent down a better path. They came to show me what they couldn't while they were here. That true joy and happiness comes when you align your life to God's loving plan for it. Much of this story is contained in a letter I had written to Joan Wester Anderson a couple of years ago while inviting her to our church for a talk and book signing event. Joan Wester Anderson is a noted author of several best selling books about miracles and angelic encounters that people have had, as well as a consultant for the new TV Series called It's A Miracle. I bought one of her books for my wife for Christmas a couple of years ago and when I saw that she lived close to us (60 miles away) I wondered what the possibilities were of having her come to our church for a talk on angels. To my surprise she accepted. We had to cancel the first event due to her illness. But now she is well and will be giving that talk this October 18th if there are any of you in the Chicago area you are welcome to attend.
So rather than re-write all this again, I am going to insert the rest of my story that was contained in that letter. I hope it is not too long and will bring you great hope that prayers ARE answered. My wife prayed for 10 years for me to stop drinking and to find God. Now that it has happened, I regret missing so much joy in the years I could have had this fantastic joy all along. It is ironic, I use to make fun of my wife when she would go to church. I was jealous of the happiness she had found. Now days, I am the " religious nut" of the family! So here is the rest of my story.
I know for sure I have had one angelic visit ation and quite possibly two others. The second two happened so fast it is hard to tell if Heavenly Hosts were involved or if it was just natural instinct. Let me begin with the first which is rather lengthy and stretches over a period of six years. On Christmas Eve December 24th 1984 at 2:30 in the morning my father passed away in his sleep of a heart attack. He had never been sick a day in his life so it was a real shock to the entire family. He was exactly 71 years old as Christmas Eve was also his birthday. Needles to say it was a very sad Christmas for us all. But for me it put an end to the hope I had in my heart that my father and I would one day soon reconcile our souls over my poorly managed and somewhat turbulent childhood. At the time of his death I was just arriving at a state of well being after recovering from alcoholism and was ready to sit down with Dad and have a long talk over past issues. But I never got the chance to do that or hear him say he was sorry for things that may have contributed to my own problem. My father was an alcoholic himself and there were many nights I spent as a child listening to drunken arguments between my parents while lying in bed crying. I tell you this information because I think it is important in assessing what type of angelic visit I later had. Sometimes angels come to set us at peace and guide us to better paths. Here it is interesting to note that on the morning I arrived at his house as a final farewell before the paramedics took him away some thing very strange happened. I was sitting in his bedroom alone stunned by what had just happened. I was staring out the window into the backyard of his house when my ears started to notice a very loud clamor of many birds chirping at once. Unlike the previous December this one had been warm until right at Christmas when it chilled down and we got some snow. However living in this area, by late December most birds are where they are going and the trees are pretty quiet. The loud chirping continued for a long time. I hadn't paid much attention to that detail till just now as I am going over the entire story from start to finish. Thinking back the birds could have been a signal that all was well with Dad and not to worry.
After a period of grieving life returned to normal. Dad was in my thoughts occasionally but I seemed to put the past behind me and moved on with my life. About five years later in the summer of 1989 my sister gave me a call for help. She herself had been influenced by our childhood and was an alcoholic and now very down and out on her luck. She asked if she could come and stay with us and perhaps I could share my success in overcoming my drinking problem. I jumped at the chance. I saw it as the prodigal child coming home and I was going to have a key role in getting our family relationships back together. But it was not to be however. She spent the whole summer with us as we tore out hearts out trying to help her without success. We parted ways in October in less than friendly terms. Feeling very stressed out one night after she left I drove over to my old neighborhood and walked around wondering why my sister had so many problems. It was the first time I had been by my old childhood home in years. I live in the same town I grew up in. The house at that time was occupied and didn't seem to stir any emotions in me except for a feeling that there was something in my life unfinished, and my sister's situation seemed hopeless.
