The Personal Testimony of Kay O'Hara

A God Who Determines the Times

Bill and I stood perfectly still beneath the glaring overhead lights. We looked like players in a game of statues, motionless in the act of dressing warmly. The doorbell rang again and our dogs, a pair of Afghan hounds, came hurtling past us, springing up against the front door and foyer glass in a frenzy of excited barking. The straps of my motorcycle helmet slipped from nerveless fingers. I cringed and made a wild grab for the visor. The helmet bounced once, went spinning across the parquet floor, and then crashed against the doorjamb with a thunk.

Panic stricken, I glanced over at Bill, who had one arm in and one arm out of his leather biking jacket. “Oh, MAN!” I hissed. “They must know we’re here, now!" 
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Defining moments alter history. They impact decisions, purpose, even destiny. The choice to open a door or leave the house a few minutes earlier can forever change the future—for good or for bad. In a random world, this realization is paralyzing. However, in a world where faith would have us believe that the LORD knows the number of hairs upon our heads, the next words we will speak, and the exact moment of our deaths, we are free to receive His perfect will and trust in His tender care, timing, and omniscience. 

I was not reared in a Christian home, but I was inexplicably born with a “God magnet” installed in my heart. From an early age, I gravitated toward the LORD. I pursued Him up trees on the playground at recess, tramped after Him in the mountains on Sundays, and wrote letters to Him in my journal late at night. He was like the wind: evident in His awesome power but completely invisible.

In my junior year of high school, I brought home a paperback Good News Bible from a motel room after a Latin Club trip. I carefully printed out Scripture verses onto my bedroom walls alongside newspaper clippings of boys I admired and posters I had collected. What did these phrases mean? I read them over and over, but for reasons I could not understand, I was “looking through a glass darkly."

In college, I spent my weekends exploring area churches in Eastern Kentucky. Dinner on the grounds, Mass, snake handlings, liturgy, Bible study, speaking in tongues, exorcisms and outdoor baptisms became intertwined in my confused concept of what it meant to be a Christian. During the school week, however, liberal faculty members steadily chipped away at my faith. Man had clearly evolved. Premarital sex was a smart move. Same sex relationships were evidence of upward thinking. Euthanasia and abortion were acceptable choices.

My soul recoiled in dismay, but I had nowhere else to turn. How could so many well-educated people be wrong? As the months passed, I lost the ability to resist their influence. While my intellectual awareness of the potentially damaging consequences of smoking, alcohol, and drugs shielded me from disaster, my desire to be loved did not serve me well. After two unremarkable years of school and a heartbreaking relationship with an upperclassman, I lost the vision for my future. In its place, I chose the easiest possible “out” at that time—marriage. Perhaps in this controlled environment I could regain my sense of purpose and decode the meaning of life.

Within a year, I became a mother, and the impact of motherhood caused me to renew my search for kindness, love, and God. My spouse was an intelligent but faithless man whose inability to love or comprehend a loving God did not dovetail with my own desire to seek such things. We separated a few months after our son reached his second birthday, and I found myself back on my parent’s doorstep as a single mother with no vocation and no vision for the future.

My relationship with Bill O’Hara began that year, in 1980. He was a tall, handsome neighbor whose kindness immediately drew me to keep company with him whenever I could. Bill encouraged me to return to school and earn a degree in dental hygiene. He also generously provided a strong hand in any practical need I had. After living together for a season, we were married on his parents' anniversary in November of 1982. By the time we reached our second year of marriage, however, we were in trouble. We had no anchor to help us ride out the storms of life, and the same brokenness that had undermined our previous marriages had followed us into this one.

One night, in absolute despair, I told Bill that it no longer mattered to me if we lost our health, life, or possessions. I had reached the place where I would do anything to know God in a very real and personal way.

“We won’t make it another year without something meaningful at its center, and I think it must be God,” I wept

“We’ll work this out together,” Bill promised.

The spring of 1984 found us visiting every church within reasonable driving distance of our home. We searched for the LORD for months. One Sunday night in October, my eye caught sight of a piece of paper tucked into the pew rack of a local PCA Presbyterian church. It was a leaflet about a missionary the church supported. As I drew it out, the image of an older man with a serious, open face caught my attention. I began to read.

The biography of Mickey Raia swept over me. He was a New York City Police chief who had been shot through the heart, lived to tell about it, had a conversion experience, retired from the force, and entered seminary late in life. He was now serving as a missionary in South America. What a life-changing story I held in my hands!

“If we could just talk to this Mickey Raia,” I said earnestly to Bill that night, “I’ll bet he can answer my questions and tell us how to become true Christians.”

Bill agreed with me, but after reading the pamphlet, we knew this could never happen. Mickey Raia was out of the country in South America, and his home church was hundreds of miles away in south Florida. We would have to find our answers elsewhere. That night, I decided to “throw out a fleece” like Gideon did in the Bible.

“How about this?” I proposed. “God can do anything, anytime, right? Well, let’s give Him until midnight on Wednesday to prove to us in some meaningful way that He is real and actually cares about the hairs on our heads like He says, OK?”

