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Rich Kalke

One Man's Journey With God

I have lived my life until very recently with my head stuck up my ---. At 40 years of age that's not a very good testament to a life, but concerning mine it is the truth.

Born, through no design of my own, into a middle class family I never had to worry as a child while growing up about having enougn to eat, having clothes to wear, or a roof over my head. However, one area that my life lacked considerably was in the display of affection. My parents weren't the type who showered their kids with hugs and kisses. They felt by providing a stable home, with all the necessities, this should be enough to show my sister and I that we were loved.

For me this was enougb at first. Although incidents took place in our house that I will discuss later, for the most part the first ten years of my life weren't all that bad.

Then, in 1971, my parents decided that they no longer wanted to continue raising their children in Chicago. So, they bought a resort and supper club in northeastern Wisconsin that changed my life forever.

Raised in the suburbs of Chicago I had all the perks that come with suburban living. Friends I had known my whole life, little league, and cousins I loved dearly who lived only a few minutes away by bike. At ten years old, it didn't get any better than that. But when my family moved to Wisconsin those things were no longer a part of my life. From many friends, I suddenly had none. From being a starter on my little league team, I found there was no little league even played where we were moving to. From being able to go hang out at my cousin's any time I wanted, I now lived 250 miles away.

I understand today the purpose behind my parents buying their own business, and moving away from Chicago, but back then, at ten years old, the only thing I understood was that I hated living in Wisconsin.

Moving became the focal point around which everything else in my life revolved. When I went to my new school I found that instead of being popular as I was in Chicago, I was now considered an outcast. I was this kid from the city who was entirely different than his new country classmates. Not being able to understand this rejection I began to feel as though something was deeply wrong with me, when all it really was was kids being kids.

Yet, not knowing this, I was miserable. I cried myself to sleep for months as I treid to adjust to my new surroundings. Living 5 miles outside of town didn't help me to make new friends, and that sense of being an outcast never went away in my life until I met the Lord Jesus Christ. However, there is an 18 year gap between those two moments in time, when we moved to Wisconsin and I met the Lord, and over those years I learned how to survive by burying my despair and hopelessness.

I did this by becoming quite reckless. By drinking to extremes. By living on the edge. Living always one step away from total destruction. Until finally I did destruct and in 1980 I killed someone and ended in prison.

I entered prison bitter, angry, despairing, despondent, and unwilling to accept my own personal responsibility. I didn't need to see a need to change who I was because I didn't realize how far over the dge I had fallen. So I lived in prison the same way I had on the streets. I lived on the edge. I gambled. I drank. I did drugs. I even got married to a nurse who worked at the prison where I was incarcerated.

Yet deep down inside, in that quiet place we all know lives in our soul, I was miserable. For years I was able to hide this inner dissatisfaction from those around me, but I couldn't hide it from myself. My life had absolutely no meaning to it, and every morning I woke up in prison I believed my life was a complete and total waste until I finally gave up.

One morning I decided that's it, I'm not doing this anymore, and I refused to get out of bed. As though somehow this was going to make everything right in my little world. By hiding from reality I believed I could make it go away. I simply wanted my life to be over.

So for three days I laid in my bed with the covers pulled over my head and ignored everything around me. However, because I had responsibilities, such as a job I wasn't going to, the world kicked in the door of my little attempt to escape reality and I found my floor officer standing at the foot of my bed informing me that Chaplain Moore would like to see me. Seems Chappie had been wondering where his clerk had been for the past three days, and since I was his clerk, he desired the presence of my company in his office.

Dragging myself out from under my covers I remember thinking, "Damn. How am I going to deal with this?" At that time in my life I was only a convict, and to me Chappie was only a cop. I remember thinking I had to come up with some sort of excuse that sounded logical. So I thought of the usual ones: I had been sick, there had been a death in my family, I had hurt myself playing sports. Running through my list of options I realized I didn't have much I could say that was going to keep me out of trouble.

Then a funny thought scurried through the corridors of my mind, and I was like, "No way! I can''t do that!" What had flashed across the consciousness of my mind was that maybe I should tell Chappie the truth. I should tell him what was going on with me. I should be honest for once in my life. These conflicting thoughts almost made me decide, "To hell with this. Chappie can just fire me."

Arriving at his office I was strung so tight I didn't know what to do. I wanted to run away, but something inside my heart kept saying to me, "Just talk to him, Rich. Tell him what is going on with you and how you're feeling." So I did. I went into his office and Idid something I wasn't doing in those days, I told the truth. For me that was the equivalent of blindly jumping off a cliff in the dark. I didn't know what was going to happen when I hit bottom, but it had to be better than where I was at in my life.

