It’s been almost
30 years, but Tom
Michaels Zahradnik still vividly recalls sitting in the waiting room for his girlfriend while she got an abortion.
“I still remember the sound of the
machines,” he says. “I remember when she was done. It was Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in 1980.”
Tom was only a high school senior; his girlfriend, a sophomore. He didn’t know it then, but his life would never be the same.
“At the time it didn’t seem devas-tating, but after that, my life just really started going downhill,” Tom
says.
Tom is now the general manager and chief executive officer of a Christian radio network in New York’s Hudson Valley. Raised in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., he says he was “pretty emotional” growing up and saw psychiatrists, but nothing ever seemed to help his crushing periods of depression. In high school, he often pondered suicide, and during his senior year, the abortion made his spirits sink very low.
He did discover one niche, acting in school plays, and his first role was in “Guys and Dolls,” in which the main character is a young, female Salvation Army officer. He was cast opposite his future wife, Cathleen.
“That was my first exposure to evangelical Christianity,” Tom says with a laugh. “I didn’t connect with it at all.”
During one of his bouts with depression in 1982, about a year after the abortion, Tom went into the kitchen of his home and downed an entire bottle of sleeping pills.
“I’ve come to realize that my suicide attempt was directly connected to the abortion,” Tom says.
God in the ‘cuckoo’s nest’
“I didn’t really want to die,” he says. “In fact, I went with my mom to pick up my sister at work. I passed out in the car.”
Tom awoke to find his parents carrying him into a mental hospital. He ended up in White Plains, N.Y., at the New York Psychiatric Hospital, which he describes as a cold place right out of the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“I was like, ‘What has my life come to? This is my life?’ I had no purpose. I didn’t believe in God. If there was a God, I was pretty angry because of the way things had turned out,” Tom says.
Tom retreated to his room, where he knelt by the bed, totally distraught and broken.
“I said, ‘God, if you’re real, you’re going to have to show me now. Otherwise, I have absolutely no reason to go on living.’ I didn’t know anything about being a Christian, or being born again, or the Cross, or the blood of Jesus, or anything like that,” Tom remembers praying.
Tom says the only born–again Christians he had known were obnoxious. But he had gone to Catholic school as a boy and always felt God had something special planned for his life.
“As I knelt there by the bed, I was just sovereignly aware of my lost condition,” he recalls. “I was aware that the reason I was there was because of all the bad choices I had made over the last 19 years of my life. At the same time, I was aware that God was right there and that He was prepared to forgive me and that Jesus was the way.
A hospital altar
“I was aware that He had died for my sins and was ready to take my life as it was and change [it] if I would give it to Him. It was kind of a mystical experience. It wasn’t a church. My altar was this bed in a psychiatric hospital.”
Tom also noticed that he felt completely different afterward. “It was like this glowing meteor came out of heaven and filled me up,” he says. “What was empty and cold and dark was all of a sudden light. I sat back from the bed, and I was aware I was not depressed. It was supernatural. It was a divine appointment with Jesus, and He came into my life.”
Tom left the hospital the next morning, Feb. 20, 1982, and everything had changed.
“I remember how green the grass was and how blue the sky was,” he says.
He started attending church and had a hunger for God. He had found a reason not just to live but also to live with purpose.
“When I came to Christ, that’s where purpose was ignited,” he says. “That’s what I needed to set my life in the right direction.”
His new life began when he landed a job working in Christian television for the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) in Fishkill, N.Y.
God’s purpose revealed
Tom was sitting in the audio room at TBN one day when he got an overwhelming impression from God: “Go make your radio demo tape.” At the time, Tom didn’t even know what that meant, but he followed orders and eventually landed several radio jobs in the Hudson Valley.
One of those gigs was at the Sound of Life Radio Network, a Christian station that broadcasts to 12 different communities in upstate New York. Tom had worked there on and off since the 1980s, and its board named him CEO and general manager in 2004.
Tom wasn’t on the job long before his depression flared up again. This time, it took him 18 months before he realized, “My life is not my own.”
