If Only

Yesterday, another group of men were conferred degrees and certificates by our sponsoring community college.  As it was on prior occasions, the ceremony was joyful and uplifting with the graduates mingling with faculty and family just like graduates in the “real world”.  And, as with other college graduations I’ve attended in here, there were moments for me of bittersweet memories as my mind ran through “If only, Larry”.  More on that later.

The other weekend I was at visitation with my folks.  Every month, they make the ninety mile drive from their home in North Carolina up here.  They are both healthy, late-seventies people, and that gives me hope for a lot of years post prison.  Our conversations run the gamut of what’s going on with whom, and where people are.  Invariably, my mom will make an aside about my former church and the minister there.  At my worst, as I sat in the Henrico County Jail trying to find any reason to go on, he refused to come see me.

For a long time that treatment – by people I worshiped with and helped – gnawed at me.  How can my own minister turn his back on me?  2012 was an epiphanal year in my life.  And a fair number of issues and emotional baggage I’d been carting around slowly began to go away.  Things that had seemed to hurt me so deeply didn’t really matter too much.  In fact, I began to appreciate the pain they caused.  Call it rationalization, or maturity, or salvation, but I began to understand what the Apostle Paul meant when during his imprisonment he wrote “And in all things God works for the good of those who love Him according to His purposes.”

Paul was a heck of a writer and his words struck at the mystery that is faith in times of deep trouble.  Those words – I recited that verse literally dozens of times on my worst days as I tried to will myself into believing nothing was happening that God in His infinite power and grace couldn’t work out for my benefit.

I have a dear friend, an Episcopal minister, who regularly visited me at the jail and the receiving unit.  He has provided counsel, and support – even getting his congregation involved in my circumstances, and has listened during my Job-like periods when nothing made sense.  He stayed in touch, writing and visiting me even while undergoing chemotherapy.  His friendship is a true blessing in my life.  Here’s the irony.  I never would have met Gary had it not been for my own minister’s snub.  Another friend, one of Gary’s parishioners, asked him to come see me after my own church rejected me.  “If only”.  Somehow, I think Paul is smiling and saying, “Larry finally gets it.”

Back to college graduation – I sat there and watched our students march in and I remembered I missed my older son’s college graduation.  A wave of emotion – sadness, guilt, loneliness – hit me.  “If only”, I thought, and I felt myself growing back into the guy who struggled so long in here. I started thinking about Paul’s words.

The ceremony ended and I was eating with a few friends and two college faculty members when one of our graduates came up.  “Larry, my parents want to meet you.”  I walked over with him and said hello.  An elderly black woman with a cane stepped up, then threw her arms around me.  “Thank you”, she said.  “You helped our son so much.  You answered our prayers.”

Funny thing, that same reaction happened eight or nine times after that as grad after grad got me and introduced me to parents, grandparents, spouses, children.  “This is the guy who got me through my academic classes.”

I thought about Joseph in Egypt.  Sold into slavery, sent to prison, forgotten and then saves Egypt during a terrible drought.  Through divine intervention he is reunited with his brothers who fear for their lives.  Joseph, in one of the Bible’s great lines of mercy forgives his brothers.  “You meant to harm me, but God meant it for good.”

“If only.”  Sometimes we focus too much on the regret and not on the blessing.  I couldn’t help but think about Paul, and our graduates and their families, and my prison journey.  “In all things God works for the good….”  Even in embezzlement convictions, incarceration, and divorce that message applies.

 

Empty

Easter, 2012.  Another “new” season and yet, so much this year is like the last three Easters.  All of them spent incarcerated; all of them spent removed from what I knew, what I cherished.

Each year as Easter approached I’d try and find meaning, try and understand why, why was I going through this, why had I lost so much, where was the loving God I prayed to each day in the midst of struggle?  On a simple level, I knew I was guilty.  I was paying the price, serving the sentence, imposed by a legitimate court following my guilty plea for the theft of two million dollars.  And, I knew I deserved to be punished.  I knew all along I was breaking the law.  I knew I’d lose my wife and friends.  I knew it all.  Yet, the punishment was worse than expected.  The swiftness and finality of rejection beyond what I could imagine.  I was paying more than a just price for my conduct.