It's hard to explain the importance of what happened next because Chappie's response was so different than what I thought it would be that, at first, I honestly didn't know how to handle it. Up to that point in my life every time I had gotten into trouble honesty never made a difference. Whether I told the truth or lied to my parents when I got into trouble growing up their response was always the same: slap the kid around for a while, scream at him until he's so terrified he'll never think of doing that again, and then send him to his room without supper. As I got older my Dad's slaps became punches and my Mom was always screaming at me for something.

So when Chappie's response was to say he understood and that he would like me to begin group counseling with him and a couple of Christians who were also at this facility, I was like, "What the hell is this about? Doesn't he realize for three days I blew off my job and left him hanging? When is the other shoe going to fall? I'll bet that's next."

But it never happened. Chaplain Moore was dead serious. True enough, he wasn't happy with my not coming to work, but he was more concerned about me than the job I did for him. Not knowing how to handle this kind of compassion and understanding I asked him to give me the weekend to think his offer over and come Monday morning I would let him know what my decision was. He agreed and told me that since it was already Friday afternoon to take the rest of the day off.

After I left Chappie's office that afternoon the Lord started speaking to his heart about me. The Lord told Chappie if you let that young man go until after the weekend he will turn down your offer of help. So that afternoon my floor officer told me the Chaplain was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. Chappie told me that if I wanted to I could come over to his office right now and talk to him about what was going on in my life. He said the two Christian brothers he had told me about were interested in meeting me, and that they both just happened to be in his office at the time, so why not come over?

I honestly didn't know what would have happenedcome Monday morning if I hadn't of gone over to Chappie's office that Friday afternoon, but when he called I had already begun to question the good counseling with him would do, and my intention was to tell him I would pass on his offer. In my eyes he was one of them! He was a cop! And I didn't know how I was supposed to feel comfortable telling him anything?

But caught off guard, and not being quick enough on the fly to come up with a valid excuse for turning him down, I attended that counsleing session. For the next three weeks Chappie and these two brothers talked to me every day until I could no longer deny the truth they were sharing with me about needing Jesus Christ in my life. They were offering me peace through Christ, while showing me through their lives that what they were telling me was true for them, and I wanted it to be true for me, too. So through their love for the Lord I accepted Jesus Christ as my own personal Savior, and the peace that was theirs became mine also.

For the next six years I walked faithfully with the Lord, but that initial peace I had experienced didn't last. By trying through my own strength to live a righteous life I failed time and time again, until eventually I gave up and walked away from God. Even though there were many wonderful things the Lord did for me over those six years it never seemed to sink into my heart that through Christ I had a right standing with God. I had all kinds of knowledge about God, but all I had was a faith of rules, regulations, and thou shalts and thou shalt nots. Saved by grace, I tried to live out my faith by the law of God. I found myself constantly failing in my attempts at self-righteousness and because of this my faith ended up shipwrecked.

For the next six years I again became engulfed with feelings of despair and despondency. Only this time when I ran out of energy to deal with life I didn't end up hiding under my covers. No, this time I found myself sitting over in the hole for fighting. But even in the hole I found out that God hadn't forgotten about me, although I had turned my back on Him.

My second day in the hole I was sitting on my bink thinking about my life and the situation I found myself in when one of the officers who works in segregation came by and knocked on my door. He informed me that my property had arrived, and that by sending a letter to the third shift officers they would then give me whatever I ahd requested of my property that was legal for me to have in possission in the hole. He then made a statement that rocked my world. "Kalke," he said, "you can get your books, magazines, cosmetics , and stuff like that out of your property so if you want your Bible you can get it."

As soon as he mentioned my Bible I thought to myself, "How does he know I have a Bible?" I had never seen this officer before and, to my knowledge he hadn't seen the officer who packed up my property when I was sent to segregation, so how would he know that buried in the bottom of my footlocker was my Bible? After he left I sat there conicted to the very core of my being. Here I was, a man who made his living booking bets on the yard, a man who was emotionally miserable, but who had his penitentiary life together and all my efforts had gotten me locked up in jail in jail.

Falling to my knees I asked God to forgive me for being such a fool. I asked him to have mercy on a man who had never come to a place where he was able to forgive himself. I asked him to reduce me from knowledge of Him to faith in Him. I surrendered my life to Him and since then I haven't looked back.

Gone is the despair and despondency that ruled my life. It has been replaced by a hope that doesn't get rattled because my faith is no longer in my ability to live a good Christian life, but is rather in my beliefe that God has cleansed me of my sin through His gace and His garce alone. Rom. 3:10-11 says, "as it is written, 'None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God." If no one understands, and no one seeks for God, then how is God found by man?

