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I come from a farming background in Corofin, Co. Galway. My family is a traditional catholic family. I had always felt restricted with my life on the farm so from a very early age I would get away whenever I could. I had been told that I’d never settle down.
My first excursions were to my neighbour’s house. There I choked myself on cigarettes. This was at the age of five and six. Mother tried her best to discipline me but gave up. Her next ploy was more effective; she started taking money off me. She got two fifty pence pieces out of me but didn’t get the third. I had been reformed.
I wasn’t very bright at school. I missed quite a lot through been sick or work at home. I had some negative experiences that adversely affected me. I may as well skip onto my time in secondary school. I loved it because it got me away from home. The reason for me wanting to be away from home was primarily because of my dad and work. My dad and I didn’t see eye to eye, it wasn’t his fault we were just too alike in certain ways. It used to be like striking a match to dynamite.
The great adolescence years were years of confusion, doubt and questions. Everything I did was to prove something. I got good at football because my dad said that I was useless at it. I did better than the rest of my family at school because one of my relatives said that I was the “thick one� of the family. I was a re-actor. I wondered if I was homosexual, I really liked girls yet I was too shy to ask anyone to go out with me. I was crippled with fear in this regard the reason being that I grew up hating myself and if a girl refused to go out with me that would confirm my fears. It was easier not to know, or so I thought at the time.
I eventually got off the mark when I was sixteen. I had been hunted around the local hall during a disco by a friend of mine, the reason being to get me to go out with a friend of the girl he was going out with. Thus came my first kiss. She was no stunner, but at least it comforted me and convinced me that I wasn’t gay.
I went to boarding school for my final year. It was great, away from home. I enjoyed the chats with the guys and the set study times were good for me.
I chose hotel management for my future career i.e. it was the only thing I saw that remotely interested me. My drinking life began. At the end of three years I was getting very board of the life of drink etc. Within the pub one day I asked God “is there anything else apart from this�.
A few days later I was in a convent and while seated in the canteen a great peace came over me. I was walking home from the convent and met an old friend from secondary school who told me about prayer meetings and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. I said that I’ll try anything once. I went to the meeting the next Monday and really enjoyed it. I knew that these people had something I didn’t have. I came to realize that there was a great gap between God and me, and I needed something to bridge this gap. I rang home and mother told me that there was a life in the Spirit seminar starting the next Monday with Joe Dalton. This I hoped would bridge the gap.
The second night of the seminar Joe prayed with my brother Patrick who had a hip operation at the age of eight that left him with one leg shorter than the other and a limp. Patrick was sitting on a chair and Joe took Patrick’s two legs in his hand and showed us how one leg was shorter than the other. Then he prayed in the name of Jesus and I saw my brother’s shorter leg growing to the same length as the other one.
It was then that I was zapped, it was like a basket been woven or a computer on overdrive. In less than two seconds everything made sense. From that moment on I had direction in life. Jesus was alive, no longer a concept in my head but the living Lord, who died for me and rose from the dead.
Since then my relationships went better--even the one with my father and my own self-esteem improved dramatically. It’s not all been a barrel of laughs but I’ve become a better person, the person God wants me to be. A scripture that has been very meaningful to me is 1 Cor. 13 v4 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered……� I find this really challenging on an ongoing basis. I am not there yet but I can I can be patient etc with God’s help.
I now have a beautiful wife and two beautiful little girls. God is so good. I would really love to see many more Irish men come into a personal relationship with Jesus as I and my wife, Isabelle, have found.
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