I have felt so alone, so abandoned, rejected, and betrayed that no one, I feared could comprehend the depth of my suffering.  I would cry out, over and over at night alone in a stank cell, “help me, God.  Please help me.”  And my tears, my pleas would fall on deaf ears.  Everything I had feared my whole life, everything I believed about myself, that no one did love me, that everyone was dependent on me giving them something or they would abandon me, proved true.  It was, on more than one occasion almost too painful to bear.

On more than one occasion, especially in that first year of living in a jail cell with no physical contact with friends or family other than the all too infrequent thirty-minute “how are you doing?” through Plexiglas, I actively planned my own death.  Death, I believed, was better than prison, divorce, rejection.  I was empty.  Nothing could change my circumstances.  It is the worst position to be in.  Hopelessness kills.

Each year, as the Lenten season began, I vowed to renew.  I’d sacrifice some silly pleasure and devote myself to meditation and prayer.  I’d try and meet God halfway, try and understand what all of this meant, try and hope when every rational fiber in me said hope is gone.  Easter would arrive; I’d hear the words from my years of church attendance ring in my head.  “The Lord is Risen”, and the rote response, “He is Risen indeed”, and I would wait expectantly for the miracle to unfold.  I wanted, I craved that “come thou long expected Jesus” moment, the one that would restore me to family and friends.  It never came.

Tough.  Painful.  Lonely.  Survivable?  I wasn’t sure.  I cried to God, I argued with Him; I tried everything I knew and then I concluded nothing I could offer or promise would matter.   My life was beyond my control.  The only decision I really had to make was, do I hope or do I just go on. 

I thought of a man in Texas as I tried to figure out what to do.  He served over fifteen years in a Texas prison, convicted of murdering his wife.  He told anyone who would listen he wasn’t the killer.  He loved his wife, he told the jury.  But the evidence, the prosecution argued, was overwhelming.  It was cold-blooded murder.  Life in prison was his destiny. 

I heard Michael Morton speak about his time in maximum security, how close he came to breaking.  There was the time his son turned twelve and wrote him and announced “I don’t want to visit anymore”.  And the pain from that letter seared his heart.  It got worse.  At seventeen, his son wrote again.  “I’m going to be adopted” by the family raising him.  He was changing his name.  “My heart broke”, Morton said.  He gave up.

Then a miracle happened.  The Innocence Project heard about his case.  They petitioned the court to examine the prosecution’s file and discovered evidence exonerating Morton that was withheld at trial.  And then DNA evidence proved conclusively Morton was not the killer.  Another man, already doing life in Texas for murder, had killed his wife.

Michael Morton walked out of prison a free man.  But, he wasn’t truly free until he was able to forgive all those people who put him in that hell, all those people who abandoned him.  Nothing he went through made sense and yet, in God’s infinite wisdom it all made sense.  He had survived the valley, stared into the abyss, and was made whole.  More importantly, Michael Morton found peace.  He mattered and what he’d gone through mattered.

This Lenten season I embarked on another time of renewal and spiritual cleansing.  I gave up potato chips – my weakness in here, and coffee.   Each morning I began with reading one or two Psalms and an Old and New Testament lesson.  Ironically, three times I read Psalm 77, a Psalm of crying out to a silent God and then finding strength remembering His prior amazing deeds.

More ironically, I read the story of Joseph, sold into slavery, imprisoned for thirteen years, and then he saved both Egypt and the Israelites.  “You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.”  I read the Exodus story.  God heard the cries of His people and sent Moses, a murderer of an Egyptian, abandoned by his own people, to go and announce to Pharaoh, “God says, Let my people go.”