I used to have the equation backwards. I used to believe that it was all up to me. If I simply had enough faith, if I was just good enough this would commend me to God and He would bless my life. But I found no peace in that. Where I did find peace was when I realized that, if I wasn't seeking for God, then that means the only reason I know God is because He sought me. He has been the initiator and I have been the recipient, and as this truth has worked it's way down into my heart I have learned I truly am saved by grace, and although I have a serious responsibility to live my life to the best of my abilities, God has shown me that it isn't what I do that commends me to Him, but rather it is who I am that commends me to him and who I am is a son of God through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ.

As a growing child of His, I have learned that in order to truly understand what God has done for me, I must go into myself and forgive those who have hurt me in my life. I have walked down this path, and although I fought the Lord on this, I slowly came to comprehend the depth of God's forgiveness of me by learning how unwilling I was to forgive those whom I felt had hurt me the deepest in my life.

In my life the two most important people that I had to forgive were my Mom and Dad. A kid's whole world revolves around his parents and I was no different. Growing up I needed my parents' love more than anything else, and although today I know my parents love me, as a kid I had trouble accepting that they really did. I always felt like nothing I ever did was good enough for them. My parents were very demanding people and things had to be done a certain way and that meant their way. Anything else led to anger on their part.

In Chicago my dad was a truck driver so he had tremendous upper body strength. When he smacked you upside the head it felt like getting hit with a two by four. My Mom wasn't all that strong, but when your Mom goes to hitting you with a wooden spoon she doesn't need a lot of strength to do some serious damage. Trust me, a wooden spoon wielded in the hands of an angry mother is a dangerous thing.

Howevere, before I paint too deceiving a picture of my home life, let me say this: I wasn't abused in the sense that abuse is known by today. When I was a kid it was considered acceptable for parents to discipline their children as they saw fit. It just seemed to me my parents always went beyond what was necessary.

One instance that stands out in my mind happned when I was about 8. I had been disruptive in class so my teacher sent a note home to my parents about my misbehavior. I knew I was in trouble, but I had no idea this one simple note was going to have the effect it did. Had I known I would never have given the note to my Mom. But not knowing this, I did what kids do, I had a little fun at school and got into trouble for it.

Arriving home I gave the note to my Mom. After reading it she didn't say much. Only that my father would deal with me once he got home from work, and with that she took me to Little League practice leaving me with the impression I was in trouble, but nothing serious.

I honestly don't know what it was about this situation that set my Dad off so bad, but he arrived at my Little Legaue practice to take me home and all the way home he never gave any impression of what was coming. Had I known I might have tried to jump out of the car. It might have been safer because as soon as we walked through the front door he turned on me and his anger towards me wa so intesne and terrified me so bad, I went mute. I had seen my Dad angry before, but not like this. He was livid with rage and the longer I stood before him with nothing to say the madder he seemed to get until suddenly he lashed out at me and started smacking me upside the head. The beating he put on me was fierce, but the thing that stands out for me wasn't so much the beating I was getting, but was my Mom's response. She was screaming at my Dad to top hitting me in the head not because it was wrong, but because in her words, "the bruises would be seen by everybody."

For years that statement haunted me. Here I was getting the crap beat out of me and all my Mom was worried about was everyone would know because my face was all black and blue. As I have gotten older I have come to realize that even though she did say that, the reason she said it was because she was as scared of my Dad as I was. I felt for a long time like she had failed me on that occasion, but I now understand that if she had tried to intervene on my behalf my Dad would have beaten her up too, and that wouldn't have been anything new.

I could tell you about other things that happened while we lived in Chicago, but I think this story gets my point across. Discipline in our house was violent. Plain and simple.

Yet, when we moved to Wisconsin my hope was that things would change. But they didn't. They actually became worse, and shortly before my sixteeneth birthday after six years of life in Wisconsin, I was so depressed that I decided enough was enough and I was going to kill myself. So I loaded my hunting rifle, a Winchster 30-30, set it on the couch and contemplated the end of my life.

I felt an overwhelming need to talk about how I was feeling, but I was home alone. My parents had went out to dinner and my sister was out with friends. So I sat there staring at my rifle trying to summon up the courage to end it all. End the pain, the misery, the unhappiness I felt. But I couldn't do it. As miserable as I was, death scared me too much and my fear ate at me making me feel like a coward. When my sister finally came home I tried to talk to her, but she had had a long day of her own and she was tired, and as I was trying to tell her how I was feeling, she fell asleep.