“I didn’t want to do what God wanted me to do,” Tom says. “I was literally undone, unraveled. Here I was lying with my face in the dirt for 18 months, just struggling and fighting God.”
Tom recovered after reading Psalm 30:5 (“His anger is for a moment, but his faith will last a lifetime”) and hearing the Marty Goetz song “Chanukah,” in which the singer dedicates his life to the Messiah.
“It was [in] that song and that Scripture that I realized God is not mad at me,” he says. “His favor is still on my life. From that point, I decided I would do what God wanted me to do and not [worry] about what people think. I made a commitment that December [2005]: ‘God, my life is yours, I’ll do whatever you ask, I’ll go wherever you want.…’ It was a lot like Isaiah Chapter 6. I was ‘undone’ and restored by God.”
I’m not in control
That doesn’t mean Tom’s life has been perfect or that depression has not set him back occasionally.
“In the past, when I would fail or make a mistake, it would be consuming,” Tom says. “I couldn’t get over it, but there’s something about walking in the grace of God. I am very much at peace with who I am, imperfections and all. I don’t let those things paralyze me anymore.”
Tom says anyone with depression should not feel guilty.
“There is nothing wrong with you as a believer,” he says.
He urges depression sufferers to get a Christian counselor and take medication if that’s necessary. Family members of depressed people should be a “listening ear,” he says.
“In our country and our culture, we’ve learned to try to solve problems ourselves,” he says. “That’s that American independence, but that’s not biblical. We need others to help us. That interdependence is what we need.”
Over the years, Tom considered job changes, such as becoming an air traffic controller or serving in the military, but nothing ever seemed to work out.
After his last bout with depression, Tom found what he believes is his true life calling. He recently was ordained
as a minister with the General Counsel of the Assemblies of God and serves as a chaplain in corporate, government, and entertainment arenas.
Touching the world
“I remember thinking recently, ‘I can’t believe that the Lord allows me to do this and what a privilege it is.’ For me, it’s to be able to bring encouragement into someone’s life,” he says.
“Jesus calls us to love and accept people and listen to them and then maybe we’ll have the privilege of sharing the Gospel with them.”
The station has started doing more live remotes, in which a radio show is broadcast from a venue outside the station.
“We’re not supposed to be cooped up in some religious corner,” Tom says. “We’re supposed to be out influencing our culture. That’s probably the most exciting part.”
Tom has also used The Sound of Life to promote organizations like The Salvation Army (see sidebar) and local pregnancy support centers, which are close to his heart.
“My restitution is paying back, not to gain forgiveness, but [to] share with other men,” Tom says. “Most guys will just say, ‘It doesn’t bother me.’ I think that’s a guy who’s just not dealing with the issues.
“It’s one thing to lose a child, it’s another thing to be responsible for the death of your child. I’ve come to greatly understand God’s grace and His forgiveness. It’s impassioned me more to get out and say, ‘You may think this is an easy choice to abort, but you have no idea the months and years of pain ahead of you. Don’t do it.’ ”
Tom, now a father of three, is sold on the work of crisis pregnancy centers and often helps them raise money.“If you vote for a pro–life candidate and you think that makes you pro–life, you’re wrong,” Tom says. “You need to support the pregnancy centers in your community, write letters of encouragement, become a counselor, serve on a board, and give financially.”
A white rose
Tom has had no contact with his ex–girlfriend for years. He talked to her briefly after becoming a Christian in 1982 to tell her how sorry he was, but “I’ve just had to let that go,” he says.
“It was 28 years ago and I can still remember it, not like a wound, but more like a scar,” Tom says. “I’m grateful the scar is still there because [it] is a reminder of healing.”
Tom went back to the scene recently on his “Black Friday” anniversary. He was looking for the abortion clinic, but in the ultimate irony, he found a church in its place. He placed a single white rose on the steps.
“I think a lot about my child being 28 years old,” he says. “I look forward to the reunion in heaven someday. I really do.”
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