And I listened as I prayed waiting for God to tell me what this all means.  I heard silence, but the silence gave me comfort.  I cried out some nights, I hurt, I was lonely, but somehow each morning the silence sustained me.  Did anyone know what I was going through?  Did anyone care?  I read the Gospels and saw it, the suffering, the rejection.  His twelve most trusted friends; one betrays him, ten run and hide, afraid for their own lives; only one – John – shows up at his execution.  He knew what I felt.  He knows what I’m going through.  He is with me.

This morning I awoke to a cloudless Easter morning.  I went out and ran.  Over and over I heard the words from the Gospel of Luke, “and they went to the tomb and it was empty.  And the angel of the Lord said, “He is not here.  He is Risen.”  I thought about that empty tomb.  I thought about all I’d been through these past four years.  And I realized I’d never felt closer to God than I did this morning.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  I don’t know when this trial will end or what will be in my future.  I know what I pray for each day.  There is hope in suffering; there is hope in emptiness.  “The tomb is empty.”  There is hope.

Joseph

So what do I write about Christmas?  Tough subject because Christmas is a time of family, and hope, and wishes fulfilled.  And prison?  Prison’s just the opposite.  It’s solitary and lonely and hope seems to be just beyond your grasp.  Fulfilled wishes?  More like unfulfilled.  Guys treat Christmas as just another day, another knocked off their remaining three, or seven, or ten years left to do.  Christmas in prison.  It’s hard to put into words everything that goes through your mind.  Memories of Christmases past, longings for Christmases in the future.

The country folk singer John Prine has a song, “Christmas in Prison”, that I find myself singing as I run. 

“It was Christmas in prison
And the food was real good
We had turkey and pistols
Carved out of wood
And I dream of her always
Even when I don’t dream
Her name’s on my tongue
And her blood’s in my stream.”

Christmas dreams.  What do I write, what do I put down on paper to explain exactly what I’m feeling as the day approaches?

Someone sent me pages of quotes from my favorite Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  I love the character George Bailey.  And, like I did when I was out there, I choked up as I read George calling out to his guardian angel,

“Clarence! Clarence! Help me, Clarence.  Get me back.  Get me back.  I don’t care what happens to me.  Only get me back to my wife and kids.  Help me, Clarence, please.  Please!  I want to live again.  I want to live again.  I want to live again…Please, God, let me live again.”

Who can’t relate to George Bailey, at the end of his rope when nothing in his life, when everything in his life, seemed to come into crystal clear focus?  Everything was gone.  Everything was out of his control.  All he had left was that deep felt, primal plea to God “let me live again”. 

Christmas in prison and you’re alone and you’ve lost everything you worked for, everything you lived for.  What do I write?  And then Joseph came to mind.

I’m not talking about Egypt Joseph.  I’m talking about the largely forgotten Joseph.  And yet, without him I’m not sure there’d be “The Christmas Story.”

This guy asks a girl to marry him.  He’s doing alright for himself; he owns a small business, has a trade; he’s got his life planned out.  Only the girl comes to him and says “I’m pregnant”.  That is a major problem.  They hadn’t slept together, so it obviously isn’t his child.  So I imagine that conversation, how disappointed Joseph must have been.  All those plans, all the preparations he made, wasted.

Joseph does something out of character for most people.  He decided to keep things quiet, not embarrass the girl.  She’ll go home and he’ll say “things just didn’t work out”.  And then, he has a dream.  In his sleep an angel visits him and tells him to still get married.  “Don’t worry”, the angel says.  “It’s God’s child.”  The angel even tells Joseph what to name the baby.

Here’s the crazy part, the extraordinary part – Joseph listens.  He decides if God chose him to marry this girl, that was good enough for him.  Ever hear that voice deep in the back of your head, the one that tells you the right thing to do even when conventional wisdom tells you otherwise?  For years I heard that voice and I ignored it.  Then I got arrested and started following those little instructions even though it cost me everything.  And I learned on the outside my life appeared worse, but on the inside I’m stronger and I sleep better.  Funny how that voice works.

