“My
center is giving away, my right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am
attacking.”
The
author of the devotion wrote that “sometimes in life’s battles we can feel as
if we are losing on every front.” He then noted that trials can be God’s road
to triumph. I thought about those words this week as I tried to steel myself
for another year in here. I spend every morning before sunrise in prayer and
Bible reading. And, I think this experience has made me a better man, a better
Christian, a wiser, more merciful believer. But faith and hope are tested
repeatedly and I’ve come to accept that having faith, believing when everything
tells you otherwise, is the key.
For
the past six months a group of supporters have been lobbying to get my sentence
reduced – modified in a way that would allow me to leave prison and get to work
paying off my restitution and doing what I’ve been called to do. That sounds
funny from in here, saying you have a calling, but one of the many things I’ve
learned during my time in here is that I can teach and motivate men in very
difficult circumstances.
Many
people wrote letters to the Governor on my behalf. My cousin, who – along with
her husband – has cared for me and supported me in more ways than I can count
since those very dark days at the jail, sent me copies of those letters. “Read
them when you’re feeling down so you see what people think of you,” she told me
when she mailed them. I haven’t read any yet. I haven’t been in a position
where I “needed” to read them and, quite candidly, the fact that someone would
take the time and effort to write on my behalf is very humbling and touching.
So, I start each day reminding myself I can’t do anything that would discourage
and disappoint the people who have backed me, and prayed for me, and hung in
there with me when logic and common sense should have told them otherwise.
Hope
is a mysterious thing. It’s a feeling that what is wanted will happen. It’s
expectation. Combined with faith – an unquestioning trust and confidence – hope
is what keeps us going when everything tells us all is lost. As I’ve written
before, I love how Stephen King’s protagonist Andy Dufresne in “The Shawshank
Redemption” explains hope:
“Hope
is a good thing, maybe the best thing. And hope never dies.”
Michael
Morton spent twenty-five years in a Texas prison for the murder of his wife.
The evidence, the prosecutor said, was overwhelming. Morton described his
nights in the prison, the screams, the smells, the despair. At one point in his
time behind bars, his son (who was required to visit once each quarter) wrote
and said “I don’t want to visit anymore.” What could Morton do? Within two
years, the son wrote again. This time to ask that he be allowed to be adopted
by his aunt and uncle and change his last name. Morton just said, “Those days
were the worst.”
Twenty
years after he entered Texas DOC the parole board (yes Virginia, Texas still
has parole) offered to release Morton. “Admit you killed your wife and you will
make parole.” Morton couldn’t do it. No matter how much he hated prison, how
much he missed freedom and fresh air and privacy and the thousand other things
we take for granted each day, he couldn’t say he killed his wife.Morton had a lawyer who for nine years had tried without success to get his case reopened. “I told him to take the parole board’s offer,” the lawyer said. “And when he told me he couldn’t, when he told me he knew all he had left was his honor, I promised then and there I’d never give up trying to get him free.” Honor matters. Even when you face the worst you do so with dignity and honor. And you hope. You never give up hope.
I wish
I could say that the whole time I’ve been in here I was honorable, but I can’t.
When I first got locked up, I was a mess. I’d spent so much time living with
what I was doing, so much time anxious, depressed, and hating myself that my
arrest should have been a relief. It wasn’t. I lost everything I loved and held
dear and it didn’t depart quietly. I was full of fear and self-pity. I said
things. I wrote things. I thought things that I deeply regret. I was weak, and
cowardly, and dishonest. It’s hard to imagine being worse than you are at your
lowest, yet I was. Jail was not character building. Jail was destroying what
little was left.
So
Michael Morton stayed in prison and he hoped, and he prayed, and he believed.
One evening, years earlier, when the prison was awash in the cacophony of
piercing screams and shouts, Morton put his headphones on and turned his small
radio dial to nothing but static. He wanted the white noise to block out every
sound around him.
He
lay there with his eyes closed and the sounds of the prison drowned out amid
the constant crack and whir of static until he heard it, the clear beautiful
sound of a classical music piece on a station that never came in on his radio.
And the music soothed him; he felt peace and security; the bitterness and the
loss left him. Even though he was behind bars, Michael Morton was free. And I knew what he meant. I understood.
I’d been there and had the same epiphany, that moment I knew it would
all be alright.
Freedom.
On the eve of his twenty-fifth year behind bars a Texas court ordered DNA
testing on evidence – a blood soaked bandana – found at the scene. The test
showed Michael Morton’s wife’s blood and the blood of an itinerant construction
worker already doing a life sentence for the rape and murder of a woman that
occurred less than a year after the death of Morton’s wife. A review of the
evidence used to convict Morton showed that the prosecutors withheld evidence
that would have exonerated Morton. The prosecutors needed a conviction, so why
not the husband?
And
just like that, the doors of the prison swung open. Morton was exonerated with
apology – and money – from the state. But the twenty-five years? The bitterness
over the loss? How do you go on? “I never gave up hope,” he said. Hope is a good
thing. Andy Dufresne sure knew what he was talking about.
On
a sweltering July day in 1863, Joshua Chamberlain looked over all that remained
of his bloodied Maine regiment. Only one of six men remained standing. They
were out of ammunition. All day they had fought, barely holding their line
against a succession of enemy attacks. They could not stop another onslaught.
Nothing stood between his line and his army’s rear. His battered regiment was
the right flank of the union line. There was no reason to go on. No hope of
success. But hope is a funny thing. Sometimes it just takes a step forward.
Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets; and they followed; on the order
they charged down the hill into the advancing army; and the tide turned and the
men from Maine prevailed; and the union was saved.
I
don’t know what the Governor will do. In less than a week his term ends. The
new Governor will take his oath of office on Saturday ending the McDonnell
administration. And Governor McDonnell? He faces his own legal problems. The
Washington Post recently reported that the Governor’s private attorneys met
with Justice Department prosecutors to delay his indictment on influence
peddling and improper receipt of gifts until after his term expires. And I’ve
wandered the past few weeks if in his time alone the Governor ever said to
himself “I wish I’d handled things differently.” Or “I’m a good man who made a
mess of things. I just need a fresh start.” I wonder if he has had his epiphany
yet, his revelation that there are consequences to our actions and we have to
face those consequences – “man up” – and then move forward with integrity and
honor.
I
don’t know if I’m getting out early. I do know I have hope and hope is a good
thing, maybe the best thing. Hope a lot of times is all we have left when we
lose everything else. But, hope never dies. As long as you hope, you are on the
road to triumph. It doesn’t matter if you’re in prison, or poverty, or just in
pain. Hope keeps you going. 
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