Yea, I had been heeming and hawing around the whole subject, not knowing how to say what I needed to say, but I'll never forget how that made me feel. I have never felt that abandoned by hope in all my life. It was then that I decided I would kill my whole family first and then kill myself afterwards.

So I waited until my parents came home and been asleep for an hour or so and then, taking my rifle, I silently entered their room and pointed my rifle at my dad. He was my only threat physically, so I figured I had better kill him first. Trying to calm my nerves enough to pull the trigger I found I just couldn't do it. I simply couldn't will myself to pull the trigger. I wanted to, but I couldn't. Yea, I hated my parents and blamed them for everything that was wrong in my life, but I still couldn't do it.

So easing my way back out of their bedroom I took my rifle, laid it fully loaded on the kitchen table with the safety off, left a note saying, "I'm outta here!", and grabbed the keys to my sister's car and took off. Not knowing where to go or what to do I went to the one place in my mind that life was good; I went to Chicago. I went to my cousin's house.

You could technically say I ran away from home, but what I was really trying to do was get my parents' attention. As I shared earlier my parents bought their own business when I was 10 years old, and I never adjusted to this. In Chicago we had been a family, but in Wisconsin we were a business. The days of doing things together, such as summer vacations, family get-togethers, and things like that were gone. Replaced by work, work, work. All that seemed to matter to my parents in those days was the business. Their customers came first, meaning my sister and I came second.

So when my aunt made me call my parents I didn't have a problem with that. I wanted to talk to them. I needed to talk to them.

My dad then came down to Chicago by Greyhound and the two of us drove back home. Not much said during that 6 hour drive. My dad's not much of a talked and I honestly don't think he knew what to say to me. But once we got home we all sat down together and put our cards on the table. I told my parents how I felt unappreciated by them. I told them they made me feel like the hired help, instead of their own son. We all spoke our piece, and the result of it all was that my parents promised to do a better job of being there for me.

And they were at first. But, like so many other things in lie, my parents slowly fell back into their old habits and once the summer tourist season hit it's stride we were back to square one again. The business came first, I came second.

Then towards the end of August my parents decided to put a new roof on our house and bar. Because my dad told me I had to help with this project I wasn't allowed to attend the first two weeks of footbal practice, and I lost my starting halfback position to a new kid who moved to our town over the summer. Although he really was a better running back than I was, I still resented never getting to honestly compete against him for my spot on the team because I had to work.

I buried this resentment deep down in my heart and channeled it into aggression every time I got a chance in a game to carry the ball. Unfortunately my aggresion cost me and in early October I got hurt when I refused to be tackled and my left knee got twisted. Taken to the emergency room after the game by my mom, she was advised to get to an orthopedic surgeon for a complete checkup and a couple of days later my mom took me to see one in Green Bay. His advice was to put me in a cast for six weeks because, although no cartilege or ligaments had been torn or damaged, he felt this was the best course of action.

However, because my knee was only sprained I told my mom there was no way I would be in a cast for six weeks for nothing. Homecoming was only 6 days away and there was no way I was going to that wearing a cast. My refusal set off an argument between my mom and I that I will simply say was ugly. Things were said in that doctor's office that never should have been said and during the hour-long drive home things only got orse as more things got said that shouldn't have been spoken aloud in 20 lifetimes. Arriving home my mom told my dad about the wonderful day we had been having and as soon as my dad opened his mouth I took off.

I went and got a twelve-pack at a party store that didn't care how old you were as long as you had cash money in your hands, and then proceeded to try and drink away the pain. But this wasn't a pain that alcohol could reach. No drug, no matter how pwerful, has the ability to heal your soul when it's in that kind of pain and turmoil.

So here I was, drunk and emotionally strung out, and in that state of mind I decided I was going home to have it out with my parents. I was going to make them give me their attention and I was going to make them listen to me. But when I got home nobody was there. My sister was in town at a volleyball game and my parents had gone out somewhere. Finding an empty house turned out to be the straw that broke my back. Here I was, desperately needing to talk to my parents, and once again they weren't there for me.

So impulsively I decided enough was enough. Entering the bar I grabbed a full bottle of Southern Comfort and threw it against a wall. As the botle shattered booze went flying everywhere. Intentionally lighting a match I then used this spilled liquor like lighter fluid and set fire to my parents' bar and supper club. Within minutes the fire was burning out of control and before the night ended my parents' entire business was nothing but a pile of smoking cinders and ash. The firefighters were able to save our house, which was right next to the bar, only because it was made out of cement blocks. (Although that new roof I had been forced to help out on in August didn't fare too well)

I didn't have a very good alibi for myself and shortly after this I was convicted of arson and sent to the Brown County Mental Health Center in Green Bay for a psychological evaluation and eventually ended up in a treatment facility in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for troubled teenagers. Upon my 18th birthday I was released from this facility and 15 months later I was arrested for second degree murder in Michigan. I have been in prison ever since.

