Shannon and Family

I grew up in a very strong, solid Christian home. My childhood memories are extremely happy and filled with love from my parents. My life revolved around church and school, so I knew only Christians. Accepting Jesus as my Savior at the age of five, I enjoyed many church activities as well as attending Christian school throughout my elementary years.

Although I was aware of a “world” out there somewhere, I had no clue what it
was all about. My parents were careful to shelter us from outside influences. When I was in 8th grade, my mother quit teaching to home school my brother and me. As I grew, I felt overly controlled. Although taught to obey and honor my parents, sometimes I didn’t understand all their rules. During my home-schooled high school years, it became very important to act right, speak right, and look right at all times. That’s when the games began.

I began “playing” Christianity because it seemed like the easiest solution. I went to Bob Jones University where my way of life was reinforced. By then, apathy had turned to rebellion—I was tired of playing church and just wanted out. Dropping out of Bob Jones my senior year, I went to bars; but I hated all the superficiality I felt there. I needed substance, and there was a big emptiness inside of me. I started searching, reading different philosophies, drawn to free thinkers like Timothy Leary, William F. Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson. I sought other people engaged in the same way of thinking. They were, of course, “drug people.” I started experimenting with hallucinogens that made me even more confused and the big empty hole even more hollow.

Then, one day, I was given my first line of coke. I remember thinking, “I finally found what I was looking for; I’m finally home.” Selling myself out, stealing, lying, and manipulating everyone I knew, produced guilt and the need for more drugs. Losing job after job, trying to quit, out of control, hiding my habit, more guilt, more drugs, losing all self-respect, my morals going down the drain, doing whatever I had to do just to get high. How glamorous did coke look now?

One night, God gave me a wake up call as I was flat on my back in a hospital bed. With my life out of control, I went to a secular outpatient program. It helped me understand how addiction works, but that big gaping hole that was back inside my heart. Then, I went to RU and learned that, in spite of everything I knew about the Bible and Christianity, if I did not have a growing, personal relationship with Jesus to allow the Holy Spirit to guide me, I could not know true peace and contentment.

My RU leader came to my house every week to disciple me. She taught me to love the Lord in a way I had never known in all my years in church and Christian college. I continued to go to RU and church as much as possible. Unfortunately, as a single mom and a waitress, I had to work most Fridays and Sundays. Nevertheless, I stayed in the Bible, praying and trying desperately to be a good Christian woman and mother. Now I know that I was trying to do it in my own strength. I thought that was what I was supposed to do—try really hard all by myself. I started to get down, really tired, overwhelmed, and eventually depressed. I believed Satan’s lie that I couldn’t do it anymore. “Once a coke-head, always a coke-head,” people had said about my attempts to get clean. I fell back into my addiction after almost two years clean and trying to live for God. That’s when God worked in a miraculous way to bring me to Rockford. I couldn’t do it in my own power.

I felt very blessed to be able to come to the Ladies’ Discipleship Home. God used it to show me so many things that could never be expressed in writing. The teaching and preaching that I got to sit under definitely helped me grow spiritually and develop a much closer walk with the Lord. One of the most important things that I learned is that under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the rest of my life on earth will be constant change and growth towards being more Christ-like. I will never and should never be comfortable and content to stop growth and learning. The other important concept I needed to learn was concerning my self-righteousness. I learned to die daily and dedicate myself everyday to knowing and doing God’s will. God taught me and changed my heart towards others. I now realize that I had lived my life selfishly, and that it’s not about me, but others. God has blessed me with a godly husband, and the restoration of the relationships with my family, especially my mother; but most of all, the relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ. I no longer am living with all the anxiety and depression that I once felt. That big gaping hole in my heart is now being filled.

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I had everything going for me. I was a wealthy physical therapist and had a beautiful family, ranch, horses, and ponds on my property. However, I made many small compromises that led to great disasters. I allowed the stress of my life to lead me to alcohol and soon thereafter to drugs.

I was arrested 13 times for drunken driving, the last of which nearly cost the lives of many. I woke up in jail, which was not uncommon for me, but soon found myself revoked of my driving license and my license to practice medicine.

It was in this desperate position that I was first introduced to the RU program. I began by attending their meetings in the jail and eventually the meetings at Grace Baptist Church in Ohio upon my release. At my judicial hearing for what was supposed to be two to five years in prison, I was miraculously court ordered to the Men’s Discipleship Home in Rockford.