My angel story really doesn\rquote t take on full speed until the following summer in 1990. Because my sister had caused me to cancel our family vacation the year before we decided to take an extended one in the summer of 1990. We drove completely around Lake Michigan. We spent some time on the lower side, a day at Macnack Island, and then finished with a week at a fishing cottage near Crystal Falls, Michigan on the Upper Peninsula. As a child we would always spend two weeks at my uncles resort on a lake near Crystal Falls so being in that area started my head buzzing with memories of the past again. Here is where things start to get spiritual. The day we returned from the trip was when my connection to the spirit world began. After returning a movie we had rented I drove past my old childhood home. I f ound it to be complete deserted so I drove into the alley and parked the car behind the house. Recalling the days my father would pack the car for our summer vacations I just sat in the car looking at the rear of the house. I must have been there for at least a half hour. I seemed to drift very deeply into the past and felt very taken up with thoughts of my childhood. After a long period of sitting there remembering, I drove home. My wife and my son were still at her class reunion picnic. Alone in the house I sat down at the kitchen table and cried like I have never cried before in my life. It is very difficult to describe the exact feeling but there seemed to be such a deep pull or tug on my soul. I felt very connected to my deceased parents and to the time period that we had lived in the Monroe Street house. It wasn't a sad or regretful cry and beyond a doubt there was something very spiritual going on.
Over the next few months I started to experience a strange spiritual draw to my childhood home. It looked like the owner had vacated the home to renovate it and then sell it. He would work on it on the weekends mostly and the rest of the time the house would just sit there totally deserted. Every so often I would drive by and each time I did the spiritual draw and feelings would get stronger and stronger. I was beginning to wonder if the old joint was haunted. The owner had stripped off the old brown siding and at night it would look very spooky sitting there with the old white frame exposed, no lights or curtains in the open windows with the neighbors leaving there lights on to keep trouble away. Something kept beckoning me to dig deeper into this strange draw to the house. So one chilly November afternoon in 1990 I took a day off from work and decided to see just what the heck was pulling me to this house of the past. Risking being turned in as a peeping Tom I spent an afternoon walking every inch of the property comparing it to my memories and some pictures I had of the place during the tim e we lived there. I sat on the porch for awhile and looked into the empty living room recalling both good and bad memories. It was when I was in the backyard looking in the kitchen window that IT HAPPENED . An overwhelming feeling came over me of awe and wonder. I was still a bit confused, but I knew at that moment what I had been seeking all along was peace with God. The strange thing about the visit was how quiet the entire neighborhood was. It was in the middle of the week so most of the neighbors were still at work. It was as if everything around me had stopped to allow me the freedom to move back and forth in time totally undisturbed. When I heard neighborhood children coming home from school I knew it was time to leave. I picked up a piece of th e old brown siding that lay on the ground as a keepsake and put to rest all those haunting memories of my childhood. I thought the matter was finished but it would have one more chapter to play out yet almost two more years down the road.
Here it is important to note my spiritual status before the November visit. My wife and myself had been Catholics. Around the time our son was born in 1981 we became rather disenchanted with the Catholic Religion and simply quit going to church. It didn't seem to be doing much for us and at times we would even get into fights over issues that were hang ups for me from childhood. As our son got older I started to get the guilt's that his spirituality would suffer because of my lack of faith. So we started an on/off search for a church that would meet our needs. This began somewhere around the time my sister came to stay with us and went on for almost two years. I might add that the search was rather unsuccessful because I was still spiritually dead and mad at God for conditions in my life that were less than perfect. However shortly after the November angel experience my heart experienced a change. I became more cooperative when my wife would make a suggestion to try a new church. One day shortly after the November visit just on the chance recommendation of a friend we attended services at the Immanuel United Church of Christ in Highland, Indiana. Things have never been the same since. It only took one service and we knew we had found a home. The music was just right, the pastor made sense, and the people were warm and friendly.
Over the next year we started to get active in our church. I would drive by the Monroe Street house to witness the renovation going on and smile. There seemed to be a multiple metamorphosis going on. As my old childhood house was changing on the outside I was changing on the inside. I think they call it " born again" ! Perhaps not as dramatically as on TV but the principle was the same. Slowly over a three year period I became a totally different person inside. I assessed the Monroe Street angel experience to be a clearing of some kind so that those in the story, both living and dead, could be free to move on. And move on they did. Shortly after the November visit we found our church, my sister found a good job at the Statue of Liberty and has at least stabilized to hold it for six years. And as for my mom and dad, well they could be on the other side of the universe by now!
