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Christian Testimony
My name is Tom Kraly, I am 40 years old, married and the father of three children. My wife and I have been married for 20 years, her name is Florence and she was born and raised in France. My three daughters are Christina 22, Michele 19 and Jewel 15 all of which have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior and followed the example of Jesus by being baptized with water. My father and mother were divorced before I was one year old and I did not meet my father until I was 16 years old. I was the one who initiated the meeting and I found out that he had a great deal of health problems mostly as a result of drugs and alcohol abuse. He is a good man and I was told he always loved me, but having never built a bond with him as a child, there never was a real connection as an adult. I had a lot of health problems as a child including; scarlet fever, severe asthma, hyperactivity, and problems with my hearing. All of which I have been healed from and have not had return as an adult. I spent a great deal of time living with my grandmother and uncles who still lived at home. This was a very critical time of my life and I grew up very fast. I did not have a brother until I was 12 years old, so my uncles were very much like older brothers. I learned a lot from them, some good; a lot was not so good. Before I was 9 years old, I had already smoked cigarettes, tried marijuana and drank alcohol. There were a lot of drugs around and I learned a great deal about them while still very young. None of my family introduced me to any of that, I just got into what was available. They have grown to be good responsible family men, and I look up to them for that. My grandmother and grandfather took me to church with them
I have always been pulled in two directions through my entire life. Everyone is to an extent, but for me it has been extreme. When I accepted Christ at 7, I truly surrendered my heart to Him and understood completely what I was doing. I started to read the bible and pray at that time. My relationship with Christ was back and forth, but while I was in fellowship with Him, I was all in. When I was 17 years old, I rededicated myself to the Lord and became very active in church, bible study and regular prayer. I was part of the church bus ministry, youth group, nursing home ministry and went on my first mission’s trip to Monterey Mexico. I went to Bible College when I was 18, but found out that it was very strict and I could not fit in. It is no excuse, but this pushed me away from God and I only spent one semester there. When I returned home, I was already beginning to backslide and had gone back to alcohol and cigarettes.
I met my wife when I was 19, and we got married a year and a half later, making me the father of my 1 year old step daughter. We ended up getting an apartment, and I drank every night, but still worked and was functional. The problem is that at that time, I had a very distant relationship with Jesus, and I was not praying regularly, reading the bible or going to church. I slipped right back to where I was when I was a teenager. My wife was Catholic at the time, and I was Baptist, but neither of us were living Christian lives.
I got injured when I was working as a painter, and things continued to get worse as I turned to the drugs rather than God. I had legitimate pain that required narcotic pain medication to be treated. I had a back surgery in 1995 that was not successful, so the pain medication continued to increase more and more in dosage. In 1998 when I had and accident with my work vehicle, my neck was snapped back and aggravated the condition I have called Arnold Chiari Malformation. The combination of back pain and head pain had me taking stronger narcotics and continued high dosages. It became a problem after a few years, when they could no longer prescribe the amount of medication that my body needed. This led to me running out of pills each prescription, and ending up sick and many times in a detox facility. It was in one of the detox facilities that a met a person who introduced me to heroin. It was a way I could treat my pain and not need to worry about the doctors. I tried it and was hooked, and had left my family for periods of time to live as a daily heroin addict. I used so many different drugs in mass amounts that I was no longer the person that I used to be, and my relationship with the Lord was very distant. It wasn't until 4 OD’s, jail, detox, stealing and other things that might be incriminating that it was over. It was in June of 2003 when I was sent away for my 13th drug treatment and I finally turned my life back to Jesus. I had a moment of clarity where I know the Lord was speaking to me, and I felt like if I trusted Him, I could get well. Prior to that I felt hopeless and like I had gone too far to be redeemed. I began the process of recovery and was delivered from addiction on June 24, 2003. The process of recovery continues today; however I have been completely free of my addiction to drugs and alcohol for 10 years. I no longer crave or have any desire to use drugs. It has not been problem free, and there have been bumps in the road, but that is part of recovering from a massive addiction. My life has been restored throughout this time of recovery and I have gotten closer and closer to the Lord every day. I felt called to full time ministry shortly after getting clean and sober. I have made amends to my family and our relationships have grown closer to God and to each other. Since the beginning of my recovery I have achieved a BS Religion, will have an MA Pastoral counseling in December 2013, and an Master of Divinity in 2014. I am currently an on call chaplain at the Cleveland Clinic Medina Hospital. I am in a program called Clinical Pastoral Education, which will provide my credentials, along with my education, to be a Professional Chaplain, possibly a spiritual care director at some point. I feel at this time that God has called me to become a full time chaplain in a hospital, I have a strong interest in being involved with Emergency Department and critical care chaplaincy. I also would like to be part of an EMS and or Fire department, as at least a volunteer chaplain. I have always had a passion for being involved in emergency medicine, and have discovered that I love doing this in the capacity of a chaplain.
Chaplain Thomas M. Kraly
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