A loving husband. A faithful church-goer. Looking at Kelvin Lacy’s life now, few would guess that things were not always this settled and happy. Few, if any, would perceive the painful past and years of wandering endured until just seven years ago. Kelvin’s life was not always nicely put-together. Not until accepting the divine help and love of a faithful Jesus did he find healing and wholeness.
The struggles began early. At the tender age of two, Kelvin found himself in the foster system along with his older brother and younger sister. Everywhere they went, the siblings were a package deal. “They kept us together all our lives,” Kelvin says, something which he is grateful for. However, he has no fond memories of any of the homes he stayed at. “Some homes, we would get there, and there’d already be other kids there, so… the other kids would take our food,” he recalls. “I guess they figured they were there first, and it was their house.” In order to keep from starving, Kelvin and his siblings resorted to shoplifting from a local grocery store on their way home from school, because they knew that they would get nothing else to eat. “It probably wasn’t right, but it was the only way we survived.”
The Lacy children bounced around to seven or eight different homes before they were adopted by a kindly Seventh-day Adventist lady, Gertrude Pettitt, in 1976. By then, Kelvin was eight years old, his brother was ten, and his sister was six. “Ms. Pettitt” introduced the children to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and they resided in Chicago until moving to South Bend, Indiana, during the blizzard of 1979. Upon settling into their new home, Kelvin and his siblings were enrolled in South Bend Jr. Academy. Kelvin thoroughly enjoyed his time there, and he graduated valedictorian of the eighth-grade class of 1984. From there, Kelvin moved on to Washington High School – a public school.
The transition from church school to a public school was a jolting experience. “The school was so much bigger, because South Bend Jr. Academy is a small school,” Kelvin explains. “There, I mean, it was just, like, rowdy. From quiet, to rowdy.” To help ease the transition, Kelvin began hanging out with a group of friends who had gone to public school all their lives, and Kelvin’s own life started going a different direction. “I hung around them to adjust, and then while I was adjusting, I just slowly was drifting and drifting further and further away from the church. And next thing I knew, I had stopped going.” Thus began a twenty-year separation from church. “[I] got off into the worldly things. Women… cars, hanging out with the wrong people, and wrong influences,” Kelvin recounts. He dropped out of high school during his senior year, only lacking three credits to graduate. “Why, I can’t tell you to this day,” he says.
As time passed, Kelvin continued engaging in “the world.” It was not until he found himself in jail that harsh reality hit him: this was not the kind of life he wanted to be living. “It was time for a change,” he says, recalling five months in prison. “I was tired of living the way I was living. Things wasn’t going right. Bad relationships, hanging out doing wrong, kept going to jail. That wasn’t the life for me.” While serving his time, Kelvin resolved to change his ways and better his life. One conviction he made was to return to the church and faith he had strayed so far from. As soon as he was free, Kelvin kept his promise and began attending church. “When I came out, it seemed like it was a whole new world out here. So I knew if it was a whole new world, it was time for me to make [a] change.”
“I had my hesitations,” Kelvin admits, reflecting on returning to church by himself. Fortunately, he was warmly welcomed. He reconnected with an old classmate from South Bend Junior Academy and found a new friend in a woman named Roberta Stran.
“I try to speak to people I haven’t seen before,” Stran explains. “And so I just spoke to Kelvin.” The two struck up a rapport, and would exchange pleasantries every time they saw one another at church for the next several Sabbaths. One Sabbath, while walking to the front of the church for prayer time, Stran noticed Kelvin sitting near the aisle, right where she was about to pass by. Suddenly, she felt that God was trying to tell her something. “I just feel the Lord impress me, ‘Well, just take his hand and take him down to the front,’” she recalls. Listening to the prodding of the Spirit, Stran reached out and took Kelvin’s hand in silent invitation. “You know, he got up and came with me?” she says. “And we’ve been doing that ever since.”
Returning to church and to Jesus has changed Kelvin’s entire life. “I believe that He [God] was just waiting for me to come home,” Kelvin says with conviction. “Ever since I’ve been going back to church… life is good.” One of the blessings Kelvin experienced after his return to church was marrying a lovely woman named Cynthia. The couple celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary in October, 2017.
Just over a year ago, Kelvin was re-baptized. Though he had been baptized at age eight or nine, he decided a renewal was in order. “It felt good when I did get baptized,” he says emphatically. “I felt like a new man!”
In the future, Kelvin is also hoping to finally finish high school. Reflecting on his tumultuous early life and the redeeming love of his Heavenly Father for a wayward child, Kelvin has one thing he can say: “He’s been good to me!”
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