I have shared all this with you because the Lord requires us to forgive the people in our lives whom we believe have hurt us and caused us pain. For there can be no healing without forgiveness, and until I came to a place where I could forgive my parents I never had any real healing in my life.

I told you earlier how the Lord used Chaplain Moore in my life to bring me to faith in Him. Well, the Lord also used him to bring me to a place where I could forgive my parents. After accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior I continued in group counseling with Chappie for quite a while and during one of those counseling sessions the Lord did a work in my life that enabled me to forgive my parents.

We had been discussing my feelings towards my parents in group and Chappie asked me what I had been thinking about on the night that I had set fire to my parents' bar. He was curious to know what I would have said to them had they been home that night. His question kind of hit hard because I didn't really know what I had wanted to say to them that night.

At this point Chappie asked me if I would be interested in saying to the Lord what I wanted to say to my parents. I didn't really understand what he meant so he explained that he, Mark, and Bud were willing to pray with me and that I should just say to God what I wanted to say to my parents that evening. I wasn't too sure about his suggestion and I was having trouble seeing how doing this would help. But they all seemed to think it was a good idea, so I agreed.

Chappie told me that Mark and Bud weren't going to say anything while we were praying, but that he would play the role of the Lord during this prayer time and that he would ask me some questions and I was to answer them like I was talking to Jesus instead of to him. I remember feeling kind of weird about him doing this, but I trusted Chappie so I agreed.

Once we had started praying it wasn't long before you could feel the Spirit begin to move. The presence of the Lord was powerful and as Chappie slowly asked me one question after another I began to respond to his questions until the next thing I knew I was once again standing inside my parents' ar with a bottle of Southern Comfort in my hands. I was physically incarcerated at that moment, but emotionally I was once again standing in my parents' bar.

I remember thinking this is insane and just as I was about to bail Chappie very quietly asked me what I wanted to say to my mom and dad. His question stripped me of all pretense and there I was a sixteen year old kid again, terrified, hurting, confused, angry and as I saw myself getting ready to throw that bottle against the wall I remembered exactly what Is aid in my mind to my parents as I threw the bottle: "Why is this business more important to you than I am?"

Reduced to tears in Chappie's office the inner turmoil I was feeling was killing me. I finally knew why I had so much anger and hatred in my heart towards my parents. It was because I honestly beieved they didn't care about me. Time was standing still for me and I was wrestling with my emotions, trying to bring them under control, when I heard Chappie say, "Rich, I love you and so does Jesus." When he said that I was undone. All the pain, all the anger, all the hatred I was feeling was simply washed away. I could literally feel Jesus taking me into His arms and I knew I was appreciated and loved and a sense of peace setlled over my entire being. Gone was the anger and hatred I felt towards my parents. It was replaced by a seed of love and forgiveness that continues to grow to this day.

I left Chappie's office that day a different man. The bitterness that had been the foundation of my life had been uprooted and I was now able to see my parents in a new light. I saw that they were no different than me. I saw that they hurt as deeply as I did. I saw that our home life had been as painful for them as it had been for me. I saw that they had been trying their best to raise me right, but both of them had grown up in violent, abusive homes and had fathers who drank too much, and this played a huge role in how they treated me.

To this day my mom feels a deep sense of guilt about our relationship. I pray for her and my dad every day that they would turn to the Lord because I know they will never know healing like I have experienced until the Lord is part of their life. I would never have these hopes for my parents if I hadn't have been willing to let go of my anger and hatred towards them.

This could not have happened if I hadn't havv forgiven them. Prior to the Lord doing this work in my life I treated my parents the way I felt they had treated me while I was growing up. I consciously distanced myself from them emotionally, making them work for my attention. I was doing to them what I felt they had done to me. But nowadays I no longer treat them this way, and it is only because I forgave them and the Lord healed me.

Brothers and Sisters, peace, true, sustainable peace, won't come into your lives as long as unforgiveness lives in your heart, and it is my hope and prayer that you would find a way to forgive those people in your life who have hurt you the deepest. My forgiving of my parents took place in God's way. And your forgiving of others must be done His way also. Meanining you must willingly let go of your anger and hatred. Simply forgive the people you hold in unforgiveness and trust in God to do the rest. He will I know because He did it for me, and I know He wants to do it for you too.