March 8 - Dan Finney
I had an inexplicable experience when I was 7 years old - I woke up in the night and saw a vision. I still have part of it in my mind to this day but the figure in the center is shrouded (which may have been the case even then). I have no idea what the message was but I knew it was from God - though, to my knowledge, I had never been to church yet.
Not long after, while being chased up an escalator by my sister, I tripped and fell at the top. Somehow the safety plate was missing and my left hand went in. Miraculously, it just stopped at that very moment. Even so, I still had a spiral sliced "hand" and needed many stitches narrowly saving my little finger. It never occurred to me until now that I have literal marks of a miracle on my body.
When I was 11 we moved and started going to Church once a month or so. Then, I was sent off 300 miles to work room & board for 3 months when I was 11 going on 12. Among my responsibilities was taking care of 600 rabbits, helping to butcher on Sundays, and going to cemeteries three nights a week working until dawn collecting worms for the bait business. I wore rubber gloves, knee pads & miners light, putting steel rods with low volts in the ground to drive up the worms between the headstones.
I gained a lot of experience working for dad building two houses, shop, & barn as well as taking care of farm animals, but somehow found time to work for a Godly man who owned an apple orchard nearby. He became a second father when I moved in at 14 and worked while attending school. I could not take the screaming, yelling, and physical fights at home (beyond what I can put in writing) so God delivered me and I started going to church with Jim.
When I was 15 turning 16 I worked another Summer on a wheat ranch bucking bales and driving grain trucks. When I came back I moved in with my now divorced dad who was in a body cast and in constant pain from a construction accident. I changed sprinkler pipes before school, worked in the orchard in the afternoons, and then at a restaurant after apple season as my dad became more financially dependent on me and turned to alcohol as a substitute for pain meds. So it was not a hard sell when the Navy recruiter came to school. I enlisted at 17 half way through 11th grade.
When you end up on a dinky little Submarine in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on the front line of the "Cold War", at barely 18 - you feel pretty small and insignificant. This helped save my soul though, as God put me in those depths to find him in his word as I read that Gideon's Bible and gave my life to the Lord Jesus.
There have been many chapters since then, including failed marriage (when I thought that was impossible), loss of my oldest son by suicide, near total financial loss a couple times, devastating and Incapacitating autoimmune disease that lasted two years but ended with miraculous healing, and more. Through these trials & blessings, I have never felt abandoned by our great and Awesome God (Neh. 1:5) or questioned my faith. I have prayed for him to take me home in dark hours but also that he can use me while I'm here.
One of my life verses is Jer. 12:3 "But You, O Lord, know me; You have seen me, And You have tested my heart toward You". I love to talk with anyone about how God has worked in our lives or that I can help in some way.