The Monroe Street incident might be passed off as j ust a chance meeting with past memories except for three factors. First, why my old house out of all the house in Hammond would there be such an opportunity to visit property in the process of renovation and not run into a problem? Secondly, after the experience my life took a drastic swing spiritually. And lastly there was a the dream my wife and I had which still gives me goose bumps when I think about it. During the period the Monroe Street house was completely empty my wife and I had the same dream on the same night ! Now I ask you how often does that happen? Nancy woke up one morning and started to tell me about a dream she had about my sister. She was in an empty house. I stopped her in mid sentence. I finished the description of the dream with that of mine. My sister Carol was in the empty basement of the Monroe Street house standing by the wash tubs very sadly looking at me toward the east wall of the basement. We concurred , we both had the same dream. There was no way my wife would have known about the house at this point. I hadn' t told her yet about what was going on with me. I filled her in a little that morning but she never got the whole story until many months later when I wrote a journal entry on the experience.
Over the next two years Nancy and I became even more involved with church activities at Immanuel. We have even developed a great friendship with both pastors and their families. I was beginning to develop a very loving and personal relationship with God. Things were beginning to really come alive for me and I felt the Monroe Street business was finished, there was no longer any draw to the house and the drive bys had ceased all together. It seemed as if it had run its course and all was well. Then one night after getting gas for the car I thought I would spin by the joint and see what it looked like after the owner had fixed it up and sold it. As I drove by my heart jumped into my mouth! There was a lighted sign out front that said, " Basement Sale Tonight 7-9 PM." I was finally going to get a chance to get inside that house and put this crazy thing to rest. I walked around to the back door and knocked. From the basement came a female voice that said, " Come in." I was trembling as I descended the stairs, I hadn't been in this house in over 35 years. I walked around the basement looking at the items for sale rushing 15 years of memories through my head. As I walked up to the lady near the stairs to purchase the items I had selected, I wondered if I should tell her why I was really there? Would I sound like some kind of a nut? Something told me to press on, this isn' t finished yet. So I asked her how long she lived there. She said, " A little over a year now." "That would be about right," I said, " You see I have had a rather vested interest in this house over the past few years." I then proceeded to tell her of the strange spiritual draw I had to the house during the period it was being remodeled. She listened intently. When I was finished she understood what was going on and remarked that it must have been some kind of spiritual cross over and reconciliation with the past. I told her I had written a story about the event and had some pictures of the place from back in the 40's. She told me to bring them by some time and we would talk.
Another year went by before I found the time to stop by. One Saturday morning I dropped by with some of the old family pictures and my story. We had quite a visit that day. While walking through the house I noticed a picture of Jesus over her bed. She is a single woman in her 50's and a practicing Christian. In a way she completes a full circle. She has put my soul to rest and has brought Christian peace to a place that once knew a lot of drunken violence. I walked out of there that morning totally free of a past that has haunted me on and off all my life.
The Monroe Street angel experience has had a profound effect on my life. We are so involved at our church that it is more like family now than just a church. I have just been elected as the president of the church council and I guess you could sum up my spiritual condition as being head over heels in love with the Lord! If someone would have told me ten years ago that I would be chasing down Twila Paris Christian concerts all the way to Milwaukee (her music makes my heart explode!), forming handbell choirs that traverse the entire county, and attending a nation wide church conference with speakers and worship leaders from all over the world I would have told them they were absolutely NUTS! But as you well know when the Holy Spirit gets a hold of you big changes can happen. All of these changes were leading in one direction. To prepare me for a very difficult time I would have in my life after I had become spiritually awakened. This many of your have already read about in my " tunnel" story mini-series.
The angelic encounter was in 1990. It is now almost 1999. It has been nine wonderful years of growing in the Lord\rquote s grace and in His Word. My desire to love and serve the Lord is as strong now, as it was the first day we stepped into Immanuel. There are times when I feel so happy and loved by God, it feels as if my heart is going to explode. I feel really blessed that I was chosen buy God to respond to His calling. I see so many of my family out there just wondering around with no real direction. I have tried to share this fantastic joy and promise with them, but so far no success in getting them to see it. When you have a moment please pray for my very lost sister Carol and my cousin Mary. I would so much like to share this with them as a family again. Well, you know me troops, I could go on and on, but I will wrap this up. Perhaps I will develop a sequel to it and site some of the experiences in those nine years so far. Call it Testimony 2, or better yet, Son of Testimony! What da ya think?! I look forward to hearing all of your experiences. God bless and keep you all in His tender care.
George D. Kelly k9wwt@aol.com
Webmaster~ George D. Kelly... April 11, 1999