Joseph listened to the angel, but that wasn’t the end of the story.  He’s largely forgotten in the New Testament story and yet, without him I wonder if Emmanuel, “God is with us”, would mean the same thing. 

Christmas in prison.  What does it mean?  Sometimes we find ourselves in places we never imagined with dreams lost and we wonder what should we do?  And the voice tells us to “do the right thing”.  Life doesn’t suddenly turn out wonderfully.  In fact, things may get worse.  We have more in common, I think with Joseph than we do with George Bailey.  But like both men discovered, the Christmas message is alive, it’s real.  God is with us, even in prison.

So what do I write about this Christmas?  How about this? It’s a wonderful, blessed time, even in prison because I know the real message of hope exists.  As John Prine sang,

“It’s Christmas in Prison

They’ll be music tonight
I’ll probably get homesick
I love you
Good night.”

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Dreams

My mom sent me a copy of her minister’s sermon delivered the week before Christmas. Ironically, it was on a subject that I had jotted down in my notes a few weeks ago. I’d been thinking a good deal about the approaching New Year and how so many of the plans and dreams I had “BA18” (before August 18th) had been lost.



I’d been thinking during that time about Joseph. Here’s this guy. He’s about to get married to a young girl (he’d be her first) and start life as a newly married man handling his carpentry business. All of a sudden she shows up and says “I’ve got good news and bad news”. And Joseph finds out the woman he’s betrothed to is (1) favored by God, so much so that an angel paid her a visit; and (2) oh yeah, she’s pregnant.


Probably as bad as news can get for a Jewish guy living in Roman occupied Israel in 2 or 3 AD. Joseph is devastated, but he doesn’t want to hurt or publicly embarrass his bride to be (after all, announcing she was pregnant out of wedlock was a capital offense. She would have been stoned to death). Instead he decides to let her go quietly home.


All his dreams: the honeymoon, kids, his carpentry business; all are going out the window. But, an angel visits him and says “Keep her as your wife”. Joseph doesn’t argue. He doesn’t complain about the hand he’s been dealt. He does what he’s been told by God, not once, but again when he packs up and moves to Egypt to protect his wife and this baby he didn’t father.


There isn’t a lot written about Joseph, but he’s an integral part of the Christmas story. Every plan he’d made was thrown out the window when Mary told him she was pregnant. Yet, he trusted God and did the right thing and it made a difference.


As I’ve written before, early in my marriage I wondered why the beautiful young girl I fell so deeply in love with was so sad and depressed. I had changed every plan, every dream for my future to be with her and it wasn’t what I’d expected. I stayed because, well, that’s what you do when you love someone. You don’t bail out, you don’t give up on them, you stay and you trust and believe with all your heart because it’s the right thing to do.


Fast forward to 2010. Every dream I had growing old with that beautiful girl, watching my son graduate college, holidays with friends, my youngest son playing baseball and performing piano recitals, all gone.


You’d think I’d be bitter and depressed. I’m not. As I look back on this past year I’ve learned some amazing things about myself and realized I was wrong about so much in my life. I’ve made some friendships with men in this prison that I wouldn’t trade for anything: Big S, DC, Tyrone, Black, Craig and E to name a few.


I’ve had people outside and in here tell me how I’ve made a difference for them. I’ve learned to let go of many painful memories. And, I’ve learned patience and trust. Pretty ironic that all this took place in a cesspool like this.


It’s been a good year. All those times I was struggling, when I felt like I couldn’t go on, somebody was helping me. Maybe it was the day I got a letter from my cousin or my friends at home, or maybe it was the guy coming up to me and saying thank you, but those things happened when I needed them most.


I still have dreams. Maybe someday my ex will tell me she still loves me; maybe my sons will show up; maybe I’ll sell a book. I know this. God knows what I need. He’s got a plan for me.


I read a quote the other day:


“The black moment is the moment when the real transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”


2011 will be a bright year, even in prison.