Monday passed. We waited eagerly for a sign. On Tuesday, I was a nervous wreck at work all day. Wednesday evening, we sat at home and waited. At 11:45 PM, I opened the front door in invitation and listened to the wind sift through the pines as streetlights reflected brightly on the rain-washed pavement. The grandfather clock chimed at midnight. Nothing. Finally, at 12:15 Bill got up and closed the door. We turned out the lights and walked silently back to the bedroom.

Jehovah God was not real. He was no different than the images of stone that pagans had worshipped for centuries. Jews must have robbed the tomb of Jesus’s body, after all. The Bible was historical fiction, just like my college professors had said. Darwin had been right. Mankind was the beginning and the end. From the slime of the sea to grave dust, life held no purpose. We were the victims of modern-day mythology.

I woke up with a heavy heart on Thursday morning and listlessly went through the motions of my day. “NO!” my spirit cried out. “I am certain God IS! I knew Him as a child. I believe in Him still! A silly test can’t change that!  Don’t give up!"

I returned home that evening, exhausted from the futility of my thoughts. Bill and I mechanically went about our evening routine. As we were finishing dinner around six-thirty, the telephone rang. I answered.

“Hello!” a bright feminine voice cheerily greeted me. “My name is Joyce, and I am calling from Hazelwood Presbyterian Church. We would like to come out and fellowship with you and Bill around seven this evening. Could you please give us directions to your house?”

Caught off guard by the call, I automatically responded and hung up. I looked at Bill, stunned. How many months had we been putting our names in the plate requesting a call? Three? “Too little, too late!” I vehemently spat out. “I am not about to hang around for the benefit of a bunch of do-gooders who are finally paying us a visit. Forget them!”

“You got that right,” Bill agreed. “Let’s take the bike up Asheville and grab a dozen donuts. Those people from church can ring the bell all night for all I care!”

That suited me just fine. Hazelwood was thirty minutes away, so I cleared the remains of dinner while Bill pulled the bike around front. We were in the process of suiting up when the doorbell rang. We were caught! But it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet!

“What do we do now?” I urgently whispered to Bill.

With a sigh of resignation, he removed his helmet and bent down to retrieve mine. “Let ‘em in, I guess. Maybe we can get rid of them quickly and still make it to Asheville in time.”

I took a breath and opened the door.

There, ringed by a smiling group of people, stood Mickey Raia.

“Ohhhh!” I cried out in astonishment as I rushed forward to embrace this poor, bewildered stranger on the doorstep. “I know who you are! You’re Mickey Raia, and God has sent you here to explain the Gospel to us!”

And that is exactly what He did one evening in October 1984.

God weaves the tapestry of His perfect timing with great skill and control. The series of events that transpired before Mickey Raia could stand on our doorstep were staggering. His mother had recently passed away, bringing him home from South America on furlough two weeks earlier. After settling the affairs of her estate in New York, he had to dispose of a car she had left him. Mickey decided to drive it back to Florida and donate it to his church. Since he preferred rural byways to interstates, he chose Highway 19 for part of his trip.

That Thursday afternoon, Mickey Raia’s car broke down on Highway 19-23 at the Hazelwood, North Carolina exit. As Providence would have it, there was a service garage open just down the street from Hazelwood Presbyterian Church—one of the few rural churches that supported his ministry. After leaving his car in good hands, Mickey crossed the street to call on the manse. He was invited to take his dinner with the pastor and his wife.

During the meal, a leader in Hazelwood Presbyterian’s recently established Evangelism Explosion (EE) program knocked on the door. There was a problem, it seemed. Seven visitation teams were formed that evening, but they needed one more man to complete the proper team requirements. Was the pastor available?

No. The pastor had another commitment that evening away from home.

“I’ll go with you,” Mickey said, rising from the table in the middle of his meal. After all, EE had originated at his church, Coral Ridge Presbyterian; he was trained in the method. And so, that night, seven EE teams set out to greet recent visitors to the church. Of those seven teams, God sent the group with Mickey Raia to my home. Lastly, in an era before cell phones, the LORD prompted the team to stop en route and call ahead from a pay phone just down the road. This detail effectively kept us from missing their visit.

No one but Bill knew of my longing to speak with Mickey Raia about the Gospel. No one, that is, except the LORD. He must have known that I needed Him to custom-design an unshakable, stirring testimony, one that would sustain me through all manner of trials to come. The precious, inarguable experience of my testimony comforts and reassures me daily that a loving, interactive God cares about all the details of my life.

By 1987, God had changed all my priorities. I left my career to become a full-time home educating mother of six and devoted helper to my hardworking husband. In the years that followed, the LORD continued to show His mighty hand through financial reversal, a terminal diagnosis, an extended illness, and three miscarriages. I clung to my testimony with all my might as the enemy battered our little household with challenges.

In 2001, Bill was killed by a drunk driver early one Friday morning while commuting to work… but not before he made his own clear profession of faith twelve days earlier. That knowledge has been a source of immense comfort to the children and me this past decade. You see, though we have our own hidden timetables and sense of how we would like things to be, I’m here to testify that God’s unique plan for each of us is still perfect, and He is never late.

Kay O'Hara
September 17, 2013