That was 2002. Today, I work full time in this wonderful Christian ministry. I have a beautiful home, beautiful wife and family, and have gained full privileges to drive again. As a matter of fact, our God is so good that the day after I miraculously received my license back, my wife shot a hole in one at a golfing event and won a prize—you guessed it, a beautiful Cadillac! Yes, God is so good, and I am so unworthy. Won’t you give God the same opportunity to do for you what I have personally seen Him do in the lives of hundreds of other people just like me?

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My name is Mike Platek, I was born on July 23rd, 1962, to Ken and Doris Platek. I am their fourth child out of five. I grew up in Franklin in a hundred and fifty year old farmhouse on five acres of land.

My mother was a loving brutally honest and caring woman. My father was a police officer for Milwaukee County, a mason, a tyrant, and a pedophile. When he wasn’t leaving welts on us kids with a belt, he was sexually molesting not only me, but one of my sisters as well. Since age six to age seventeen I endured this life.

The world outside saw him as someone they called upon for protection and advice. Everyone felt so safe knowing he was around, that was the irony in it, for his own family was scarred and trembled in his presence.

By age fifteen my father took me to a bar where he was a bouncer on the weekends, usually accompanied by his lover of seventeen years of age. Once I remember a huge mistake and regret in my life, when I called him “Dad” in front of his friends. He turned around so fast and with a look of sure hatred in his eyes and the coldness of his tongue said, “You call me Ken when we are out”! It was at these places he would set me up with old guys that would take me home with them to have some fun. Even through all of this, I still loved my Dad and would think by doing this I was showing him how much I loved him. I knew just how much it pleased him and with his intimidation I knew none else.

I eventually got the nerve and finally out of sheer exhaustion, told my mother. She brought it up in the divorce; he denied it of course and said I was in need of counseling. We would have to see him during visitation of course and on one particular day he picked me up and started down the drive when all of a sudden he stopped the car said, “Get out”! I cried so hard and asked why, he would just say, “You told”, he then shoved me out of the car and drove off.

Later in life I called my father curious and wanting some answers. I asked “Was it considered suspicious for a police man in 1960 not to be married”? He replied, “Yes”. Then I asked, “Was mom and us kids nothing to you than a prop you could use for your cover up”? He calmly replied, “Yes”. From then on I never talked to him again, though others would tell me of his moving to Lake Geneva, and living in a trailer just a half a mile from a middle school and how he’d have boys over from time to time. For nineteen years he lived there and God only knows how many a kids he has affected during that time. In May of 1993 he put an end to his misery by shooting himself in the chest with a rifle.

One day I went to the Milwaukee Arena to see an evangelist that was having a crusade. I saw him on TV once and thought, why not go. At the end the Preacher asked those who weren’t saved to come forward and accept Christ, then played the song, “There’s room at the cross for you”. I stood in front and sobbed and cried out to God to accept me, and I got saved.

I was twenty three and determined to see my cancer reddened mother get saved. I saw her to the Lord shortly before she died on August 21st, of 1985. By 1986 I was living alone and depressed and started to drink and do drugs and succeeded at becoming a social drinker and a recreational drug user. I contemplated suicide, walking very slowly out into the street knowing a car was coming. The car swerved and missed and I was so angry at that.

With my mom gone I became so depressed I backslide from God and sinned much worse than before. (As a dog returneth to its own vomit, so doth a foolish man returneth to his folly.) More drinking, more partying, more whore mongering was my daily life now.

In August of 2005, I was unemployed and on my way to visit my sister and noticed that I always pasted by this church on the way. I was up to four packs of cigarettes a day and when I saw a sign for RU an addictions program I wondered if they could help me. I entered the church to find two men in ties greeting me, while hearing some awesome preaching coming from behind some doors. The Lord has been pulling at me to come back for a long time and I guess I was through fighting him and said, “Ok”. I then attended the RU class that Friday and liked it a lot! The people really cared about me! I went to church in flip flops and shorts; I wasn’t going to wear a tie I thought. However God is in the transformation business! Since September 13th of 2005, I haven’t had a single cigarette, no cravings for it or desires. This is truly a miracle from God. God has truly changed my life in so many ways; I know he loves me so much that he sent his son to die for my sins, just so I, Mike Platek could come to him one day for help and enter into his ever so loving arms.

I now have the privilege in attending the answer to a prayer, Faith Baptist Church, and Reformers Unanimous! What a tremendous blessing that God has given me.

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